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Ballmer Claims Linux Is Top Threat To MS
Greyfox writes: "According to Techweb, Steve Ballmer now claims that Linux is one of the top threats to Microsoft going in to 2001. This up from his previous accounts of Linux as being nothing more than a toy etc. Expect to really see the FUD start flying now. As IBM found with OS/2, once MS percieves you as a threat, they attack like a rabid pit bull. I expect we'll see a lot more negative Linux press on zdnet, reporters paid to laud Windows and slam UNIX, fake grass roots movements, and all the other favorite MS tricks." Well, I'm not that quite that paranoid, but I'll be keping my eyes open
Although I admire the insight you show in your post, I disagree with this statement, because Microsoft has already demonstrated another way: they can coerce people into buying their product, by bundling it, and by using their market dominance to interfere with the establishment of competitive products, mostly using old Railroad Trust trick of creating gratuitous incompatibilities every now and then for no reason than to make competitors update and users upgrade. The Ralroad Trust, by the way, was the primary target of America's first antrtrust legislation.
Although I hate words like this, what Windows and Office have on the desktop is synergy. The business market could give a damn what OS is on the desktop, so long as supports Office, which, although it runs on two platforms, only guarantees interoperability among instances running on (surprise!) Windows. MS didn't kill OS/2 with its Windows juggernaut; it killed it by withdrawing Office support.
So as long as MS can say "if you want one, you gotta have the other," it's going to continue to sell both.
Fortunately for us, the server side of the equation is dominated by pragmatists who--although we usually do have passion for our favorite products--insist on solutions that work, reliably by necessity and cheaply by preference.
So we're safe, for now. But remember that MS has quitely taken over the Web browser market, and now that there's only one meaningful browser to access the web, they can start making sure said brower interacts better with one type of server, such as IIS on Win2k, than another, such as Apache or Netscape on anything. When this happens, the surviving e-commerce sites will ask a very pragmatic question: whether they want to give everyone in the world unreliable, half-assed access to their site, or give ninety percent of the world excellent service. When they choose option two, we will have lost the server market as well.
--
This is not my sandwich.
`ø,,ø!
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
The directory names are short so they're easy to type.
/etc?
But in any case, if you're going to be editing the configuration files manually, most of the configuration files have comments within them when the package is installed, which makes them very easy to edit. It's usually as simple as finding the file, editing the file, and uncommenting and making variable value modifications (with the help of comments).
If you're going to be editing them with a front end program, what are you doing in
thats how they squished their linux efforts. ms bought them off--> it's one of those you scratch my back i'll scratch yours. why dont you login?
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
First off, dare I jump off topic, my post was on-topic and relevent even if you believe I live in a tiny world. You see, I have as much right to post my opinion as you do.
Perhaps Winders doesn't support ALL hardware, but it does more so than most significant OS's. Who runs Alphas besides a very small community of animators? As for s\390, I have no idea what that is. =] Try running that cdrw on Win98.
All web browsers (that matter) run on Winders.
I rarely see the blue 'screen of death', seriously. My Win98 machine is more stable than my dual G4 at work which runs on 512MB RAM vs. 256MB at home. I have never encountered any software I couldn't run, save SoftImage, on Win98. But, SoftImage runs on...you guessed it: NT!
As for your second to last statement, I totaly agree. Windows is old and stale, but so are my grandparents. I can't replace the wisdom they've experienced over the years and they know better than I about a great many things. When Linux becomes easy enough so that I can use it without having to go through months of training and studying I'll happily place Winders in the trash.
As for my 'tiny world', I'd rather be in here than out there with you M$ hate mongers. Hatred is useless. Try looking outside YOUR tightly knit Linux cult. =]
Linux quotes I've heard:
"More people should use Linux! Why isn't it catching on quicker?"
"I don't want 'casual' users on Linux. They don't deserve it."
Ahh, but did you catch the part where her foot freezes in midair, and the techs had to come out and re-boot her?
/me ducks, but doesn't apoligize for the pun
That's true. Perhaps they'll give away Win2001 for free?
I'm warning you as a user of MacOS for about 7 years (heavily), don't buy a Mac. You think Windows is buggy...OMG, wait till you experience MacOS 9 (or 8.6, 8.5 or 8)! You never get a blue screen of death, just complete freeze. Multitasking? Forgetaboutit! Ugg, sorry, off topic.
microsofts apple stock is extremely small and they are non voting shares. they have no control over apple through these. the stock was a pr manouver as a vote of confidence and in exchange apple dropped lawsuits against ms
microsoft _does_ exercise control over apple in the form of microsoft office. if ms were to withdraw office for macintosh, apple would be in serious pr and actual trouble
even with this ms control, apple is unlikely to back down on things they see as their vision. ms tried to use office to get apple to cease development of quicktime (competitor to windows media player), but apple refused and started making noises to the ftc. hopefully with microsoft under scrutiny they wont use monopoly power to exercise control
the animal doesnt even have opposable thumbs, focker!
B) Linux's stability won't play much of a part in this. Win2K is very stable, to the point where the average user (meaning one that shuts down at least once a week) won't be able to tell the difference.
Main os might be stable but application base isnt. For example, my company bought 6 dell inspiron laptops few weeks ago that came with w2k and ie crashes them atleast once a day. (And no, im the only techie and others are more or less below average users)
--
yush
Any idiot can see that. What else IS? On the desktop any encroachment on something you completely own is a threat. If MS only had 40% of the desktop market then Lunix would be just another desktop scrabbling for scraps. When they have almost 100% then its an encroachment on their personal kingdom. What about the LAN space? IBM Lambserver? Novell? Ack. Midrange? Other than the usual gang of suspects nothing else new here besides Lunix. What did you expect them to say? That they plan to dedicate the focus of the company to unseat high end IBM SP's and z/OS mainframes? So of course they're going to go after the server space. Its where they are popular and vulnerable at the same time.
I'm not going to disagree with you. I think its been a tactic since the Nixon years to try and discredit the messanger (i.e. journalists) whenever someone wants to duck an issue. Nevertheless, there are a couple of other issues.
MS has nice, clean, non-geeky P.R. people to send nicely formatted press releases perfectly set up to be placed into newspapers, magazines, web sites without all that time-consuming editing. It sure is easier than sending an investigative reporter or setting up an impartial technology testing lab (expecially for any non-technical publication.) Read just about any technical article in your local Big City Times and ask where they got the information.
If you're getting preferential treatment because of your position as a journalist, can you remain impartial? Can you even understand what the average user goes through if a programmer isn't available to want him or her through the problem? Who is more likely to have a P.R. person/programmer available at your beck and call; MicroSoft, Adobe, or a 10 person software company?
Of course journalists arn't on the take, but like everyone else, if a nice company is willing to make thier lives easier by providing guidance and mechandise and even stories how many have the integrity to ignore it? I don't think most (any?) Senators take bags of money in exchange for votes, but they sure do enjoy that all-expense paid week-long trip to Tahiti to take part in the "Forest Products and Voter's Jobs" symposium put on by the Forest Products Coalition.
Current ethits seem to say that all of these methods are legitimate, but do they result in the factual imformation making it to the general populous?
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Just as Microsoft is declaring the Server is key and the Desktop is Dead. M$ knows that PC sales are now slumping, and that's a hit into their bread and butter (Windows upgrades, plus the bundled Office kits from OEMs). As Cringley wrote, nobody NEEDS 1ghtz when your 28.8 connection (the best most people get out of a 56K modem) is your number one bottleneck.
Keep in mind the #1 problem with Linux is what many consider the #1 advantage of Linux : anything you can build and run on Linux can be moved somewhere else and run just as well. Heck, I just installed on a win98 laptop the NuSphere kit of MySQL, Apache, PHP4, Perl5. I've already had emacs, cygwin, mp3 encoders and players, and the jdk, and so the only missing piece now is mozilla and my win98 laptop has all the same software i regularly use on my Dell RedHat box. Linux may have built and/or popularized all that software, but Linux is not necessary to run it.
THAT's what M$ is going to point out. That's the FUD they're gonna use, and its gonna hurt, 'cause its true. Open Standards made Linux, but Open Standards also make Linux irrelevant.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Sounds like you are describing MacOS X. Except it doesn't run on x86 hardware. Yet.
And above all, companies that are willing to provide paid for support for it so that other large companies will accept it as an alternative OS. "What do you mean that there isn't anyone responsible for fixing bugs?"
Oh cmon. You cannot be serious!
Unfortunately I am...
You mentioned several things that I wasn't aware of, but... Those seemed to all be Red Hat specific.
And if I am not aware of them how likely is it that the average IT Manager is aware of them?
The company that I work for also does outsourcing. I am sure that when a customer asks us to run Linux we will... However, at the moment, the biggest objection is the lack of anyone that you can go to and say "fix this bug..."
Zwack.
-- Under/Overrated is meta-moderation, and therefore is Redundant.
For example most of your /. perl scripting kiddies think it is the "one and only solution" -
WRONG. Sure perl works great in many cases and /. is certainly proof of its success on a large scale but the moment you say "this is the tool for all occasions" I then know to ignore anything else you say because you clearly have no perspective in your argument. Most have never
even tried using php or java servlets.
Similarly with this M$ vs Linux debate (and how original to bring it up again CmdrTaco) where the /. zealots basically say fuck any M$ products cause Linux is king.
The irony is that it is this attitude that prevents Linux from becoming as mainstream as /.ers hope it will.
Well at the risk of being flamebait to all I would like to point out that I dont like M$ or Linux (yes I run both Windows & Linux and Id bet 50% of /.ers do to if they were really honest about it)
M$ are your typical money hungry large corporation who have security flaws throughout their products (how many crackers do you reckon use Win95/Win98 huh?), have shocking coding solutions due to reusing old poorly written code (e.g. anyone tried to use the semaphore/lock mechanism implemented in NT4 - its a nightmare)
Linux has hopeless support for many peripherals (I havent yet installed 2.4 - better USB support etc - but it cannot possibly hope to have improved THAT much), is a joke for doing Photoshop type graphical design and has such poor usability (I take it you Linux zealots heard indeed heard of that word) for your average Joe e.g. no standards for GUI's etc, that it cannot possibly hope to become a desktop option (I agree it is a great server side solution but win2K/Solaris can also be great if know how to set it up correctly)
So I think the current OS's could do well to learn from each other so that future versions can indeed provide a reliably, user friendly environment.
But then again Ive always been told Im a dreamer .....
"I expect we'll see a lot more negative Linux press on zdnet, reporters paid to laud Windows and slam UNIX, fake grass roots movements, and all the other favorite MS tricks. Well, I'm not that quite that paranoid, but I'll be keping my eyes open" Here are a couple of links to MS doing all of the aforementioned in their anti-trust case by a PR Watcher. http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/1998Q2/ethics.htm l
A huge percentage of companies have an IT stategy as follows:
- IT staff are expected to deal with the systems not suggest/develop
- Management staff talk to all sorts of people and make a decision whenever they think they might be smart
Now in this case, MS will never win the managers because they don't have a clue. What they do know is that they are always told the XXX is down because the NT/2000 server is "just being rebooted, back in a mo" AND that they love the B.S.O.D. How many decisions have you seen made in a company to change YYY because of as badly formed reasons as the above...MANY in my case.If the company has an I.T. staff that actually have some power, then how long before someone brings in a GNU box just to serve ZZZ purpose, and how long before it's strengths in the single sphere push it out to take care of everything it should?
MS may have a monstrous market share, but I do not believe for a moment it is loyal. If Sony relased a consumer product tomorrow running Linux with a windows alike UI (hack up a "complete" windows desktop) and one of the methods (working properly of course) to run win32 programs do you think anyone would be dismissing it because it didn't run MS Windows (or even how many people would pay an extra $100 on purchase to get said MS Windows)?
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Oh yes, if Linux goes on like this (with even flames betweeen users about which distro is better), the Linux community will stagger to an end.
/which/ opensource software is going to be used. It's not only Linux under the horizon you know? We still have the BSD's and an C++ alike implementation of the Linux kernel (forgot the name, never used it).
/what/ needs to be different? I recall clueless people installing MSDOS (which involved just as much trouble as earlier Linux distros) pretty easily.
But no, that's not what is going to happen. Linux will adapt, probably distros will become unusable because they are "too far off".
Another probability is a shift in
You say users need easier installations, but
Yep, people are lazy, people don't want to read the documentation anymore and people don't listen to advices.
I can recall a Redhat 7.0 installation for a demonstration computer at a bookstore I worked for last year. It was so enourmously simple! Nobody can confince me that a kid can't do the installation.
But it's not only the installation. An even bigger part of a system is the maintenance. Every system needs it and you can't walk away not doing it. And that's were things are going wrong, because Linux is still based on the Unix prinicple: maintenance by commandline. And yes, there are tons of handy configer tools which allow you to do the stuff the easy way, but they allow you to bugger the system for around 50%. The power still lies in the shell for the other 50%, and that's were new users are getting stuck. Given the fact that most "users" in contrary with geeks, don't read the documentation.
Just my 5c
This is a replacement signature.
I've been wondering about this lately. Eight years back it was multimedia; Five years back it was all things Internet. What is their goal now? (Based upon their recent actions, not their PR propaganda.)
