Eh. Home users often don’t even pay for their licenses.
Selling windows licenses to other businesses has always been how windows made most of its money. I don’t even want to think of how much work it would be to get hexagenarian office workers to switch to Ubuntu (or any other flavor of linux, frankly). That’s not a dig on Linux, it’s just that trying to switch to any other operating system would be so painful that MS could ask basically any price and companies would pay it.
The gaming/home user space may well continue to slide toward Linux, and I hope it does. But making inroads to the corporate desktop is the real challenge.
Let’s say the home Linux market share continues to improve over the next few years to the point that it overtakes Microsoft. Sure, wishful thinking, but give it a few years after that, and you’ll have average people getting used to Linux the same way they are now used to Windows. I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch in this hypothetical to see corporations seriously consider switching due to combined factors including cost and employee comfortability with Linux. Losing the home market is a big deal.
Eh. Home users often don’t even pay for their licenses.
Selling windows licenses to other businesses has always been how windows made most of its money. I don’t even want to think of how much work it would be to get hexagenarian office workers to switch to Ubuntu (or any other flavor of linux, frankly). That’s not a dig on Linux, it’s just that trying to switch to any other operating system would be so painful that MS could ask basically any price and companies would pay it.
The gaming/home user space may well continue to slide toward Linux, and I hope it does. But making inroads to the corporate desktop is the real challenge.
Let’s say the home Linux market share continues to improve over the next few years to the point that it overtakes Microsoft. Sure, wishful thinking, but give it a few years after that, and you’ll have average people getting used to Linux the same way they are now used to Windows. I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch in this hypothetical to see corporations seriously consider switching due to combined factors including cost and employee comfortability with Linux. Losing the home market is a big deal.