7/17/2006 -- It has been quite a while now since the first release of Linux. In fact, it has been 15 years since Linus Torvalds, a computer science student at the University of Helsinki at the time, made freely available a kernel that mirrored many of the features of Unix and Minix. In this time, there have been small pockets where Linux has grabbed a foothold and "stolen" some market share, but for the most part it is still not setting any adoption records. By the way, I use the term stolen loosely since many of these areas were new to begin with and not that many were migrations.

Why is this?

I can think of seven excuses often tossed about, and one real reason of my own creation. Let's look at the excuses first:

Excuse #1: Some will say this is because there aren't enough applications for Linux. That's a line of crap that anyone with access to a search engine and gumption enough to check can easily dismiss. There are applications -- and I'm talking decent to great ones -- that can be used for productivity suites and application servers as well as everything in between.

Excuse #2: Others will say the market is too diverse and confusing. I'll agree this is a problem and attempts have been made to unify what is "Linux" (you can create just about anything and call it Linux form the operating system for your phone, to the OS on the mega-million dollar server). I still don't think this excuse is a very valid one, but more one of convenience: Dell has said that they don't ship Linux on desktops anymore because they don't know which one the market wants. In reality, if you want to buy Linux, you basically have three choices now: Red Hat, SuSE (Novell) and Ubuntu. Each has its own niche of the market and each serves that market very well. Given the strength and commitment of these three, it would not surprise me at all to see five years down the road that they are the only real entities left.

Excuse #3: Yet another excuse slowing adoption is that the mainstream does not know about it or understand it. After 15 years, I would suspect that most administrators have heard of Linux, and most have probably even loaded it on a machine in their basement and played with it at one time or another. Surely, they've watched television at some point in time and seen the commercials from IBM and read some trade magazine where they've seen ads from vendors. No, this excuse doesn't hold much water either.

Excuse #4: The brainwashing of Microsoft: It has convinced everyone that their offerings are the only ones to have, or so this excuse goes. This is true, supposedly, for everything from server and desktop operating systems to applications and game consoles; the world mindlessly adopts everything leaving their shipping department. Really? Maybe I'm getting old, but I remember a fair number of products they came out with that fell flat on their face (Bob, anyone?). The reason their products are adopted – those that do become successful – is because they work hard to understand the market and give it what it wants. Yes, I know all about vaporware and empty promises, but they are not isolated in that practice (it is employed by car manufacturers, politicians and others on a daily basis). Love or hate Microsoft, you have to admire the way they stay with a product, make it better, and make it (usually) what the market wants.

Excuse #5: There are issues with Linux and certain hardware. Here is a surprise for you: There are issues with some piece of hardware and every operating system. Aside from the old kernel/hard drive issue (long since resolved), the only hardware issue I can think of immediately is with Winmodems – legacy (and very cheap) modems controlled mostly by software. In the first place, they are notoriously buggy to begin with, even when you have the right OS and drivers. In the second place, modems aren't commonly used today as opposed to several years ago. Lastly, if you do need a modem for business, I would certainly hope you would be smart enough to buy a decent one and not try to get by with one of these in the first place. All that said, I know of no disadvantage Linux has when it comes to hardware compared to any other operating system.

Excuse #6: Lack of technical support. If I have a problem, no one here knows how to take care of it. Maybe you need to hire or train someone. The odds are good that no one at your site is proficient with Windows Vista at the moment either, but when it comes out, someone will probably be responsible for learning more about it. Linux -- and I am being as honest as I can be -- isn't that difficult to learn. Gone are the days when you needed to memorize hundreds of command-line tools and their options because the main files took too much space to load them on the hard drive. You can pretty much administer all you need to through a graphical interface now and yank out a reference guide when you get stuck.

Excuse #7: The costs of adopting/migrating are too high. Compared to what? The costs of adopting a new implementation should be based upon total savings of one operating system to another and nothing else, and Linux is often the best solution. The cost of migrating is high because it often involves more than just the operating system –- it includes applications and services as well. If the applications you are using are proprietary, then the migration may not make sense -- pure and simple. More and more, though, solutions/applications are becoming less proprietary and more open and thus the operating system migration can be beneficial.

These are the top seven excuses I have heard for the slow rate of Linux adoption. There are a handful of other excuses that are occasionally bandied about, but they tend to contradict themselves even in their phrasing and disappear like smoke as soon at they are voiced around anyone who has an inkling of what is being discussed.

Now that I've listed the excuses, let me propose what I believe to be a real factor: the lack of an adoption spokesmodel.

When you think of Microsoft, you think of Bill Gates. While he has been called everything in the book (and a lot of things unprintable), a few key words pop out: nerdy, highly intelligent, productive, driven, business savvy. While everyone knows he doesn't write each line of code for Microsoft, his image is known by those who evaluate the products, those who use the products, and even those who have never even touched a computer. In other words, through his image, he plays to the stereotype and is able to attract the customer base: When it comes to work, who doesn't want solutions that are productive, business savvy, etc.?

When you think of the Mac, you think of Steve Jobs. Whether he is in the company or out of the company at the moment, it is still his image that fits the stereotype and makes the product trendy.

I once knew a girl who ran a Mac and she wasn't "cool." What? Isn't everyone who runs a Mac cool and artistic? No more so than everyone who uses Microsoft's OS has bad hair and glasses.

Linux does have a spokesmodel: Linus Torvalds. Far be it from me to speak ill of someone so meaningful, but unfortunately, he remains quiet about most things and this does not help speed the adoption process. You can't hate the guy, no matter how hard you try, and that is something that has to be possible (look at how many don't like Microsoft's leaders and how that has only made them sell more).

If I ask my almost-blind grandmother who Bill Gates is, she'll have an answer. If I ask her who Steve Jobs is, she'll come close. If I ask her who Linus Torvalds is, she'll turn to her applesauce and pretend she can't hear me rather than admit she has no clue. And while you have to love the penguin mascot, it doesn't say much to those not already familiar with Linux and using it.

If anyone could benefit from a spokesmodel, it is the commercial versions of Linux that would be at the top of the list. How many, though, could name the CEO of Novell (SuSE) or Red Hat? When Jack Messman was recently released from Novell, the shareholders responded by driving the price up substantially – the news of someone few could name being fired made the company more valuable than it had been for a while. Who replaced him?

In the absence of a single visible spokesmodel pushing for Linux in the workplace, what has sprung up is an image that the media has artificially created: That you need a ponytail and earring to run Linux. Now that we are out of the 1990s, that is not an image that finds an audience readily these days within the Fortune 500. Or a lot of small companies trying to become big. Or a lot of universities. Or...

If Linux is ever to go mainstream, I assert, there must be a face put with its movement. That face must be someone you can like and hate -- someone you can associate with, cheer for, heckle and throw a pie at. It has to be someone you can get so mad at when something doesn't work like it should, and someone you can wish you were like when you read about their exploits outside of work in the trade rags.

The operating system is sound. The excuses are just that. The missing piece is the face.

Do you agree, or am I as full of bunk as everyone else? Let me know by posting below.