Ok, I'll stop now...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Right. Just like they didn't make any money from Internet Explorer, and so didn't have any motivation to do it.
--
"I have a good idea why it's hard to verify programs. They're usually wrong." --Manuel Blum, FOCS 94
As opposed to Linus Torvalds who just stole ideas from Unix to create Linux?
Oh come on now.. how many people do you know that fit into the categories of both "home user" and "I actually paid for my copy of Windows"?
If you bought a computer with Windows installed the licensing fees were part of the price of the computer. Since most users will never install an OS, that means most of them paid for their copies of Windows.
-antipop
Forget Microsoft. Linux is better worrying about Linux than it is about Microsoft. With how outraged people get over Microsoft's FUD, I wouldn't be surprised to find a multiverse-esque Microsoftian Slashdot somewhere and a bunch of people talking about how the Linux nut cases are scared to death of Microsoft. Then again, there is ZDnet.
If a corporation is a personhood, is owning stock slavery?
Now that's just plain silly. Honestly.
Whatever... MS runs a lot of their web site on 2000. Machines that never crash are universally spoonfed. Good power/cooling, competent administrators, strong, enforced management and operations policies, etc. Without these types of things, any system is going to be (or at least become) unstable
Personally I've been on linuxes and bsd OS' for some time and sure Linux and BSD's kick MS tail up and down for security, networking, functionality, but there is too much inconsistancies within the OS' at this point for any one of them to overthrow Mickeyshit at this point.
./configure ; make ; make install or find /usr -name someshit* all day when some of these people have yet to understand that sleeping with their siblings is a crime and immoral?
Take for example the arguements on simple things like window managers. The Unixes don't have a set standard which is good to the geeky type but your typical 1-2 hour user does not really have a need for this. People love simplicity and things all purty and cutesy sort of like a nation built around Oprah and Martha Stewart, do you hnoest believe that Mary Jo Homemaker, or Billy Bob Hillbilly are gonna sit around and
Theres just too much for the average end user at this point which doesn't make it a viable solution, a lot of people just want ease of use point-click-do-this-for-me-cuz-im-illiterate OS' which aren't going to hurt their ego's which Linux can sometimes do to people even experienced users sometimes.
I use things*nix religiously and even at work I have to have a separate Wintrash system around to appease others who use Excel, Microcrash Word, Unpoweredpoint, etc.
Maybe Redhat and others should make like a separate offspring and call it Hicknix or Cluenix for e-taded users.
Republican Party Spoof
360 degrees of Karma
JUST clip press releases by Dick Chaney and Geroge Bush and show them to your boss. In the comind recession every dollar will count.
War is necrophilia.
Hmmm...Let me think...
No. I'm sorry, I don't mean that... At least not quite...
I'm basing my answer entirely on their web site information.
I'm thinking more of the sort of relationship that we have with Sun or EMC or HP. We can contact any of those companies and tell them that we have a problem with X. They will replace hardware, provide software support, whatever it takes.
If you have a problem then you can get a good answer about what should be replaced and why within a very short timespan.
As an example, one of our Sun machines running Solaris 2.5.1 crashed. I called in a report, and uploaded the core files to their ftp site. Within minutes the Kernel engineer had pointed the cause of the problem as a third party driver. That driver was provided by a different group within Sun and he transferred the call to an engineer in that group. We went through a couple of quick checks and had the patches that needed to be applied within a couple of minutes.
Linuxcare does not seem to have the same level of support as far as I can tell. They claim they can answer my stickiest questions, but they only guarantee a response within one business day.
In addition they do not guarantee that if a problem is found with X then they will provide a solution. From their FAQ "Technical support does not include: Software development or code fixes for Open Source applications."
Unfortunately that is precisely what my boss would look for. It's all very well someone at LinuxCare telling me "OOOH, looks like you've found a nasty bug in X." But if nobody is willing to say "And here is a fix for it." then my boss will not want to have to go there.
Yes, it's nice that I can fix my own problems, but in the environment I work in that is not acceptable. The higher ups want to get the warm fuzzy feeling that "Well, X from Sun is working on a fix" gives them...
Zwack
-- Under/Overrated is meta-moderation, and therefore is Redundant.
You're conveniently forgetting one thing: the Detroiters' cars were _engineered_ to fail within certain specific timespans, in a doomed and (and ultimately self-destructive) desire to get the consumer to purchase a new machine a few years down the line. Now, don't you notice a resemblance to the tactics that a certain duopoly had been practising with awesome vigor up until a few moons back? Please tell me you do.
Yeah that's better.
That's what poeple think of when comparing the Japanese Car Effect with the current computer industry.
Open your eyes my friend.
Guess what! Windows supports ALL hardware, most software and has an easy to use GUI. All PC games can run on Windows. All web browsers run on Windows. Just because M$ makes products which work and a lot of the general populace uses doesn't mean they are evil. Microsoft is scared of Linux because they have been abused by our illustrious government and if they try to compete any more with any other OS this new precedent imposed by our ever evolving Socialist government will knock them down. M$ now has to devise a way to compete in our so called 'free' marketplace without offending Socialist minorities in our sad government. Linux is a great and revolutionary OS, but until it reaches the plane of use which an ordinary consumer can reach, M$ will justly prevail.
Why PINBALL.SYS Gordon Letwin wrote HPFS at Microsoft. The sound of the hard-drive was likened to a pinball arcade machine, thus the name of the thing was made PINBALL. Nothing more sinister. Sorry to burst your bubble. Ratboy666
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
how about no. How bout not enforcing any common structure, but have a standard. if a program requires some more complicated configuration files it can do that... sendmail.cf? /etc problem ;) The trick is to have a common structure, but make that structure flexible enough that all programs can adapt to it. Even then, there will be the occasional (very rare and low volume, certianly no desktop ones) that need more complex config files, but they can always keep a custom text file in their own directory. Sendmail is the kind of thing you set up once, on a sever that stays locked in the closet. If it can't adopt to the system structure, then nothing is really lost by keeping its configuration seperate. The problem is that when you *don't* enforce a standard structure, app developers just find it easier to store config files their own way, when they don't have to.
>>>>>>>>>>>
That's the same thinking that led to the current
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
How likely would it be that M$Office were created for LINUX. I mean, if the interests of M$ apps and M$ OS were truly segregated, it would then be in the best interest of The M$ Office developers to develop for Linux. Of course, if it were not free, would Linux people buy it? I don't see myself shelling out the money.
What IS wrong with the name HFPS.SYS. If I saw this, I would know exactly what the file was related to. No second-guessing. No unravelling the programmer's mood on some long forgotten day.
Also, PINBALL.SYS sounds like a game file, and a sysadmin may very easily delete it. Ouch.
I say again, and this confirms it, that MS disrupts the user interface.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
What the hell does an average user want with the Windows kernel? By that same token, what does ANYONE want with the kernel? Why would I want access to it besides for programming apps? Linux is open sourced, and open to anyone, which is precisely why it will never catch on with the average user base...which, by the way, is THE market Linux should be targeting if they (you) want a larger market share. Windows = mainstream; Linux = underground.
I think you would be hard pressed to demonstrate that the developer base is shrinking, or will shrink at some time in the future. The most one can claim (with confidence) is that proportion of developers to users would decrease, but that is not really a relevant claim, since the cost of replication is free -- the many can be fed by the few. When I observe the progress of the community, I see newbies become knowledgeable users, and maybe even fledgling developers. Of course only a few rise to the top, but the absolute size of those who write applications that run on free platforms seems to be increasing.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
I know you are looking for flame, or you are actually a Linux supporter attracting flames in windows. Anyway, I fell into it.
/etc and replace it with something sane.
>>>>>>>>>
No flames, just honest critism. Like I said, I don't dislike Linux, I just have exceptions with some aspects of it.
If only NVIDIA would release its specifictions to linux community. After their hand-in-hand cooperation with M$ in XBox, I doubt NVIDIA would ever think of supporting Linux community in the future.
>>>>>>>>
I doubt it. History has shown that NVIDIA can drag MS around by the balls. Ever wonder why DirectX8 bears such a striking resemblance to NVIDIA hardware? There is nothing to indicate that NVIDIA will be the bitch in the MS-NV relationship.
Now that 3dfx is bought by NVIDIA....there goes voodoo*. Nevertheless, it's not Linux to be blamed, it's the attitude of those 3d chips vendors.
>>>>>>
Wrong on both counts. It is entirely the fault of 3DFx for making crappy products.
You can't deny the fact how quick Linux is be able to catch up with the performance without their
support.
>>>>>>>>
Which is why exactly 1 OSS driver is faster than the closed counterpart? (Some of Matrox's OSS drivers were faster because the closed versions had major OpenGL problems.)
B) Linux's stability won't play much of a part in this. Win2K is very stable
Win2k is stable? I bet you haven't been trying to upgrade the hardware in a Win2K box. All I got is
INACCESSIBLE_DEVICE_ERROR blue screen. Come on! I didn't even touch the disk! Just upgrade a damn CPU! It
happened in old NT, which resolved this problem long time ago, now they bring it back. Well done!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Then something is wrong with your machine. There is term in psychology (forget it offhand, its either a fallacy or the false concensus effect) that describes the overgeneralization of the characteristics of one example of a group to the whole group. This thinking is very dangerous because one's personal experiences are more or less irrelevant. I've had bad experiences with Win2K myself, particularly with relation to random crashes in OpenGL apps. However, the overall concensus (on ZDNet, Slashdot, and in other media organizations) is that Win2K is quite stable, and this idea seems to bear out in reviews of the product. So both you and I are going to have to chalk up our bad Win2K experiences to random chance and the wrong hardware. BTW> I've had consistantly bad experiences with Suse. I don't go around saying Suse sucks, because its most likely just a problem particular to my config.
1) Confusing configuration. Get rid of
Like scattering configuration files across all the disks is sane?
>>>>>>>>>>.
Who said Windows did it the sane way? Take a look at Darwin and see how they do it. Now that's a good config structure.
2) Stupid directory structure. My dad...
I don't want to be rude, but I just could point it out, that, the directory structure, which has been around for 30 years, is not
stupid, your Dad....
>>>>>>>>>>>>
I use my dad as an average user. You're going to have to get over this elitist mentality that many computer-literate people seem to have. Its the same self-superiority trait that makes (many) New Yorkers, Washingtonions (I'm from the area BTW), artists, drama and movie people, musicians, and philosophers such snots. Anway, UNIX is perfect because it has been around for 30 years? The fact that UNIX has been around for 30 years shows that it is good, not perfect. The directory structure is asnine for a desktop user. There's just no getting around that. The fact that Microsoft, Apple, Be, and countless others all have cleaner, simpler structures can attest to the fact that random directory structure was one of the mistakes that *NIX made.
You know how to read a manual? A lot of people like you think a system is hard when it doesn't have a GUI.
>>>>>>>>>>
GUI? I'm programming my own OS and I'll be happy when I have a debugger! Anway, I can, and have read manuals. They are poorly written, full of crappy grammer, and confusing, but most of the time they work. However, there is no way in hell I'd expect a normal person to understand (or much less care) about them.
Say, configure a Apache from default installation to release to public with adaquate security only take me 5 minutes. You know how?
>>>>>>>>>>>>
How? I've never configured Apache. Although, I've configured BeOS's PoorMan server, and that takes 30 seconds. Besides, we're talking desktop here, remember?
I'm sure it helps if you use win2k more often. I'm a NT/2K admin, currently in hell.
>>>>>>>>
Don't even have 2K installed at the moment. (Or Linux for that matter.) I hosed my filesystem and have been using BeOS for the last three months. That's probably why I can't bear to use Linux. Not because Lin$ux $ux, but because I find it simply too messy for my taste, and BeOS does what I need to do, and faster.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
A) Who said Win2K had a good directory structure? I like BeOS's, but Win9X's is nice too. There are only 3 directories on a clean install, "My Documents," "Program Files," and "Windows." The first is your's to do with as you please, the second is logicall organized by application, and the third is crappy, but you rarely need to go there anyway.
B) Linux takes up just as much memory on my machine as does Win2K. Of course, I'm (was) running GNOME, KDE 2, and the full host of libraries, but only because I need good app compatibility. Don't even get me started on how pointless it is for GNOME and KDE's libraries to be incompatible (and thus memory wasting.)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
thank you
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
http://samovarawards.com/
Linux is awarded as "The biggest treat" by Steve Ballmer Ballmer just named Linux Top Threat To Windows. And Linux zealots immediately proclaimed the ultimate move to the next stage by the famous Mahatma Gandhi's formula: First they Ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you get bought by AOL. Then they laugh at you.
Windows geeks of the Redmond and outer world! Unify your Visual Basic pains together! Lets read everybody the SlashWin paper (you need Office 2001 for that)! Facing the evil Linux empire ruling the world we admit that we have nothing to loose than our bugs, but we will win all the benchmarks! Lets fight until the Blue screen of death formats our hard drive to live! Lets destroy all the Universities, from where the Octopus of Linux belongs and than only Windows children will know to install.
Andrew
Ummmm, there's no problem there. Binary only software for Linux is absolutely not an issue, unless they want to make proprietary kernel modifications, and then Linus has deemed that it's cool, as long as it's a kernel module. There's absolutely nothing stopping them, other than a resistance to eat crow.
