Products Must Solve a Problem
One of this week’s tech news stories is the end of Wal-Mart’s experiment with selling Linux PCs in its stores. It was not a success.
Advocates of Linux have been insisting that the open source OS will take off this year for quite a few years now. It never seems to happen, and I doubt it has anything to do with the technical merits of Linux (which are considerable).
So why aren’t users flocking to buy Linux PCs? Because they don’t solve a problem for them.
The problem that an operating system solves - making your PC run - is one that is already solved quite well by Windows and Mac OS. Both have their flaws (and please, let’s not debate them here), but they both solve that problem in a way that satisfies most people who are buying computers.
It doesn’t matter if, in technical terms, Linux is better (and I am offering no opinion in that regard). First, there are other issues that make a solutions work (are there drivers for all my hardware? can I call a friend and ask for help when I need it?) and where Linux falls short. Second, the problem has already been solved for us by two highly entrenched competitors.
It doesn’t matter how cool or brilliant a particular $200 Linux PC is; it’s not addressing a need that many people think they have. And there’s a lesson there for anyone designing a product: it doesn’t matter how well you design it if nobody thinks they need it.
As for Linux… maybe next year?
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