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back to article Seagate axing 1,600 staff amid PC sales slump

Seagate is flinging about three per cent of the workforce overboard to cut its cloth to match crappy PCs sales. The drive maker lodged a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission last night that stated a restructuring plan had been approved to “reduce its cost structure”. “The plan includes reducing the company’s …

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  1. bombastic bob Silver badge

    Seagate might invest in Linux to offset PC sales slump

    it's worth a thought... if people see a Linux PC as being something they WANT, rather than being force to buy a Win-10-nic machine, maybe Seagate would get a really GOOD return on the investment?

    the actual investment would have to include marketing, some software development, and a LOT of encouragement of key software-makers to product "a Linux version" (or at least Wine compatible versions), maybe even PAYING THEM to do it.

    1 2 Reply
    1. Nate Amsden
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      Re: Seagate might invest in Linux to offset PC sales slump

      Sounds like a pretty terrible idea, I say that as someone who has used Linux (and continues to) for the past 20 years on my desktops and laptops (currently Lenovo P50 with Linux Mint/MATE 17).

      Seagate makes storage, changing gears to start making servers or desktops is just a bad idea, and trying to make desktops with Linux on them even worse.

      People are obviously more likely to switch to Mac than Linux if they don't want windows 10. The more technical bunch like myself will refresh their computers before windows 7 can no longer be sold by OEMs (October 2016 I believe) to maximize the life of windows 7 (I dual boot though 99% of time is spent in linux, I do use a windows 7 VM for work related things as well while in Linux).

      Back in the late 90s I too had high hopes for linux on the desktop, there was certainly a massive opportunity, but the community building the software kept shooting themselves in the feet (a practice that continues today, with no signs of changing - biggest issue is driver ABI stability in the kernel).

      Then IOS/Android tablets came out and gobbled up that entire market opportunity that was there for Linux on the desktop. Of course Android uses Linux underneath but it's really just a shell, so to me I don't really count Android as "linux" it seems to share practically nothing in common (from my perspective as an end user) with what I get with my regular linux laptop or servers.

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