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
Don't under estimate their power and cleverness. Take for example a certain competator that decided to port their office suite to Linux and contribute heavily to the Wine project. While it may be debatable whether Corel has made a big difference in the Linux world, the M$ response is clear. Send some big bucks their way, show them a possible alternative (and windows friendly) way of surviving. What happens? Corel drops Linux. Look for more of the same in other places. Microsoft has the cash and the balls to do what every they can think of to strangle a competetor and Linux is the biggest threat they have ever faced.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Is MS going to give it's OS for free? I doubt it, they want our money.
Are they going to open up all it's API's? I doubt it, they want to make deals with favourable 3rd party ISV's. The DOJ ruling against them says they should open up it's API's so let's wait and see.
Are they going to try hard to maintain backward compatibility? I don't think so. 3rd party ISV's love the idea that their software will become obsolete on an old version of windows so that their customer must upgrade to maintain compatibility. Can anyone say "winfax Pro 10"? This is also the case with hardware drivers.
So what will it be?
Hey! I live in Florida and I run and advocate Linux :-)
that just cause Linux is now an official 'Top Threat' to MS, it does NOT mean that Linux is better. But maybe it will make developers work harder to make it better than windows. andres Dont flame me, im fragile
I'm sure that we will all be able to use Linux whether M$ percieves it as a threat or not. There is nothing that M$ can do to stop Linux. They can't buy it and make it go away. Tough shit M$.
Not only the server and handheld worlds, but in the embedded space as well. Can you imagine if your Tivo or anti-lock brakes were controlled by Windows CE? There's a scary movie in there somewhere...
It's all Hood
Certainly this is a PR move, but there is truth in it. As you pointed out, "98% of home users who have Windows aren't going to go anywhere soon." However, the server market is what MS is truly worried about. Corporate sales, client access licenses and such are what really bring in cash for MS. The desktop is not their top priority and this is why Linux has become a huge threat.
If Linux becomes a viable desktop easy enough for grandma to use, then MS will be in trouble. For now, MS is making some blunderous decisions that may push some users away from their products. Whistler, the next release of windows, will have anti-piracy tools built in to the OS allowing the OS only to be installed on one machine. Check here for more info. Combine this with the rising cost of client access licenses and you'll see that it is MS that is driving themselves into the ground
Paid praise for one side versus the other... Sounds like Election 2000 all over again. Let's just not leave to Florida to decide who has the better OS. ;-)
Then Microsoft will produce lots of documentation "proving" to managers that Linux is much more costly to run. I totally agree. The major challenge here is to the companies using Linux based servers and workstations to produce reports as to how much money they are saving by NOT using M$ applications/OS's. Hopefully, some of them will produce docs saying so and give real figures. Third party data is usually much better than first person (or company) propoganda if done correctly. The downside of third party 'testimonial' data is that there is no incentive for a corporation to produce it. M$, who has a huge marketing department (and a huge piggy bank) to produce and distribute thier spiel is counting on complacency on the behalf of these companies.There probably won't be much data in managers hands supporting Linux compared to all the nice, expensive, colorful, glossy booklets M$ sends them.
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
why handicap a great OS by putting it on Intel hardware? X86 is a total piece of crap. sorry just trying to be flamebait as much as u r
Sure, Linux is a competitor, but it's not Microsoft's #1 priority.
Hmm whats's next? You can install the software once, but if your HD crashes you must buy a new copy© No not yet, but I am sure they are going to try this©
Software 'rental'© That is what ©net really is© You don't own the software you rent the use of the software, and they charge you by the month© Sure you may always have the latest and 'greatest', but is it really what you want? What about if they introduce file format incompatiblities? You also may end up with their latest beta, or as they call it a realease©
Lets see, what else, could they do© I am sure they could do other things, but I think that they are most likely to hurt themselves© Oh, now I remember, they are doing that thing where you can only install software that is okayed by M$© Gee IF they do this all those developers may have a tough time©
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
I love the way Ballmer has to make fun of Sun and Oracle: "look guys, let's face it: you are not as tough as Linux as competitors". ;-)
;-p
Now if someone more objective could say this... BTW, I didn't know that the Linux 2.4 included a complex RDBMS like Oracle.
This is all well and good - but honestly there's not much new here except for the fact that MS is being more open in acknowledging Linux.
We've really known this since the Halloween documents.
Get rid of /etc and replace it with something sane.
/etc, at the exact location that the HOWTOs and the documentation of the individual programs tell you. /etc can be pretty sane, and it's actually a lot more sane than the registry.
/usr/doc/packagename.
/usr/local/doc weren't there...
;) However, I have found the *NIX text "zen" to be one of the best things about it. Like I said, I don't hate Linux (and therefore UNIX). I just can't stand some of its more inane details.
After trying several distributions (among them SuSe, with their rc.config madness), I was so glad when I
finally found Debian, with all of the configuration files still in
>>>>>
Why does everyone think in terms of the registry? The registry is a piece of junk and always will be. Take a cue from MacOS X to see how things should be done. As for Debian, it sounds nice, but the fact that the layout matches the one in the HOWTOs does't make the layout any better.
You find the directory structure stupid. It's so complicated that your dad can't install programs. Well, tell him to look for what he needs on packages.debian.org and then have him type "apt-get install packagename".
Done.
>>>>>>>>>
True. And I really don't think that sequence would be a problem for anyone. I'm pretty sure the 20-something computer elite don't know it, but these older "illiterate" users DID use *NIX terminals back in tha day...
After that, the docs are in
>>>>>>>
That sounds great. If only
And if you want, "dpkg -L packagename" tells you
what was installed and where.
>>>>>>
That sounds stupid. I'm a hands-on type person. I like the previous example better.
Try that with Windows.
>>>>>
Don't have to. Everything is nicely organized in c:\program files. Though the doc thing is nice.
And if you want to compile everything yourself, have
a look at GNU stow, which helps you to keep the different programs separated so you can easily uninstall/
upgrade them without leaving files of the last few versions lying around. You don't need to know where to
put every single file, that's make install's job.
>>>>>>
Hiding complexity behind limited interface is the first mistake of UI building.
I can't see how one can tolerate the windows\system32
directory "structure" and be confused by a Unix directory tree.
>>>>>>>>>.
I can't tolerate the windows\system32 structure. That's why I use BeOS...
Oh, nice that you mentioned how all UNIX console apps work together in a nice harmony of streams and
pipes. This is the very reason I feel more comfortable with Unix when doing real work.
>>>>>>>>>
Or BeOS
In this thread, and in pretty much every Linux-related article in the press, there is far too much emphasis on how hard Linux is to install or configure. But there are actually people who install once and work with their machine for years.
And for my style of work, a few shell windows and Emacs are the best I have found so far. And yes, I did work
with DevStudio on Windows, and did not totally fall in love with it.
>>>>>>>
I've tried VI (and still use it whenever I don't feel like opening up BeIDE) but I have fallen in love with DevStudio. It is just so damn handy. (Well, as long as you stay away from the wizards and crap.)
If you can't stand to use Linux, you're not really required to like it. Perhaps it would make more sense just to like Linux' development model or the always helpful and well-informed slashdot crowd instead.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
I *do* like Linux. I just can't stand to use it. Some of its details are what you could call "deal-breakers" for me (and many other people, or I would presume so...)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Considering that the file is XF86Config, and the command is ifconfig (ipconfig is for Windows NT 4.0), my guess is you don't have much experience in Linux
>>>>>>>>>>
Sorry, typo's. I've not only had a lot of experience with Linux, but I've compile XFree86 half a dozen times from source, used at least one version of every distro under the sun, and went through the painful libc5 -> glibc transition with good old Slackware 3.5
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Actually, with the NVIDIA driver (they're the only ones that have even remotely close performance to their windows counterparts) the situation is reversed. XFree86 doesn't support page-flipping (with good reason according to Carmack) so as resolutions get higher, the memory bandwidth strain of having to blit the frame buffer starts adding up. However, even at low resolutions, performance is lower than it should be, so the page flipping issue is not entirely to blame. Either way, Linux should be *much faster* than the Win2K!
;)
Well from what I saw the difference beteen Windows vs. Linux was pronounced at low resolutions but the difference at high resolutions gets less and less as the resolutions get higher,
until it's hardly even noticeable. This was based on Quake3A benchmarks.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That's even worse! That means that Linux does a fine job crunching the geometry code, but can't handle sending data to the graphics card quickly enough. That means the disply system is f*cked. (Though with XFree86, I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Make the system cohesive. Get back to the UNIX roots. You know how UNIX treats *everything* as a file?
From a programmer's point of view, I agree with you (check out Plan9 from Bell Labs sometime, you'll probably like it). But from a user's point of view, that is irrellavant.
>>>>>>>>>>
Not really. A clean, consistant API breeds clean, consistant software.
PS> As for the config files, who *said* they had to be scattered binary files? I just said they should be more structured. If there was one standard for config files, and one GUI tool that could handle that standard (preferably displaying embedded comments) then Linux configuration would be a cinch. As many people have pointed out, OSX does just this.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Because people have hard enough of a time getting past the "be" in my username, and even in topics where I *don't* mention BeOS, they think I'm comparing it to Linux. I'm really not in the mood to defend BeOS against a bunch of Linux weenies.
;)
PS> Not all Linux users are weenies, just the anti-BeOS ones
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
But what if they didn't follow the GPL? What if they made kernel mods or wrote new drivers and didn't distribute the source? Who is going to stop them? The only dog with big enough teeth is the US Government, and we know how much good that's done. Even with a verdict against them, M$ has yet to change anything about the way they do business. And with the incoming administration it's highly unlikely that the gov't will do anything to challenge the M$ juggernaut. They've even said so. These people in Redmond are eeeeeeeeevil. Ballmer is the devil incarnate.
Given how long GUI's had been aruond pre-apple, and how much experimentation/research with various GUI's, then why did it take until Apple to come up with something as "obvious" as pull-down menus?
Xerox had a commercial product. (Dorado, I think.) There was SmallTalk which had a GUI. So there's at least two non-research, actual production GUI's that were around for awhile.
Programs at the time would have "commands". The genius of the pull down menus, and menubar, is that you can hide dozens or hundreds of commands without taking any screen real-estate, except for a tiny ribbon of menu bar at the top of the screen. Yet the commands are instantly accessible (literally, if you have shortcut keys), and they "seem" like they're always there, even though technically they aren't drawn until requested by the user. It's a perfect example of what Apple UI Guidelines called a "spring-loaded" mode. Software had had modes for years. You go into "help" mode to see what commadnds are available. Execute a command. Escape from that mode back into the mode you were in.
Pull down menus were an innovative invention.
OneClick is obvious because if Amazon hadn't done it, someone would have in the same time frame.
I believe there were some "pop-up" menus about the same time as Apple's pull-down menus. That is, you right-click on the exposed part of the desktop for a global menu. No other menus. No context-sensitive menus, etc. But the menu bar and pull-downs are a lot more intuitive because you can see the menubar on the screen. It is not assumed that you just have to "know" to right-click, and only on the exposed part of the desktop.
Another thing about Apple's menubar at the top of the screen, vs. Microsoft's menubar on each window is that the top and corners of the screen are "infinitely deep". You can just *ram* your mouse to the top of the screen without any overshoot. Then just click. (And the pointer's collision with the top of screen doesn't hurt anything, cause any damage, or wear and tear.) It's sad that so many "modern" GUI's seem to have un-learned this.
Pull down menus only seem obvious in hindsight. (Although I would be pissed if Apple tried to stop others from having pull down menus.)
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
What we could use is someone in the business community jumping on the bandwagon, and writing an open letter, that could be used at other places: "See! ABC company is doing it, and it works!"
For instance, what if an executive of a major firm tallied up the cost of Microsoft licenses, and showed that eliminating all the license costs would fund X number of jobs for new Linux/BSD administrators/techs, with $Y profit? It's hard to argue with numbers, especially when a profit can be shown. Make it an official report recommending a global change to Linux/BSD over the whole operation, in Z years.
Further, let this high-profile company make the change, create some open-source software that they found useful, standardize a desktop for their use, and show that it works, and is profitable - and other smart companies will try to do the same.
However, I have to guess, since this hasn't been done yet, that the price/profit curves haven't made it yet. Linux may be ready for the desktop, but the cost to convert over may be still too much, or no one has shown that it can be profitable and maintain productivity. It's still Microsoft's world, and they have most company's ears.
And you say:
While I realize what you're getting at (I wouldn't want Unix judged on how well it 'edited the registry' or something), it's inherently tricky to counter that claim without running up against the charge of unfairness.
For example, before Winsock a Unix geek could have said "Unix does TCP/IP better - in fact Windows doesn't do TCP/IP at all!" And you could have responded, "TCP/IP is a Unix thing. Why judge Windows by something irrelevant like that?"
So what do you consider a fair basis of comparison? Shall I dredge up a list of Windows horror stories, only to be told that each one is caused by bad application programming or system administration? Because if that's the case, you're arguing that there's a grain of wheat under a mountain of dung - something which might interest academics, but not hungry people.
Actually, I don't believe either way. I meant "We know NT is pretty crap" as saying "You've told us time and time again that NT is pretty crap".
Sure, and Video Toster kept Amiga alive...
...for a while.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
There's no conspiracy. Money doesn't change hands. People aren't "bought."
