Judging by the traffic statistics, a lot of recent visitors to this blog are interested in open source software adoption and why it isn’t proceeding faster in the corporate mainstream. For them, I’ll point to John Terpstra’s excellent three-part series on SearchOpenSource.com about his frustration in trying to buy a Linux-ready laptop at a major computer retailer. It’s one of the best-read stories ever on the three-year-old SearchOpenSource.com site.

Terpstra documents how his efforts were frustrated by salespeople’s unfamiliarity with Linux, the lack of commercial software and device drivers for Linux and the fact that the salespeople tended to be trained to sell only a Windows solution to buyers. He expresses frustration at a retailer’s lack of awareness of open-source options and compares the process of buying a Windows PC to that of buying a Linux box. If you’re an open-source fan, this column will make you see red. But it should also reveal some essential truths.

I’m not a big advocate of conspiracy theories in technology, so I don’t think Microsoft has engaged in some kind of coordinated campaign to shut Linux out. I do think, however, that Microsoft has done an exceptional job of educating its channel to sell the Microsoft solution. This is one area in which the vendor has consistently excelled. And Microsoft has continued to invest in channel education even as it has solidified its monopoly on the desktop. Give the company credit: it has effectively shut out any option to Windows at the street level.

The lack of a dominant Linux advocate in the retail channel hurts the open-source cause in this case. Microsoft has the hearts and minds of retailers and there is no one with comparable throw weight in the open-source market to balance Redmond’s efforts. If Linux is to be successful on the desktop, it must be because consumers demand it and because software makers write the applications and device drivers to support it. The latter is a chicken-and-egg problem. Software makers won’t write the apps until the demand is there. And the demand won’t materialize unti the apps are in place. In the meantime, we have an uneasy standoff.

BTW, the OSDL working group has just released a survey on Linux adoption on the desktop. The results reveal that desktop Linux users want the same thing as desktop Windows users: office productivity applications and device drivers. There is no particular bias for one platform over another as long as the platform delivers superior value for the dollar. Linux’s challenge continues to be to convince application developers that it is a reasonable alternative to Windows without being able to deploy the massive marketing dollars that Microsoft brings to the task. Score one for Microsoft. It is exceptionally good at exploring Windows’ advantage at the street level.