Re: Linux and ISP

[Simon Valiquette <Simon.Valiquette@example.com>]

Jonathan Byrne wrote:
> 
> >    By the way, if I believe his conference, Linux is now more used on
> > desktop than MacOS.  Interesting information for your ISP if they
> > support both MAC and Windows, but say that they don't support Linux
> > because this market is too small for them...
> 
> It's more than a matter of market size (BTW, I don't believe that
> assertion, at least not if we limit it to people doing PPP
> dialup on their desktops).  Other factors are:

  The number was including desktop in companies as well, and I recognize
that I never saw any survey from any ISP about which OS are used by
their customers.  And the numbers was for the global market of OS, not
the Japanese one.

> * The likelihood of a user needing help.  Linux users generally don't
>   need support from their ISP, whereas many Mac buyers choose a
>   Mac specifically because they don't know much about computers
>   (and maybe don't want to) and they believe a Mac will be the
>   easiest to use.  They are more likely to need help than
>   are people with the knowledge to install Linux and use Linux
>   or *BSD.

  The reality is that the Linux users profile is changing.  At the
starting, it was mostly kernel hackers.  Later, most users just wanted
to use Linux without making any development.  Now, you start to see many
Linux users that don't even know how to program, and don't want to learn
it.  They often use Linux just to go on internet and making text editing
with relatively cheap hardware.  I also know some poeple that use Linux
on recent computers because it is stable and many of the software they
need are available for free, or at least at a very reasonnable price. 
They are far from being the majority, but the average user is where
Linux can have the most new users in the long term.  I believe that
'long term' will be less than 5 years, and maybe only 2 years.

  Linux have made a lot of progress since the last 2 years in the ease
of installation and use, and at one time, I believe that a lot of poeple
that have just basic computer knowledge will move to Linux all at the
same time.  All is needed is a critical mass, and we might be quite
close to that.  I think that it would be the next very big step for
Linux.  And all theses new users may seek for help from ISP that support
Linux (and there is already a couple that actually do).

  Still, most of the average user that use Linux, just ask help to more
experienced Linux users and not to their ISP, since they don't expect
them to be able (or to want) to help them.

> * The relative ease of supporting Macs.  There are only three
>   things you need to support - MacPPP (old Macs), Open Transport
>   (newer ones), and Apple Internet Dialer.  Each of these can
>   work in only one way, and even a person who doesn't know
>   much about Macs can get up to speed on them fairly quickly.
>   Compare that to the myriad of ways that people might be
>   doing PPP on Linux;  they all work differently on the surface,
>   and a person supporting them needs to know both a lot more
>   about dialup networking and a lot more about Linux than a person
>   doing dialup support for Mac (or Win).  People like that are not
>   easy to get, and most of them would not be content to take
>   a dialup support job, helping mostly Win and Mac users, and the
>   occassional Linux user.

Agreed.
 
> Quite some time ago (nearly a year), we addressed the questions,
> "Do we need to provide dialup support for Linux, and if so, when?"
> The conclusion we came to was "No, and not for the foreseeable
> future."  The reasons were simple - lack of market penetration on
> one end, and simple lack of demand on the other.

  Many poeple don't ask just because they don't expect that their ISP
would want to help them.  For the ISP that I know that was supporting
Linux, most of them was already using Linux, and the network
administrator, which should know a lot about dialup networking, was
answering the more complicated occasional Linux questions.
  Maybe it would be interesting to reevaluate the question in a year
basis.  Anyway, I don't know when or even if we will soon see more than
100 milions Linux users, I just believe that this time is close.  I
still have the right to choose own my religion, right?

> about support for Linux are very uncommon.   In a profit-thin business
> like being an ISP, you'd really need significant demand to justify
> either hiring new staff to support Linux or spending money to train
> existing staff.  That demand just isn't there.  I don't expect it
> to particularly grow, either, since people running any kind of
> PC *nix usually go for cable or DSL as soon as its available
> in there area, which takes dialup out of the equation completely.

  I have to recognize that myself, I usually used only ethernet
connections, even at home in Canada, since the last 2 years.  I use
modem only as fax or answer machine.

  Anyway, the ISP stuff was just one line on a long email about Beowulf
and Beowulf-like clusters.

Simon