Hmm, that sounds like something a member of the Illumanti would say. Fnord.
I think the place where M$ is getting ready to get blindsided by Mac OSX is in the server market. Having done some performance tests myself, a G4-500 with 1.5GB of RAM coupled with the built-in gigabit ethernet is the equal of any enterprise server, *nix, M$ or otherwise that I've ever worked with. There are Solaris machines that cost $25000 that don't perform as well as a $5000 mac as a web or document server -- the fact that OSX has support for SMB, among other things, might set the wheels in motion that Cupurtino has something other than desktop machines in mind for the current generation of macs. Think about it: sendmail, SSH, apache, FTP are all installed by default under OSX. This is no surprise for Linux folks, but show me another commercial operating system that can deliver that for under $150? SCO? HPUX? Solaris? Don't even start with M$ stuff, you'd wind up paying $150 worth of licensing fees just to look at the list of software you'd have to buy.
It has always seemed to me that the reason Microsoft has dominated is because it's supported it's developers far beyond than any other company I've seen. Not so much in one particular area (tech support, documentation, flexibility of API, large breadth of API's, easy IDE's and debuggers), but the entire spectrum as a whole making it a comprehensive development environment. Make no mistake, they've made many errors along the way, but usually after a couple of releases you find that they're usually the first to find the errors of thier ways.
.NET and Win32 to Linux, which IMHO would do a great job of keeping Windows developers from jumping onto the Linux ship and probably detour many young aspiring developers from dealing with a cryptic Linux development environment.
Unfortunately, Many developers find Linux to be a difficult OS to develop for considering it lacks a comprehensive, navigatable, documention and coherant APIs, not to mention the endless fragmentation.
Many people have pointed out that Microsoft may be using Corel's expertise in porting
Hopefully the Linux community will learn the error of it's ways as some of its technology is years ahead of the pack, while a vast majority is lagging years behind it's commercial counterparts.
Keep in mind that free software is owned by all of us. We should be pushing the envelope towards the vision of a 6 year old, designing with the elegance of a vertern, and listen to anybody's idea that plugs the hole in our leaky designs, because while they may not have the answer they make it perfectly clear you don't either.
But what about Debian and Slackware, you say? .01% switch over to the daemon side of the source. Many servers run BSD. While Microsoft is fighting off TUX and his legion of open source mascots, BOFHs will set up OpenBSD routers anf FreeBSD File/app/web servers, and use NetBSD to outomate their toasters. This will be done without Microsoft, and in some cases, the BOFHs managers knowledge.
Well what about the BSD server market. Many former members of the
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
M$ owns apple? i didn't know M$ made photoshop, director, flash, icab, bryce, fireworks blah blah
Thanks, my thoughts, I'm a bit afraid that M$ tries to make money from the desktop monopol they have.
They could easily introduce some nifity features in IIS-x.x that work only with M$ IE x.x. Everyone wants/needs these features of course, forcing the web-server market to use M$ OS...:-(
I can't imagine another way for them to stand against apache, it just better than everything they could deliver.
Amusing, Ballmers: Hey, 2.4 is out, that could be a threat against W2K. Is there anything W2K could do better/faster than Linux 2.2, despite crashing?
Michael
Sure, Corel, as a company, was a failure.
Don't let that obscure the fact that they are the sole proprietors of a stable of products which potentially rival MS Office. Wordperfect, Paint, Draw, Paradox, Ventura, Bryce, etc. These products had (have) abilities far beyond the ken of their anemic Linux brethren (at least for now). While not true Linux applications, it doesn't take much imagination to see that a company that also produces a Linux distribution might like to improve the synergy of its product lines. An ambitious and risky undertaking, wouldn't you say? How do you fill the coffers while you undertake such a large consolidation effort?
With a few paltry millions, Microsoft has bought and neutralized yet another potential competitor. In the process they may have set back the development of a truly viable desktop application suite for Linux by years.
Corel had it's share of problems, but shame on those who applaud or approve of their demise. They needed help, sure. But the help they got from Microsoft was a deal with the devil.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
my friend at microsoft gave me this secret link to the mozilla CVS repository. :)
--
I would think that M$ would come out with it's own version of Unix, make it very compatable with Linux, and just get the corporate to buy it. There was an old saying back in 1982.. "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" I would think that this could apply Michael
if you see me, smile and say hello.
I suppose, of someday trying desparately to remember what it was like when MS ruled the world.
Are YOU listed?
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sure, all you have to do is look at the history of Microsoft. Now, it is not uncommon for a company to simply buy up a competitor and make them more powerful by integrating that companies products into their own but Microsoft has a history of buying into/outright companies and then taking what they can integrate into Windows and cancelling the rest.
Which brings up an interesting question.....Are there any products in Microsofts line up that are home grown (other than Bob and that paperclip?) I mean NT was purchased along with its development team, Windows conceptually was ripped off from the Mac, the basis of Internet Explorer was bought off of Blue Sky software or something like that, Excel was first ripped off of Visicalc and then bought etc, etc, etc. DOS was not even a Microsoft product initially, right? As I recall it was purchased off some guy in Seattle. Oh well I could go on here for some time, so.....
Back to my argument: Recently Corel was one of several companies that Microsoft has purchased "or invested in", only to pillage what they want and put other products for competing OS's into the unknown. Remember Bungie? They started out as a Mac company doing Pathways into Darkness and Marathon, going on to Marathon Sequels and the Myth series. More recently they started development of Oni, and the game that I wanted most, Halo. Development was planned for Windows, MacOS, and Linux if I am not mistaken. However, Microsoft saw Halo as an ideal seller for the X-box and they bought Bungie. I have been told that the MacOS development is still being considered but the priority is X-box and Windows. My guess is that the Linux version will never come to fruition. This is where the DOJ's case could have gotten a-lot of steam right? How many products have dissapeared from consumers hands as a result of Microsofts dominance? Only recently, if Apple did not catch Microsoft red handed co-opting proprietary code, Quicktime probably would have bitten the dust, as Microsoft was attempting to blackmail Apple into dumping development of Quicktime. Quicktime by the way has every possibility of developing into its own OS for media distribution and I believe Microsoft knows this and it scares the hell out of them.
Anyhow, enough ranting in this post.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
In my own time I run a number of servers for other people.
The number of times that a problem with the server is mentioned to me, along with the suggestion of "Why don't you just reboot it?" is scary.
That is part of the MS mind set. If it doesn't work, reboot.
I would rather that we found the cause of the problem, and then fixed it. It will stop it recurring, and... it may not require a reboot.
On our Sun boxes here, there is only one problem that is fixed with a reboot. Oracle has problems when it's been up around 130 days due to some internal counter. Solution, Reboot...
Here various products are used because they provide X or Y. We use exchange, not because it's any good, but because of the scheduling stuff. I would rather use a real mail program, but that is not acceptable as people can't then add appointments to my calendar...
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against Linux. I just know what the arguments against using it that are brought up here are. I like Linux, I use Linux...
But I work with a bunch of people, some of whom don't know anything about software development. They don't want to be able to read the source code, they want to be able to ask someone else why did your application/os/driver/hardware do THIS?
These arguments are universally applicable and LinuxCare is a partial solution... If they were willing to go one step further and provide patches then I wouldn't worry. At least with MS the managers know if this fails because of a problem with the stuff Microsoft provided, then we can go ask microsoft to fix it.
Zwack.
-- Under/Overrated is meta-moderation, and therefore is Redundant.
My dad can handle installing programs, but with the mess of /usr, /home/_username_, /usr/bin, /usr/lib, /lib, /opt, /usr/local/*, ad nauseum, I doubt he could handle it.
Your dad can handle "rpm --install" and "apt-get upgrade."
/usr, /usr/local, /opt, etc. are no more complex (and no more exposed to end users) than c:\windows, c:\windows\system, etc.
OTOH, Microsoft practically 0wn3s Apple. If they (Microsoft) announced tomorrow that they were dropping all support for Apple systems for all their software, Apple would effectively be dead in the water. And of course, if/when Apple does flop, all those people who invested time and effort into OS-X will be left with no recourse but to use something else, much like OS/2 users back when IBM abandoned them.
Don't get me wrong, I like Apple. They can do at least one thing to overcome this weakness, though: fully open source OS-X, and become the prime developer of the system in CONCERT with its huge and dedicated base of users. When they do that, I would be willing to swich back to Apple after moving to PC's... and only then would Microsoft lose their control over the company and perhaps label them as a threat.
BULLSHIT!
In the low-end, perhaps. In the mid-sized shop, maybe linux is a decent option for file and printing services. Now, if you start looking into large-scale server implementations, Sun Hardware +Solaris run the show. There is no linux-centric DB implementation capable of supporting databases in the 100's of GB in size. There is no Intel box running linux that is capable of handling this. Ladies and Gentlemen, may I introduce you to Oracle on a big fat E6500?
Kids and their pipe dreams... Linux is good for desktops and even then, you have no consistency across distributions. Windows is and will be the deskop king for many days to come, and Sun+Solaris will be running the server market, just like it has been for a while.
BTW, if MS wants to kill Linux, it'll have no problems whatsoever. All it needs to do is take BSD source, build a nice GUI for it, port over their apps, and voila! No more Linux. (Heh, Apple doesn't have the nuts to do it, but nice try with OSX).
"We'll need 2000 crickets, 4 cans of Easy Cheese, and the fluid from 18 glowsticks for this plan to work...." - ph0n1c
This fits exactly with Microsoft's "embrace and extend" philosophy! All they have to do is offer a distribution for free, steal market and mindshare away from Redhat, SuSe, TurboLinux, etc. until all the of the commercial distros have gone out of business or "changed business direction". Then, poof, Microsoft will have control over Linux, mission accomplished.
But what about Debian and Slackware, you say? I estimate only .01% of end users choose those distros (I'm in the .01%). Only the 99.99% matters to Microsoft.
Didn't Home Depot just do this?
--
$tar -xvf
Open Source is the ultimate in capitalism and competition. It says, in effect, that the product that competitors are selling isn't worth as much as those competitors claim, and backs it up by providing an open source equivalent, which gives customers benefits that they can't get from closed source and typically saves them money too.
Otherwise, you may as well accuse Microsoft of being communist, for giving away IE and IIS.
The communist argument is a kind of poison pill which people put out as deterrent flamebait. The truth is, we've always shared information in various ways. Academia is one big area in which information sharing is very successful. Being a successful competitor doesn't necessarily mean keeping everything you know secret. It may make more sense to share certain information, in exchange for other information from other people.
Open source is exactly like that. It represents a shared knowledge that the global community has about software, an interchange of ideas, and a pool that people can draw on and contribute to in order to further all our interests. It doesn't make sense to claim that this amazing resource shouldn't exist, just because it superficially can be argued to have a slight resemblance to a widely-disliked political ideology.
As for who pays the developer, the answer is, commercial companies. It's happening every day. If you think about what I've said above, you might start to realize when and how it could be in a company's interest to pay developers to work on open source software. As awareness of these issues is raised, I expect many more companies to do this, and we've been seeing this trend in action recently. An important point to remember is that not all companies are software companies (not yet anyway!)
Yep, it looks like Home Depot is going Linux in a big way. Here's a story.
They are going through Red Hat, which is supporting the project pretty intensively. There's a large cost associated with that (the story quotes about $55,000), but probably less than the comparable Microsoft support. It looks like it started last May, and is a three-year program, involving back-store functions, floor terminals, and registers.
Now we just need the second part of the equation: demonstration that it's mission critical ready, and that it's profitable.
At the same time, this isn't really Microsoft's turf - I can imagine they would have needed a custom system, anyway, and employees won't really be using Star Office, or other office tools. They didn't mention moving to Linux boxes at headquarters, either.
Ok, you're right about that. It would be a pretty neato idea, and would probably make configuring programs much easier, and there could always be ways to allow for more complicated config formats if absolutely necessary.
/etc is MUCH more sane than the windows registry. What the hell were they thinking? OMG the windows registry is a nightmare! Why on earth would you use a single database to store ALL of your configuration data? What if it gets corrupted, or deleted somehow?(it happens!) Your SOL. And it is so damn hard to find what you're looking for, takes forever to search through it, etc, etc. With /etc, you just look for a file with a similar or related name to the program you're messing with. So nice and simple.
/etc. I like it, but there's definately room for improvement.
But in any case, what we have with
Anyway, I just really hate the windows registry and cannot understand why on earth Microsoft uses it. There is no benefit to using it that is worth the problems it causes...
Hmmm... I'm straying from the topic... ; )
Oh yeah,
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
No, its the reality thread!
not really, Linus just created the linux kernel the part you are refferring is was "stolen by GNU"
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
Microsoft is by far the biggest threat to microsoft. Somebody of at M$ should figure out that if they took a linux distro and pulled a JAVA they could screw the entire linux community while making a few bucks. The threat of linux becoming a shambles industry with many standards, lack of support, etc, Could really become a problem if one big company tries to professionalize it as a distro.
-Moondog
with dubya in the white house, M$ doesn't have shit to worry about, it's over
Come the millennium, month 12
In the home of greatest power,
The village idiot will come forth,
To be acclaimed the leader."
