Brajeshwar

Illustration by Ralree

The OS Race: Who’s burning out next?

If you belong to the “Linux Community” bandwagon, you may just have a different opinion on the fact that there are lessons to be learned from Windows and Mac! Linux community does enjoys some real good evangelism despite having a minuscule user base. Just to prove the support statement, statistics by Marketshare show that Windows enjoys a gorilla sized market share of 90%, followed by Mac 8% and Linux users together mount less than 1%.

Uniqueness about Linux primarily involves diversity, ability to be tailored well, availability and support to open source applications and not to mention some real good solutions. Most of the times, for free!

Still, the Linux community has a few learning outcomes to explore from its competitors, Windows and Mac. Just to list a few;

1. Windows has excellent marketing and business practices which are very hard to replicate and the OS is extremely good for most occasions, if not all.
2. The geographic spread of Microsoft ensures that their customer support, be it hardware or software is exemplary.
3. Microsoft also enjoys tremendous support and dedication from their Vendor support centers and OEM manufacturers.
4. Windows OS is also a boon for the noobs as one can work on it without any preliminary knowledge and the selection of its features suits the user very appropriately.
5. Mac is from the Apple household, and being from the same company gives a direct understanding about how innovative Mac has been over the years.
6. Mac has been a highly innovative product which somehow has the ability to look into the future and come up with products that are technologically arrogant and understand the customer requirements.
7. Mac scores on the aesthetics point as its art style is unique and looks are exceptional.
8. Moreover, Mac is very streamlined, logical and functional to use with a good working environment.

A few knowledge bytes:

• The ability to get an input from any open source developer who is at potential disposal is the key thing that Linux should exploit. It would not have to pay the Linux community like Windows and Mac have to do to its employees.
• Hundreds of Linux distributions, which have fallen apart to produce something that is under the control of the owner, and thus they have to be united and the talent has to be utilized to fight Windows and Mac.
• It is better to create a set of niche customers than to attack the mass market. This should be done keeping in mind that the vendors, distributors, OEM manufacturers of Windows and Mac are far too many in number. And, more so, with so much of populace to target, being niche is not such a bad plan.
• Creation of features that are actually unique in nature will impress everyone right from distributors, programmers to the users.

These were a few insights of the OS market. We welcome criticism and appraisals alike!

Praval, the author of this article is a freelance writer/blogger and evangelist. He writes reviews and stuff related to Cloud computing, Office 2.0, Startup ecosystem, Wordpress, Linux, Open Source Software, Life hacks and technology in general.