“However, what I think is going to happen is that some of the vendors that have been selling their applications on Windows are going to see a bigger market for their desktop applications on Linux and they’re going to put the time and effort into making install on Linux just as easy as it installs on Windows. I think the biggest thing that is stopping Linux from being used at home is the lack of games. There isn’t the wide number of games that there is on Windows but that’s simply a volume thing. Once the games start to come then there will be more people using Linux on the desktop.

“I used to think that the game thing was only high school and college kids but then I found out that senior executives like to play games too. I met a four star general at a conference once and he liked to play games too but his games were slightly different!”

And what happens if you run into a hardware manufacturer that doesn’t make a Linux driver?

“Again it’s volume thing. When more and more people say that I’m not going to buy your printer because it doesn’t support Linux then you will find that those printer manufacturers will start writing their device drivers. A lot of printer manufacturers overestimate the intellectual property in their driver,”

So when and how will Linux start to make inroads into the desktop space?

“It may happen first in countries that can’t afford to pay the royalties for licenses from Microsoft,” says Maddog. “There’s a lot of piracy in these countries but there’s also a lot of pressure on these countries to stop the piracy to join the World Trade Organisation and things like that. So they’re caught between a rock and a hard place. In China, the average person makes about $60 a month.  Micrsosoft Office costs about $600. That means they have to work 10 months to buy Microsoft Office if they don’t buy food or anything else. So China pirates the software. Microsoft can go back sometime in the future and say you have to pay us for this. If that happens in China,  then they will have to pay Bill Gates their entire total revenue for a year just to pay for their software licenses.

“Therefore they are recognising that Linux is the way of the future.”

Maddog is in Sydney to give his keyonote presentation to LinuxWorld, titled "You can bet your business on Linux."

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