--
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A huge percentage of companies have an IT stategy as follows:
In my experience, this is true far more often than it should be. Most larger companies that I've done work for have an IT department which I can describe only as "castrated", and they are basically forced to implement whatever the rest of the company wants. The opposite of that, which I've also seen, is the BOFH IT department which implements "solutions" without consulting the hapless users who will be forced to take it or leave it.
There has to be a middle ground where IT makes good choices based on user feedback and suggestions. There's a missing dialog.
MS may have a monstrous market share, but I do not believe for a moment it is loyal. If Sony relased a consumer product tomorrow running Linux with a windows alike UI (hack up a "complete" windows desktop) and one of the methods (working properly of course) to run win32 programs do you think anyone would be dismissing it because it didn't run MS Windows (or even how many people would pay an extra $100 on purchase to get said MS Windows)?
Windows adds $50-$75 to the purchase price of a new PC. To create an OS to compete with it, you're going to have to be able to match that price point. The idea that you'll be able to beat it by $100 is absurd (unless your company pays Dell to put your OS on their machines). The idea that you'll be able to match it after doing a ton of custom development is questionable. MS just has a hell of a head start, and a firmly entrenched distribution system, and the VAR price for their OS (98/ME) is (cough cough) reasonable.
I do believe that licensing issues are going to take on a stronger role in the purchase decisions, particularly with the "anti-piracy" "features" of Whistler. I also believe that'll invoke a lawsuit (might do it myself) which will ultimately force MS to quit licensing per-machine. The bottom line is, though, that corporate clients are already growing weary of MS's licensing tactics, and that's one area where Linux is kicking their ass (as well as the collective ass of proprietary Unix).
Sometimes I think that's what really has Ballmer awake at night.
Michael
Do you have ESP?
You are absolutely right, Linux and X11 will never work.
The XFree86 team integrating truetype fonts into its latest release was just futile, no one cares.
And what about the guys who are hacking antialiasing into the toolkits for X? Obviously another waste of time, since we all know that it won't work.
I'm going to go register my copy of Windows 2000 now, since I have been wasting my time learning Linux and XFree86.
Or, you know, the power of the classic Mac environment, the ease of use of Unix based platforms and the popularity of OpenStep. It all depends on how well they manage to pull it off. :)
Now that _really_ sounds interesting.... but guess which shell it'll being running?
Why wouldn't it? Rewriting an application based on prior experience with how it runs, usage patterns, etc., will improve the application inherently. Rewriting an application to take advantage of improved OS APIs will cause it to work better for the user. What's the problem?
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
Don't they do this already?
-linux... they can't *give* that shit away.
I believe it was written by the same authers.
http://Lenny.com
Did anyone else notice how Ballmer refered to the 'Unix phenomenon '?
If we look at Merrium Webster's definition of phenomenon:
2. a : an object or aspect known through the senses rather than by thought or intuition
b : a temporal or spatiotemporal object of sensory experience as distinguished from a noumenon
c : a fact or event of scientific interest susceptible of scientific description and explanation
3. a : a rare or significant fact or event b plural phenomenons : an exceptional, unusual, or abnormal person, thing, or occurrence usage see PHENOMENA
Unix doesn't fit into any of these categories! Perhaps he should have said 'Unix foundation' because when you have a 35 year old server operating system, it seems pretty damn intuitive that it would be competition to a 5 year old Windows NT. There is nothing unusual or unscientific about that.
Keeping
MS or Commercial Unix -> Linux -> a BSD
There's nothing new about that.
But Linus has never claimed to be innovative, unlike the evil empire.
Alas, the lessons of the political season are so soon forgotten!
Did it not occur to you that Ballmer's words are directed towards an audience in the government, courts, the press, congress and the new administration to support their earlier claim that Linux is a real competitor and that their so-called monopoly was precariously in danger of being overturned by the rapid changes in the IT field? (You know - the changes in IT - the ones that result from MSInnovation to Windows, etc. that Redmond alone should be allowed to continue to do, just like Sun alone should be able to do to Java?)
Ballmer's announcement thus serves that purpose primarily, and only secondarily as a trumpet charge for a FUD barrage. (Expect: "If Linux wasn't such a threat then we wouldn't have mounted such a campaign!")
In reality, the inertia of the installed base of Win16, Win32 programs and the MS lock on the definition of .doc, .xls and .ppt as well as the unavoidable, Win9x-came-pre-installed-on-MyComputer upgrade path to backward incompatibility and need for future purchases of MSware can pretty much be manipulated at will to provided the proper balance between a revenue cash cow and the appearance of proper competition for the benefit of Ballmer's intended audience.
Expect the big guns not to be brought out until the DOJ annoyance has been either settled or safely litigated into an interminable appeals process.
Sheesh, as if it weren't bad enough that they've already bought stakes in both Apple and Corel to keep some well behaved toy competitors!
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Here is an interesting article on BrainBuzz about Corel dropping Linux.
--
The TCP/IP thing would be fair, because that would be a situation where the box was functionally not up to the job - you couldn't connect to machines that used the TCP/IP protocol. On the other hand, the fork thing is IMHO unfair because that's just an application implementation detail - it's possible on NT to build an app that works just as well in all functional respects without using fork.
... they woould have to release any changes they make to the linux kernel to the user and the community as noted in the GPL.
They certainly would, but I think it would be a good idea to waive the rules for Microsoft if it helps keep open-source software bug-free!
Anyway, if their distribution wasn't real Linux, then Linux would still be a threat wouldn't it.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
The correct BSD reaction is to sit back and be smug. (Personally, I'm as smug as a bug in a rug.)
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
Umm... not really. The point is that Microsoft has been satisfying most of their customers with every release. When you've got 90% of all PCs in the world, it's impossible to make everybody happy.
So far they've done a pretty good job at making everyone as happy as possible with the OSes they have. There are times I want to shoot them for still hanging on to archaic concepts like drive letters or that godawful registry.
You don't seem to understand that code monkeys like us are NOT MS' target audience. They're shooting for the crowd that doesn't want to work for their computer. Rather they expect it to be the other way around. In that aspect, they've succeeded. It is FAR, FAR easier to be productive in Windows with virtually no computer experience.
When it comes to tweaking under the hood, yeah Linux is far more conducive to that, but the vast majority doesn't want to (or doesn't know how to) build new kernels, compile Apache with mod_perl and PHP (not the easiest thing) or learn why their Winmodem/printer/scanner/etc won't work anymore.
--
I also don't know what is wrong with your computer. I have an old beige G3/300 that still runs like a champ. Yes, it needs a new graphics card (let's hope for nVidia drivers soon) and maybe a bigger hard drive (12 gigs just isn't enuf nowadays), but it's still great. I had an Apple monitor that went dead on me, but it was 3 years into it's life and I expected that. Speaking of monitors, I would never buy one directly from Apple. Yes they're pretty, but they're too damn expensive. $400 for a 17" monitor? You've gotta be kidding me. I bought my current 19" Samsung monitor for $300. The new monitors aren't just for the G4's last I heard, it's just that they support that new media plug that Apple is putting in all of their hardware. I'm pretty sure they still have VGA plugs. OS X is getting better and better with each dev release and it gonna be amazing when it's released in March. I'm sorry that you still like RedHat...
"In case of emergency, break glass. Scream. Bleed to death."
This isn't funny, its a damn brilliant prediction of what Microsoft *must* do.
Damn brilliant.
If I had been a bit more awake I would have said about $70 (sorry but the old Euro - dollar - IRP thing is starting to catch me out). If Sony came out with the Sony Desktop (think Helix cough cough ximian) which ran Gnome, KDE and Win32 apps all from a winalike front-end from the user perspective (hacked KDE or Gnome) the cost to them would be minimal (compared to starting from scratch / purchasing IP), the cost to the end user could be near zero (you'll pay for getting it installed and configured and some ongoing development/support which to Sony would be pennies and they would carry to have Sony plastered at least in source all over machines software/desktop, how many peoples machines scream MS at you despite the slight possibilities open to them). Hardware issues would NOT be an issue as Sony's backing would have plenty of manufacturers sending out test kit to put Tux on the box, and as we have seen with Mac, complete subjegation to win compatible hardware is not a complete must (but Linux kicks Mac ass for Hardware compatibility in my book).
I guess what I'm saying is that I do not evisage a new OS, but a windows face backed by a name people actually know (RedHat/Corel/Debian/Suse are not Coke/Levis/Nike/Sony). The Transmeta notebook may be the start (another reason to name Sony), perhaps Sony see the advantage of not having to pay anyone else a penny for software for their machines.....and saving the customer ???? I'd love to know the cost comparisons to Dell for example re their Linux V NT/2000 servers, and which costs Dell more! If they cost them the same price, why not build your internal strengths instead of assisting someone else? I guess for Sony it comes down to the likes of DVD playing..... anyone asked them if they'll write an Open Source DVD player and distribute it with a special TuxMan Mousemat (or some similarly low cost item), could it be done or could they just keep it outside US IP law and release it GPL (I doubt Sony the movie side would like that though :-(? I guess I'm also just spouting the next idea that went through my head for a true Linux convert company (SGI still aren't coming through enough for me but IBM aren't doing bad).
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
one need only look at BT's patent on hyperlinks to realize that having gobs and gobs of prior art may or may not prevent patents from being granted and patent infringement suites from taking place.
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
"They will find (or buy $$$) some lousy, overbroad, fundamental patent which is relied upon deep in the kernel, and while that won't dissuade the hobbyist, it will dissuade the system adminstrator and company management."
Maybe I'm taking this a little OT, but there are companies who support free software who also defend their intellectual property with patents. Isn't IBM the largest patent holder in the world? We also have Bruce Peren's HP, SGI, the ever opportunistic Oracle, etc.
It seems to me that the whole patent discussion as presented by free software advocates is sometimes a bit hypocritical. Perhaps copyrights, rather than patents, are the M.O. for free software advocates. But we certainly seem quite willing to turn a blind eye to benefactors who make patents an integral component of their business model.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
They don't need their own *nix distribution. The Windows 2k kernel is a very nice kernel. Add to that a *nix filesystem and some GNU Tools and nobody would be able to tell the difference...
...except that Windows2k*nix would have better driver support than *nix.
Keeping
Gandhi = Linux Hitler = Microsoft
I like it!
Fear not; most of the concepts have prior art dating back 30 years.
--
All men are great
before declaring war
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
"First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then the fight you.
Then you win."
-Mahatma Ghandi
film at 11
sheesh.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
I think that people overestimated the importance of the Halloween documents when they were made public, and really did think this whole open source thing was another fad. [1]
I think that learning what MS is thinking today about Linux would be much more useful than overrelying on a two year old paper written by VinodV.
I reckon that two years ago, MS wasn't particularly earnest about tackling open source. They were, to use the Ghandi parlance, still in the "laugh at you" stage.
It's hard to tell where they are now; one really needs the hindsight of history to know for sure.
[1] There have been plenty of them, and we have only the pundits writing for esteemed bastions of journalism like C|Net and Zdnet to tell us which is important and which isn't. (Ha. Haha.)
--
You're a suburbanite.
Your relationships with Sun have in that case been much better than anything I've been able to get out of them. Granted sounds like I'm in a smaller (perhaps much smaller) firm but all we have ever really gotten out of Sun is "sign this NDA" "OK we are working on it now" :) But interesting that you point out Sun as the example. I still think in terms of support OSS beats M$ but maybe not Sun yet (In particular if you are really big)
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
"Windows conceptually was ripped off from the Mac"
:)
*bzzt*
Xerox PARC, IIRC, had the first GUI and it was they who got ripped off. The Mouse as well I believe. and OOB... Pulldown menus...
Just to be nitpicky
Well, someone better be up at night, because all the kernel hackers sure are. Making the kernel, utilities, and the X Windowing System better, every day. While Microsoft integrates the animated Office helper into its next version of Windows 2000, and plans to increase OS licensing fees. I especially like how you are forced to connect to Microsoft in order to use this next version of Windows
They can't put Linux out of business.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
FWIW, Dell.com and Barnesandnoble.com are both entirely end-to-end MS solutions.
Windows 2000 has proven itself quite well as an enterprise OS.
They could, on the other hand, use this for yet another monopoly campaign. They may not be able to buy out Linux itself, but they may be able to get a force going against some of the more visible distrobution companies such as Red Hat and SuSE. With enough drive, I wouldn't be suprised if M$ could bring down some very valuable Open resources (both human and mabe code). What scares me more is this whole '.NET' thing M$ has begun. What backdoors will this turn up? On that note, it's also very scary how IE/OE always crashes every single time I try to e-mail anyone about the unfairness of Bill's Empire...- --
--------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------
Perversely greped and groped by PowerPenguin
However... ;)
As an essentially Darwinian OS, Linux will eventually grow very strong or die out. You guys decide what happens to it. Hopefully it will evolve into lots of strong variants that give Windows a run for it's money, but maybe, just maybe the lab engineered OS will beat the constantly evolving OS at it's own game.
Competition is a good thing, especially in a dog eat dog world.... We have a lot to thank M$ for. Although they could be viewed as a potentially bad thing, where would computing be without them? No-one has paralleled them for applications.
no?
I will go one step further than you. Linux is a nice lightweight server OS and a decent alternative embedded systems OS. It is not a threat to MS in the server arena: Solaris is. It is not a threat to MS on the client. OS X could be, maybe, but KDE/Gnome are not even in the running.
