Desktop Linux gains ground

There has been a surge in vendor announcements about Linux-based desktop PCs in the Indian market in recent months. Prashant L Rao analyses vendor strategies and market realities. The conclusion? Things have never looked better for Linux on the desktop

Princy Bhatnagar claims that market acceptance of Linux-based PCs has been phenomenal

It never rains but pours. After years of seeing the occasional Linux-based PC being launched, only to be dropped by the vendor due to disappointing sales, MNCs are now starting to take Linux seriously. Significantly, of the three vendors who had offered Linux-based machines in India in the last six months, two are consumer electronics companies who are better known in the PC market for their peripherals—LG and Samsung. The third is HP, the company that has always been something of a maverick among the MNC PC brigade. HP is the only MNC vendor to offer AMD-based PCs. Linux is another part of its strategy to bring the cost of an MNC branded PC within striking distance of the assembled ‘gray’ box.

So is it Penguin time on Indian desktops? Maybe. Red Hat has 5 percent of the desktop computing market today. That’s not a huge number but it is significant when you consider the fact that Linux used to have a less than a 1 percent figure in the not too distant past.

Tux’s rocket pack (or ‘What’s driving the Linux market in India’)
The cost of PCs has plummeted but the cost of Windows hasn’t. PC vendors want to keep their entry-level desktops priced as close to assembled boxes as possible. “Linux is not only relatively stable and bug free but it also lowers the price point of the product. With low PC penetration there is huge scope for expansion in this space, what is required is a moderately priced and good quality product, which is exactly what we are offering,” says R Manikandan, deputy general manager of Sales & Marketing (IT Products) at LG Electronics. Prices of entry-level desktops have dropped from Rs 50,000 to Rs 30,000 and now are available for as little as Rs 15,000. The cost of Windows however has stayed put—Windows XP Home Edition’s price is on par with those charged for its predecessor Windows 98.

Budget PCs account for over 50 percent of all PC sales
HP is loading Linux on its entry-level boxes to keep prices close enough to those of gray machines and let the HP brand to do the rest. Price band analysis based on IDC data shows that PCs priced between Rs 30,000 to 40,000 account for over 50 percent of PC sales in India. It’s in this market that assembled machines sell like hot cakes and it is here that HP, LG and Samsung want to make a dent with Linux boxes.

Linux has got better as a desktop OS
Red Hat 8 on a Pentium 4, which is what LG offers, is very usable. With the release of Red Hat 9, the trend toward Linux being something an average user can actually use is accelerating. It supports more hardware devices, in part due to Red Hat shifting to CUPS for handling printers, and it is more user friendly.

Training is a key factor here
Unless PC buyers are taught to use Linux, their lack of familiarity with the operating system will put them off. LG is offering comprehensive user training to MyPC buyers. Customers are trained on Linux basics right at home. “We needed to increase the rate of application availability, to provide training and build confidence amongst users that Red Hat will provide support and will provide an escalation mechanism for resolving their problems,” says Javed Tapia, director-India, Red Hat.

According to Javed Tapia, Red Hat will provide support and an escalation mechanism for resolving problems of users

Tux gains mind share
The Linux ‘brand’ is gaining recall to the extent that Samsung Electronics’ national sales manager, Princy Bhatnagar says, “ Market acceptance of our machines has been phenomenal in the test marketing phase. We have not come across a single customer complaining about lack of pre-loaded Microsoft software.”

The larger picture
So far, only the consumer PC market is being targeted with Linux-based PCs. The far bigger commercial desktop market, 1.5 million in 2002 vs. 0.7 million for consumer PCs, has been ignored, even though StarOffice’s biggest successes have been in government, BFSI and education. IBM is reputed to be looking for a distributor. If Big Blue or any other biggie pursues the commercial market with a Linux box, it would definitely see big sales in the government, public sector, banking and education segments.

Can it, will it?
In the past, Linux on the desktop has suffered due to half-hearted attempts to sell PCs without taking the trouble to educate consumers on how they can be productive on their new Linux machines. If vendors take the trouble to train users on Linux, it can be a winning proposition. LG’s got the right idea; folks buying the MyPC are trained in using them. Once that initial hurdle is overcome, the rest will fall into place.

Linux has failed to crack into the desktop market in the past because of inertia. Let’s face it, shifting from Windows to Linux on a desktop PC with loads of e-mail, documents and what not is a nightmare. Conversion hassles, getting your desktop to look just so, getting all your hardware configured is not easy. That’s why it is so important to have Linux come pre-loaded on a machine. This way, there are no headaches about unrecognised hardware. Your data is on Linux from day one, so there’s no question of converting email from Outlook Express to Mozilla Mail or your Word documents to OpenOffice or StarOffice.

Linux isn’t going to be everybody’s cup of tea. So far, all the Linux-based desktops have been budget boxes. But then, India is a country where value-for-money is everything. Still, there are always going to be gamers and heavy-duty users who will want top-of-the-line machines and those are still going to come preloaded with Windows XP. But for the PC buyer who wants the comfort of a well-known brand, yet doesn’t want to pay an arm and a leg for a functional PC, Penguin-powered boxes are a very attractive option.

Is Linux good enough for the desktop?

Pros

• It’s stable—Linux does crash but not very often.
• It’s secure—not many viruses or worms are written for Linux. Of course, as the OS becomes more popular on the desktop this is bound to change.
• It’s inexpensive—Linux isn’t free, not if you want support or media. It is cheaper than Windows.
• The free OpenOffice suite bundled with Linux distributions is good enough for most users.

Cons

• Applications tend to be sluggish compared to their Windows counterparts though they are getting better with every release.
• Something as simple as cut and paste can sometimes fail to work across applications.
• Look and feel varies dramatically across applications, Red Hat is working to address this with Bluecurve but much remains to be done.