.NET are about pushing services, objects and components, not text. The OSS field is too fractured to attempt anything close --witness KParts, Bonobo, Xparts, etc, etc.
Let me explain: on the server Linux is still holding strong because the number one use of low-end, x86-based servers has been pushing text along (maybe some files too) and Linux/Gnu/Apache/Perl/PHP have been more than adequate --actually quite excellent-- for that. However, the unix-heads (and I am one) keep ignoring that that's not where the future is, Linux will die and soon. Sun's Java/Brazil/JNI/whatever and Microsoft's
As for the client... one word: Office. Rented, copy-protected, or whatever else it is still by far the best (never mind widely used) suite in existence.
Unix(R) is a trademark not owned by Linus or the FSF.
;-)
Therefore you have to please a certain company (whomever it is that own the trademark today -- is it still AT&T?) to be able to call your OS Unix.
Since that's a total waste of time and money, full POSIX compliance will have to do.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
You should have put a newline after 'Linux'... I first thought you were talking about a possible new Linux distro from Microsoft. But I guess not even they are so tasteless.
I don't suppose you can dig up any pertinant info on that subject? (ms making unix, not slashdot's search...) thanks in advance.
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
Linux has a lot of different things to these companies. Linux may not be a company with a soft underbelly, but that does not mean that they don't have a soft underbelly that MS can attack.
That Linux, OS/2, NetWare, WP, Amipro, Netscape, ... were considerably better thought-out, more user friendly etc, than their contemporary MS offerings means naught. What MS has is a considerably better Legal Prober department. They have people poking at the limits of legality.
If you read the MS history, you will note they used different tricks to force the issues. Many of these are downright illegal, but they have got away with it, because the people in the US have some sort of government phobia.
What you will find most likely happen is that MS will start doing things like killing off dual boot systems on every boot. [I think NT does this already], detatching wizards to fix `corrupt partitions' [eg formatted in ext2fs], and so forth.
Much of this will be pretty low fuzz stuff that is designed to damage the standing of Linux generally, because when people install Linux and Windows, Windows will subtlety sabatage Linux.
It should be noted, that both the HPFS and NTFS file systems are type 0x07. That NT used to support HPFS and NT as separate file systems, and they chose 0x07 for both, gives the impression that they see HPFS as a corrupt version of NTFS. Also, if to show the intent, the NT HPFS driver is called PINBALL.SYS - ping
Even Windows use of Control-Alt-Delete to bring up nice features is less than benign. What happens is that people get use to pressing these keys, and then start doing them in other systems. If this had been some sort of critical thing that people's lives depended on, then MS would have been guilty of a major industrial design fraud. [Something akin to making the brake pedal an accelerator pedal on a car]
I suspect that the reason that DOS boot mode support was pulled from Windows ME was more to counter the BeOS boot from Windows, then any genuine recogintion that DOS games are passe. The personal edition of BeOS used the MS-DOS loader to boot a virtual partiton, much like a dedicated VMWare thingie.
Of course, they do not have to have to attack Linux or some other product directly. All they need is to provide a series of misleading experiences from their own OS or product, that causes some doubt that the other guy is doing it. (Snakes are imune to their own venom).
Windows .NET could prove to be as equally ugly in its heavy dependence on MS server stuff.
{example type="made up data"}So, for example, if you have Windows .NET and Linux on the same system, you might get messages saying that partitions are corrupt on every boot, or have to do something different to reboot.{/example}
So don't be too coy about having superior technology rah rah rah. Unless MS is reeled in, and you get over this liberty/free enterprise etc crap and realise that MS are criminals hiding using these as shields, you are going to have to watch for traps.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
Windows 98
- Boot computer. Insert SCSI card. Crash.
(BTW, this method won't work on NT at all because it can't handle dynamic loading of PCMCIA drivers)Reboot computer. Insert SCSI card. SCSI driver install occurs. Crash.
Reboot computer with SCSI card. SCSI driver loads. Uh... where is ZIP drive?
Reboot computer with SCSI card. SCSI driver loads. ZIP drive shows up as removable drive.
Linux
- (Computer never rebooted.) Insert SCSI card. Beep indicates driver load.
- mount
/dev/sda /mnt/floppy
You're right. Linux is a bitch.I think that this is much more likely another attempt to say, "Gee whiz, it's tough being Microsoft, we're constantly having to innovate and compete, don't break us up, please!" Linux is certainly a threat to NT/2000, but the 98% of home users who have Windows aren't going to go anywhere soon. Let's keep one eye on Redmond (isn't that always the case?), but I think that this press announcement is more DOJ appeal than anything.
Wah!
Reading the first few comments for this story, is it really a good idea to fight Microsoft FUD with our Linux FUD?
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
I like your whole post except for "Star Office ... with its excellent Office interoperability." Like there's gotta be some simple way to import a comma-delimited file into the spreadsheet? Like on any real spreadsheet? Well, it's not on the menus, it's not in the help system (which sucks). I shudda rebooted to Windows and used a real program ... but wait, Applix handles it the way any user of real programs would expect ... now if only Applix weren't peculiar in its other functions.
This is what I wasted a half-hour on earlier tonight. Look, I keep going to Star when I need to do something that would be simple with Lotus or MS or WP/Quattro - and every time it wastes 20 minutes or a half hour and I just swear at the damn thing. I keep forgetting it flat out sucks. There is no Linux desktop suite that's even up to the low standards of MS Office. Maybe IBM will have Lotus address that? Lotus's stuff is far better than MS's anyhow, more intuitive, more capable, cleaner interfaces. Come-on IBM, spend part of that billion on a Lotus port.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Or at least acts like he is.
-T
Slashwin
A site dedicated to all the windows geeks out there pointing out all the shortcomings of linux... wait, shortcomings of linux... oh yeah, that's why there's not already a site like this.
Kurdt
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
AFAIK there has been no official announcement from either company, nor any "insider information" leeked from either company that indicates that Corel is actually dropping the Linux range. In fact I understood that they may also be looking for companies to aquire to bolster their Linux activities and failing that to sell off their Linux division (thus even though they would no longer be developing it, someone else would). All of the stories I have read regarding Corel dropping Linux support due to MS investment is at the moment simply the tech media's assumptions.
"I'll take the red pill. No! Blue! AAAaaaahhhhhhhhh"
- Monty Python meets the Matrix
If you go to any linux information site, or even freshmeat.net you will see that there are many Linux distributions. Red Hat was not the first, and is not all, Linux distributions. Please don't paint the entire Linux community Red just because of how bad some Red Hat distributions have been.
Sorry, but I had to comment on this one... First of all you seem to be complaining that apple updates their OS every 6 months to 1 year. You'd think this is a good thing, yes? Now i know it's not like going ot freshmeat.net every other day and getting an update to one of your millions of parts that make up your linux distro but at least they do make progress on a whole. How many linux distro's release a new version every year. And I have no idea what's wrong w/ your mac, I have a B&W G3 and and old apple monitor. Both have been through hell and back and still seem to have come out fine.
I just read a book I picked up at barns n noble
called " trust us were experts"
It explains how PR firms sway public opinion
on all sorts of things and flat out lie
I'm sure M$ will use the same tactics
It's an excelent read
It will really open your eyes
about how big biz works when it comes to PR
FUD is nothin new
http://Lenny.com
Did you ever use OS/2? It was not just a matter of marketing -- OS/2 was a resource hog. In order to have the advanced capabilities that it did, OS/2 required more RAM than was commonly available on the machines of the day. This was back when RAM was extremely pricey. A machine with 16MB of RAM was rare, and to really work well OS/2 needed 32! (IMHO)
On a powerful enough machine OS/2 was much better than Windows. But on the average machine of the day, Windows was far more usable.
If MS starts an all-out attack on Linux, I think it will backfire in their faces.
Right now, no one knows about Linux, they might have heard it mentioned, but have no idea what it really is. If MS has AD campaigns, etc... against Linux, people will start looking into this "threat to Microsoft". No matter what they do they are screwed. If they don't do anything, Linux will eventually get big enough on its own. A real strategy for them would be to start leaving their Windows division behind, and become an all app company.
The damage was done long before. Microsoft had made life hard for it in 92-95. Cases in point:
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
I've just booted the HURD!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
This is what could be considered MS's first major fight since they took out Netscape. It'll be interesting to see if MS's continuing legal problems hamper it in any way.
Historically speaking, Linux/Unix has the best chance of not getting crushed, IMHO. Borland, Netscape, Work Perfect, IBM all really didn't have a prayer.
is that there are people who want to use Office, and other applications that MS makes, but who want / need to use non-MS operating systems.
... believe me, there are people who want to use Word *and* Linux (I'm not one).
With the Mac, they seem to have taken to heart that there are Mac users who aren't planning to switch any time soon to Windows. But there are also dedicated users of IRIX and other Unices
If they make a UNIX-friendly Office (how close will the OS X version be?), seems like MS would have to intentionally cripple the software if they don't want at least some Linux users eventually getting it to work -- just look at the emulation work which has already happened *without* a UNIX-friendly version!
simon
"Hey Carlito, r'membah me? Benny Blanco from the Bronx!"
Ahem:
First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
they have this thing called the mks toolkit... and while it isn't a unix filesystem, they do add lots and lots of unix commands and tools so you can run shell scripts, emacs, and stuff on nt. it should work on 2k, not sure.
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
Much as I hate to say this, MS has the minds of the managers, what Linux needs is...
Easy install and use by "normal" users that are ALREADY used to the MS way.
Nah, because your fellow Slashdot pundits will bitch that it "looks too much like Windows........"
Ballmer is right.
That's because if the breakup goes through, Microsoft will have to play fair...
And, as we all know, they've never been able to win on merit, so it should be interesting to see what they do.
P.S. I'd love to debate this with any rabid MS fanatics who think Windows is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it might be too easy. Bring it on.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
...once MS percieves you as a threat...
Doesn't that sound familiar? Perhaps from Star Trek? Microsoft lives up to its slashdot icon once again.
Resistance is futile.
Aciel
aciel@speakeasy.net
> Slashdot needs to grow up
Tiger got to hunt
Bird got to fly
Man got to sit and wonder why, why, why
Tiger got to sleep
Bird got to land
Man got to tell himself he understand
(apologies to Kurt Vonnegut)
--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
They will even start to support it, because if Linux gets a higher market share, it will still be no real threat, but the Anti Trust case will be void ..
Linux must take the oppurtunity and exploit it!
Before you email me, remember: "There is no god!"
They showed this back in June in Tech-Ed in Orlando, FL.
now we are in the phase "then they fight you"
What about MacOS X? Taking the power of Unix based platform, the flexibility of OpenStep and the ease of use of the classic Mac environment this certainly makes it more than just a blimp on M$'s horizon.
:)
What will be interesting is whether MS will move to embrace and port all its office software to Linux or play its usuall dirty tricks, with lawyers et al. Somehow I believe from experience that the latter is true, unless someone is willing to let them have to non voting shares
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
...with infighting about package formats and which distribution is the best. .deb is better than .rpm, [with nice things like either/or dependencies, etc, though RPM does have some distinct advantages, like transaction support] but RPM was the earlier project and has won the marketplace. Debians installation process and slow release schedule has a severe effect on popularity. The APT-rpm port [as used in Connectiva, all future versions of Mandrake, and I believe, sometime soon, another large distribution] will likely be the order of the day for most future users. You'll still have CLI, but you'll also have a nice browser based `installer' that lets you find interesting stuff [perhaps sponsored], or with a certain capability [eg, ability to read .doc files]. Screenshots and revies will also exist. Closed source packages could also be purchased via this system.
.au, and more. IBM Global Services [the biggest in the game] is now in the Linux market. Clients who have some of their work done by Praxa [a large multinational who do a lot of outsourced IT] have acquired Linux machines through consolidation of other government departments networks. Linux is on Praxas list of supportable OSs. In the next month, they're expected to add it. I have a friend who works for Red Hat churning out RHCEs, despite the fact most people fail the exam the first time [as they should - its nice to see a hard certification]. We're here, we want your money, we do SLAs, give us a call.
I'd say technically,
Then Microsoft will produce lots of documentation "proving" to managers that Linux is much more costly to run.
From a MIS point of view, MSs TCO metrics actually ignore the greatest cost of owning a server: downtime. Wages for employees for non-productive work time, overtime, investment in unutilized hardware, lost customers, damanged goodwill, and logistical breaks. Even for a small business, I'd downtime for a single machine can easily pass $AU1000 and hour.
OS/2 was better than it's MS competition. It still lost because it wasn't marketed correctly. Linux has to be seen to be a viable, trustworthy and above all useful alternative for it to be accepted.
Agreed.
Much as I hate to say this, MS has the minds of the managers, what Linux needs is...
Easy install and use by "normal" users that are ALREADY used to the MS way.
Agreed
MS compatible applications.
Agreed. Or better yet, native Linux ports of those applications. A closed source app on an Open OS is still more stable. Real engineers use the best tool for the job. Most future business Linux users [not engineeers, but managers] will use Linux because of reliability and quality [although this is a result fo being open source].
And above all, companies that are willing to provide paid for support for it so that other large companies will accept it as an alternative OS. "What do you mean that there isn't anyone responsible for fixing bugs?"
Oh cmon. You cannot be serious! I work for Cybersource, we've done with in conjunction with Red Hat Asia Pacific Consulting, third level support for Dell Linux systems in
"Linux is a top threat to MS......."
I mean cmon, Well, DUUUUUUH!
He might as well be going around screaming
"HEY! Did you know Kennedy was shot?!?!"
I nominate Steve Ballmer as the next
Nostradamus wannabe.
I go to a school where we support / use linux quite a bit (read: as much as possible). We were contacted by some grass roots thing for schools who asked if we were doing anything innovative or interesting, and we said that we were (most schools are all windows, plus we have some other special things mixed in there - linux related). They arranged a telephone interview, which they said would be about an hour. As soon as linux was mentioned by our IT head (near the start of the call), they said that they weren't interested. Why? Microsoft sponsored!
SSL Certificate
Everyone wants NVidia's chips. Steve Jobs, Even my 11, 12 and 15 year old nephews. Nvidia has all the business they want and are in a better position than microsoft. They don't need microsoft, microsoft needs nvidia.
Nvidia is in the process of 'unifying their driver' set and creating one source tree for all their chip families/os's... Linux and Windows are or soon will be running the same drivers.
1.5 or 2 years ago there were NO Nvidia drivers for Linux! So we have come a long way.
Recently I purchased a new 3com cardbus card for my notebook (running linux). I popped it in and it worked. I didn't have to install any drivers - the ernel/pcmcia subsystem already knew about the card.
I put the same card into a brand new notebook toshiba notebook/win98 and the machine choked and died on the card - it begged me for a floppy/cd or some other method of controlling the hardware. In my book Linux has windoze beat on the driver front.
Adults are obsolete children. - Dr. Seuss
Microsoft will dig through their huge library of patents and find something anything that can be used against the Linux community. They will get patents that will help them control protocols and then use Windows to make people dependant on it. They will do anything to remove any shread of interoperability that Linux has with Windows and they will use patents to do it.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
It wasn't too long ago when I swapped the motherboard on my workstation, which dual-boots 'doze and Linux.
Windows:
Windows begins booting. "Windows has detected new hardware, and is installing software for it". Bluescreen. Reboot. Safe mode. Go into device manager, and remove all the device drivers for the former chipset that are crashing because their hardware is missing in action. It doesn't help things that they are getting their shit kicked out of them by all the new device drivers that attempt to take over the same functionality. Reboot. "Windows has detected new hardware, and is installing software for it". Ok. Done. Reboot. "Windows has detected new hardware, and is installing software for it". Bluescreen. Reboot. Safe mode. Back into the device manager. Remove three copies of the driver for the joystick port. Reboot. "Windows has detected new hardware, and is installing software for it". Ok. Reboot. Three reboots later, it keeps bluescreening no matter what. Wipe and reformat the Windows partition. Reinstall Windows from scratch.
Linux:
Press ENTER at the LILO prompt. The kernel boots, inventories the hardware, and initializes the correct device drivers. I resume working.
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If you really are a beos fan as you pretend to be, why didn't you say a thing about beos in your posting? You are just a Microsoft astroturfer.
--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
or something from the people who hate it. I'm so glad to be in good company. BTW this shows that they really do understand that in the long run the server room is more important than the desktop and know we can beat them in both. Looks like the next little while is going to be *really* fun.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
What's next? M$ going to give RedHat a chunk of money, I wouldn't doubt RedHat would take it as well.
J Random Consumer: "Wow, wonder what all the big deal about this Linux is? MS is sure talking about it a lot... maybe I should check it out... after all, something Microsoft is putting so much effort into must be amazing!"
Maybe not quite like that, but i would be willing to bet it'll happen at least a little bit.
-Elendale
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
It could be immortal.
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NO TOUCH MONKEY!
Are you kidding? ZDNet is one of the biggest Microsoft apologists around... They do, however tend to go for the sensationalism most of the time... They are kinda like the USA Today of the net...
Yes, but with Exchange, I don't have to do any kind of transfer at all. It's just.. there!
From what I see by the submitter, he seems to think that any time a reporter praises something about Windows and/or derieds a *nix variant, that the reporter in question must be paid by Microsoft.
The reality is, in my opinion, that the free software movement must learn to accept that is GOOD about other platforms, which includes Windows, and take people's criticisms to heart. If people are complaining that Linux doesn't have "FEATURE-X", in many cases energy would be better spend developing something similar (and hopefully, though not always, better) than in trying to tell people why "FEATURE-X" sucks or isn't relevant. (Granted, in some cases that mindset is appropriate.)
Anyhow, those are just my musings.
-
The IHA Forums
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Many newbies don't remember the Halloween Docs.
This was something that die-hard *n*x-ens followed very closely in October and November 1998.
Perhaps some of of the new Linuxens should review these documents to see from whence some of the zeolotry originates.
Linux rocks!!! www.dedserius.com
www.dedserius.com
VB != VisualBasic
Linux cannot be contained, Linux breaks free, expands to new territories, painfully perhaps even dangerously, well, and, there it is.
- Amon CMB
Men believe what they want. - Caesar
Microsoft is the biggest threat to microsoft. I thank God for the competitive marker, knowing that a once small idea like Linux, can grow to outplay the big boys!
but i thought mozilla was better...shouldn't it be compared to vi?
> Fear not; most of the concepts have prior art dating back 30 years.
Basically, MS will push something new that everyone "has to have", and chain it down with IP encumberances to keep the competition from implementing it. (Did I just say ".NET"?)
In this regard, the importance of the widespread adoption of Linux in serverspace cannot be overemphasised. If Linux (and Apache, and Samba, and others) had not shown up in the nick of time, MS's grab for server space would be almost a done deal by now, and they would be in a position to kill off the rest of Unix by leveraging proprietary protocols off their clientspace monopoly. But as things stand now, though, there are too many Linux boxes out there running people's businesses, and MS is going to have a hard sell trying to push any protocol that won't run on all those boxen.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
...with infighting about package formats and which distribution is the best.
Then Microsoft will produce lots of documentation "proving" to managers that Linux is much more costly to run.
OS/2 was better than it's MS competition. It still lost because it wasn't marketed correctly. Linux has to be seen to be a viable, trustworthy and above all useful alternative for it to be accepted.
Much as I hate to say this, MS has the minds of the managers, what Linux needs is...
Easy install and use by "normal" users that are ALREADY used to the MS way.
MS compatible applications.
And above all, companies that are willing to provide paid for support for it so that other large companies will accept it as an alternative OS. "What do you mean that there isn't anyone responsible for fixing bugs?"
Zwack...
-- Under/Overrated is meta-moderation, and therefore is Redundant.
---------------------------
"The people. Could you patent the sun?"
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
--Henry David Thoreau
I read it as interesting concerning Oracle/Sun that they "are second-tier rivals because I think that server sales are our biggest potential short-term return". I think *potential* is the key word here. Lots of potential. Not a lot of opportunity.
Yet the Halloween documents point out how M$ is going to try to smash open-source: not with copyright, but with patents.
MS has been found in a court of law to be a monopoly in the market of PC operating systems. The trial would be shorter this time and it would (a) strip MS of the patent and (b) break them up for good.
Remember, the Holloween documents were written before Jackson's Findings of Fact.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
The biggest threat to MS from linux is in the server and the handheld environmets, the 2 areas where MS doesn't have a monopoly right now. I'm sure that they're not too concenrned about the destop yet.
Jesus used to be my co-pilot, but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him.
The true test will be to see how the mainstream press treats Linux post-settlement.
I believe by phenomenon, he's referring to the fact that Microsoft's competitors aren't really "selling" anything. Normally, a company's competitor sellins the same thing, but either slightly different or at a different price. The fact that many people are developing open-source software essentially for free is a phenomenon considering how human nature tends to be individualistic 'screw-the-rest-of-you-gimme-my-$199.95'. The thing that bothers me about this article is that an article about something as obvious as linux/unix being the biggest threat to Windows would appear on slashdot.
I for myself beleive that Linux is not ready for the masses for one simple reason : even tough you have hackers and zealots who will code drivers in their spare time to support their brand new video card, Linux will be really great when after a single installation, every peripherals will be usable, without any downloads what so ever, maybe insert a video card CD and your sound card CD to install the drivers, but everything from HD to DVD and screen and burner will be recognised by the OS and configured properly like Windows does (most of the time). I bought a brand new PC this summer and the only drivers that Win98SE didn't have were of course the Via4In1, the Sound Blaster Live! drivers and the GeForce. Everything else was supported, with no problem. Under Linux, I can't get my soundcard to work without tweaking, my video doesn't work on all distributions, my network cards are not supported, even tough I got the drivers on diskettes, I still have to compile then and add the module, which Jo-Common doesn't know how to do.
Linux already has a couple of great software ( Gimp, StarOffice, WordPerfect Suite, some 3D tools) but when the hardware manufacturers will support Linux, that's when users will really start noticing it.
Unless and until (ie: never) MS puts out an OS that is cheap/free, open (or mostly so), and much more geared to security and maintainability (as opposed to backwards compatibility with dumb MS decisions of the past decade), they will HAVE to spend money to keep market share.
Those who know will make up their own minds about the relative merits of this OS vs. that OS. The truly enlightened will even use MS products in their proper place. Nobody but executives cares about what marketing says. And even they are starting to see why "free as in beer" makes a lot of sense.
Now, if we could only beat into their tiny minds why the other "free" has a place in industry, too...
And pulldown menus are about as non-obvious as OneClick.
On one hand, it would be nice to have outlook and office for linux so I could cooperate with the rest of the company. (the embrace part) On the other hand, I guess it's good that they still aren't publicly admitting to making up their famous (incomopatable) improvments yet. (the extend part)
I'm glad I'm finally hearing the world's largest software company talk about the OS I use, but I think I'd like some software from them for it.
about all they can do now is give away their OS for free...
1) Confusing configuration /etc (or a number of other places). In NT, you have the registry. I find /etc easier to deal with than hunting down this program or that to change something.
/usr/lib/something - odd.
/opt is that you can have /opt/netscape and put related in there - like \program files\netscape, however no dll's to be put in the system dir.
/opt/netscape and be done with it. No registry or other odd things lingering.
/usr/local, or /opt, or /mycrap/bin/*, but that if you go to install one app from the net (precompiled) it may go to one place, and another to another. Even if you go to recompile, there may be a few defaults you don't catch.
You have many files in
However, it seems some people go out of their way to prove just how well they can write a parser, providing only a rough overview of the general syntax of their config file language - this is what makes it both flexible and a pain in the rear for people not fully familiar with it.
2) Stupid directory structure
No worse than NT can be. Where are the DHCP logs (by default)? $WINNT$\system32\dhcp\log - kinda like putting them in
The nice thing about the
And alo unlike Windows, you can just rm -Rf
I'm not saying the unix filesystem is perfect, but NT isn't much better.
Part of the problem is not that you can use
The only way to be real safe is to stick with packages released by RedHat, Mandrake, or whoever your system is from - which then keeps you from running what you want if you are not a system god.
The main problem with Linux and Unix in general is also a strength. You can do it your way. Everytime someone bitches about how every X app is different, you have people saying that it's great cause it doesn't force anything on you. Same with the config files, locations, etc...
As soon as you unify config files, file locations, etc... you'll have a split and then we are no better off. You can't win.
Stop trying to make Linux into the ultimate desktop OS - go own MS in the server market even harder. Make a few nice enterprise solutions that run under Gnome, KDE, whatever and can be used by trained monkeys with an MSCE. IIS and Exchange are the killer apps.
I am beginning to think its a waste of time to try and dislodge the desktop market. The desktop market - the end users - can and always will be, in majority, MORONS, and Microsoft is exactly the company that should lead these people by the hand like docile sheep. Do we really want to dumb Linux down (at least on the surface)? Get Linux on the servers - where the people using it have a brain - and squeeze Microsoft out of the low end server market. Force them to compete with Sun et al.
Have you noticed that the power users install Win2k/Advanced Server instead of 98/ME?
I believe that MS was judging Linux as threat because its usablity has become much better. Aside from server type applications, where I think MS knew it had serious competition all along, I don't think that it thought that Linux would ever grow much in the desktop market. But the usability has grown very much over the years, and people are starting to choose it over windows. These people are not novices, but they aren't necisseraly hard-core computer junkies. I fall into this catagory, I am slightly less than a computer wizard. I use Gnome quite a bit, and I find it as easy to navigate as Windows, though it did take a bit of getting used to.
Additionally, Linux seems to be making a toehold in the embedded markets, and since the convention wisdom seems to forsee a migration from large, centralized desktop computers to individual devices, I know MS wants a hefty share of what it sees as the future. Hell, Windows CE wasn't exactly a smash hit.
and here
Around here, people just like to do it for free.
--
+&x
I ask this in all seriousness, because as a BSD and Linux user I've been giving this some consideration lately. The most major differences I've noticed between the two are the startup scripts! What other major differences exist between "Unix" and Linux? Thanks for any insights.
Free music from Jack Merlot.
And it maybe worthwhile remembering that a couple of years back Microsft rescued Apple as well financially. How did that change Apple (other than financially)?
I'm sure that this thought never crossed the minds of any of our lovely legal minds at M$.
Linux is no threat to MS on the desktop, Linux zealots nonwithstanding. MS is (correctly) not afraid that the public will switch en masse from Win9x/ME to Linux.
On the server front, it's another matter entirely. Here Linux is a direct competitor to Microsoft and so, a threat. It's a competitor that can't be bought out or underpriced (like Netscape was by IE) and thus is more of a threat.
Whether we see MicrograssSoftroot-movements spring up, I doubt. Server software is bought by either techies or management and neither particularly cares about grass roots. We are likely to see more money thrown at sales and marketing, now that is nearly certain.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
It's unreal how much misinformation is floating around.
MS did not rescue Apple. MS bought $150 million worth of Apple stock. A newsworthy event. But not a big deal.
Apple was having financial troubles at the time. But that was because Spindler in his infinite wisdom didn't believe in the success of the PowerPC, and continued to build $1 billion worth of 68K-based inventory that nobody wanted. Before long Apple realized that everyone was buying PPC's, and nobody wanted 68K's anymore. Apple was sitting on $1 bil worth of machines they couldn't move. End result was one quarter where they had to take a $780 million charge to write off this inventory. Spindler "resigned". Apple changed CEO's a couple times. Copeland was delayed. Lots of various bad news for Apple about this time. Mainstream media stupidly seemed to think Apple is "dying". (As they've said each and every year since 1981.)
Apple was about a $10 billion (revenue) company at the time. MS buying $150 mil worth of stock is not a "rescue".
At this time, Apple began including IE as the default browser, while still including Netscape in install -- but just not making it default. Apple also begain including Outlook Express.
There were rumors that MS was forced into this deal because they got caught with their hand in the till. (Stealing R&D secrets again.) But this is just a rumor.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
I'm currently aboout to do a dual boot this week. Anyone got any tips on a good kernel modification and updating site is?
Amen. My pair of pit bulls is likewise offended. A rabid spaniel with rage syndrome and bad hips would be more apt.
When making an axe handle the model is not far off.
JollyFin -Feeling fishy today
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
American is going to see a big change in the political landscape. Since Anne Bingaman was appointed head of the DOJ antitrust division in 1993, the DOJ has fought hard to keep the market open to all newcomers to allow small startups to grow. Linux did very well in this climate, got a lot of major players on board to help develop new products. All that is going to change, we are going back to the pre Clinton era where the DOJ will take a hands off approach. This will allow Microsoft to go back to business as usual. Yes you can say Linux is free, but if licensing pressure was put on major players such as IBM ( According to the findings of facts in the DOJ VS MS case ) were forced to drop support of their own products (OS/2) to get Microsoft licenses,and Microsoft does the same for linux support how good can that be for linux? Some former OS/2 users can remember software products being killed just before they were finished and released with no reason other than their was a decision there was no market. The same can happen to linux application products from major players. Also hardware suppliers such as Gateway that were forced to not support OS/2 could easily be forced not to support linux. It won't happen overnight, but a constant gradual movement. Suddenly you will read about one major player deciding there is no money in supporting linux, then another then another it will just grow, with the magazines reporting it on the covers every release with headline such as " Company X decided to pull the plug on linux development"
No, Microsoft can't take linux away from the hackers, but expect linux growth to slow if major players such as IBM, DELL ect. are forced to stop supporting linux. Having a DOJ that believes in "hands off" policies when it comes to monopoly power, be prepared to see those monopolies flex their muscles.
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>>>please remove "nospam" from email address
MacOS has a comparable product- 'REALbasic'. This was originally a labor of love by a single very talented developer, Andrew Barry, designed to be as approachable and _more_ sensible than VB. When Andrew Barry got exhausted and resigned, other programmers were hired and they successfully took over the development- including bringing it over to OSX.
Most Linux developers may not be into this style of development- it's more drag-and-drop of GUI components and dropping code snippets (even dragging them from the online reference!) into the relevant control events. However, the MZA types will love it- and even if you're not a zombie idiot the accessibility and rapidity of it all is very nice.
I wrote an airfoil data generation program in this language the other night- it literally took only a night of work to produce a working program that did the following:
I daresay a lot of people think you can only do that on Windows with VB (never mind that VB is more complicated with a steeper initial curve than REALbasic- you can literally drag stuff into a window in RB and build the program without writing a line of code and it won't _do_ anything but all the controls will 'work' already)
However, even if there's not going to be anything as approachable for Linux (i.e. more dumb-simple than C console apps), a competing product already exists on MacOS and compiles to trad MacOS and OSX apps- and Windows apps for that matter, though the work the programmers have to do to keep that end afloat is 10X as much work as they have to do for the MacOS side, all the bugfix reports are invariably _loaded_ with 'Win' bugs that were fixed or worked around.
Anyhow- not even VB is a permanent safe haven for MS. Comparable products exist.
(BTW- 'the red pen'? Did you by any chance attend the Cambridge School of Weston? If so, you knew me as 'The Poet')
Well from what I saw the difference beteen Windows vs. Linux was pronounced at low resolutions but the difference at high resolutions gets less and less as the resolutions get higher, until it's hardly even noticeable. This was based on Quake3A benchmarks.
I've bet my next year that open-source will dominate.
This vindicates that decision
Prove to me that tree really exists.
Screw Microsoft.
All of Microsoft's traditional approaches, even embrace and destroy, won't be destructive to Linux per se. Sure, companies that sell Linux products (Red Hat et al) might have problems, but the movement as a whole will always continue as long as a person can SOMEHOW get Linux without purchasing a pre-burned CD that has have the word "Micrsoft" on the cover (in other words, if Linux remains an open system). Besides, a core group of Linux users (for both personal and proffesional applications) has already been established, most of which who use Linux as opposed to a Microsoft product. To expect Microsoft to dominate the commercial Linux market now seems rather ubsurd. Perhaps Microsoft could use its marketing mass to put the word "Linux" in front of every sloth in America, buth anyone who actively looks into making an informed decision when purchasing a Linux product would never buy a Microsft version. Linux by definition is anti-Microsoft. It was developed by those who don't want an alternative to Microsoft, it's used by those who don't want an alternative to Micrsoft, and this fact will always play the biggest part in the identity of Linux. If the sloths run out and buy a Microsoft Linux, great, more power to them. Most sloths don't deserve to use Linux (yeah, yeah, flamebait, but I don't care). esides, even though past data seems to make it statistically impossible, if a MS Linux product managed to produce any good hacks or ideas, they would eventually be reverse engineered or have the proprietary functionality emulated in an open context, whcih would benefiting everyone else.
The only good tactic they have is to try and somehow get around the GPL(/BSD/Apache/whatever open license your code is under) in such a way that all the Linux intellectual property (Linus' kernel, the GNU utilities, etc) becomes the sole property of Microsoft. That is the possible "great threat". Is it possible? I don't know, IANAL, but I do know Microsoft has a whole army of well paid ones, and it's been stated by others on this website that the GPL does have its flaws. Flaws big enough to allow Microsoft to STEAL Linux in its entirety? I don't think so, but in my paranoid universe anything is possible.
Maybe they could do something outlandish like patenting any system that is organized around System V or BSD. It's possible.
If I could think of something pithy to say, I'd put it here. No really.
Speaking as a daily user of Win2K I can tell you it is NOT stable. Windows Explorer goes down on me all the time as well as MSOffice 2000 and third party apps, too.
Granted, the Linux desktops/apps are hardly stable either, but let's not overstate the competition in making out point.
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
Microsoft Whistler Beta 1 By Larry Seltzer, PC Magazine November 3, 2000 Not just another version of Windows, Microsoft's Whistler has the potential to make PCs something they are not known to be: stable and reliable. I mean who the fuck are they kidding? it's the PC's fault that the OS isn't stable? And whistler is going to fix that?
wrong. people don't care what the threat to MS is. Linux is obviously a better made OS yet it doesn't have the support that Windows does... Look at OS/2. It was an incredibly robust OS, ran Windows 3.1 apps, and it had a wide range of freeware software available to it (including the somewhat easy porting of UN*X apps), yet b/c MS has dominance in the applications market (and in the ad market) it failed and failed miserably.
Linux won't "fail" b/c it has been chugging happily along the whole time, but any anti-Linux campaign that MS does will not bring Linux ahead of MS.
Yeah, yeah I know, they also came up with the laser printer, ethernet and visual programming. Xerox PARC at the time was letting all of these technologies languish without ever taking advantage of them (Xerox management that is). Apple comes along and says, hey we'll give you x number of Apple shares if we can use this technology. Apple was a hot company at the time, so Xerox says sure. Apple then delivers the GUI to the consumer and revolutionizes the PC market again. Not only with the GUI, but also with built in networking that is remarkably easy to implement. (Appleshare, and another first for the PC industry. I remember, because I was screwing around with a Wang network setup and I was absolutely flabbergasted at the idea of setting up a network by literally clicking on a couple of icons. Sitting down in 1984 with one of the first Macs, I knew in my heart and in my soul that this was where computing was headed)
Additionally, Apple was having a helluva time developing their own drivers for laser printers (again with stuff from Xerox PARC), so along comes this bright guy named John Warnock. Apple helps Warnock fund this cool little startup called Adobe.....
My point is that there is lots of history here, and by sayng that Windows conceptually was ripped off from the Mac was totally valid for the following reason: Bill Gates had never seen Xerox PARC. Never had any idea what was going on there. But in late 1982 Apple goes to Microsoft and says, we're developing this new computer, and we need some software applications for it. Since you guys do software applications we are going to give you development Macs while we work on this thing and you can see what we're doing..........But you gotta keep it really quiet see.........
Gates went Oh Sh*t, and Windows development started.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Pulldown menus are an Apple invention. They started at Apple. MS copied it from Apple.
Incidentially, Apple did contribute other totally new original concepts to the GUI. (Imagine that!) Xerox Parc was no doubt a huge inspiration. But Apple did a lot of original work that some would like you to belive was introduced to the world for the first time in Windows 95.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Have you see the source to the Windows 2k kernel?
Tons of gnu tools are available that run on Windows 2000. All the command line tools are there, sort of, they are a little brain-damaged.
_Godel, Escher, Bach_ missed the point: it's not "self-reference" which is so powerful, but rather "reference" itself.
You missed the point of GEB. The Godel Incompleteness Theorem could not have been proved without self-referential statements.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
First of all, there is the Microsoft Zombie Army. These are hoards of mediocre developers who have discovered that they can quickly and easily put together mediocre applications and systems using Microsoft technology. I've come across these people and they are entrenched. Basically they are motivated by fear of losing their '1337 status in a move to an unfamiliar technology.
The second effect is what I call the "Japanese Car Effect." Those of you unfortunate enough to have been conscious in the early 70's will remember a time when the Detroit auto makers could Do No Wrong(tm) and Japanese imports were considered crappy "rice burners" bought only by Communists. Unfortunately for Detroit, everyone who "went over" to the Japanese imports discovered that they were high-quality and efficient. They never bought an American car again.
Guess what (usually) happens when an NT user finally "goes over" to Linux?
At first I noticed a little inconcistency in the above article. UNIX is not at all the same as Linux. And at the moment it doesn't seem to be UNIX versus Microsofts OS'es, but Linux versus Windows.
/is/ known to most administrators or users that Linux (or BSD) is a viable alternative.
Why do "massmedia-reporters" always say things which are already known? Is it because we (as geeks) know more, or is it because they are too uncertain about what is going on?
I think it is the latter, and prepare for it: it's not going to get any better real soon. All you'll read in magazines like that is stuff which says: "Look at me, I know that the world is round, not flat", years after it is proven that the only flat world is Discworld (a series of books by Terry Pratchett).
And yes: Windows is at the moment beaten up by Linux, and no: We're not talking 98 or ME here, we're talking about their previous topprofit Windows NT (or atm 2000) here. So what? Most experienced users have made their bet by now, or will do so in a not so wide timespan. It
This is a replacement signature.
A) Linux still hasn't proven itself on the performance front. Even after several months, the Linux NVIDIA drivers are noticably lower in performance than their Windows counterparts. This happens even at low resolutions where the bitblit thing is not an issue. And with DirectX 8 and, later, Whistler promising huge increases in 3D performance, I don't know how Linux will deliver. Of course, MS could be overinflating their performance claims, but if NT4 and DirectX7 (which essentially made DX faster and more featureful than OpenGL) are any hint, MS *can* make good products, it just depends on if there is the motivation. When you add mediocre 3D performance to the slow desktops (in comparison to Win2K's, anyway) and high memory use (same as Win2K) then you have little reason to use Linux if you're looking for (desktop) performance.
The NVIDIA drivers are closed-source, but you never say "NVIDIA write better drivers for Windows than for Linux" you just say that "Linux" can't compete. You have to recall that MS gave the videocard deal for the XBox to NVIDIA, and makes DirectX features depending on what NVIDIA is going to put in the hardware (and vice versa).
The threat is two-pronged. One is storage devices, servers, that kind of thing.
The other is info appliances. MSFT OS costs too much, and to get to market, you need to get below $300 and prefer to drop below $200 and hopefully achieve $100 per unit retail. The only way MSFT can achieve competition here is to "rent" the OS, requiring you to pay a low annual fee, bundled in with the service agreement. Or resell your private info the appliance processes to marketeers, and get revenue that way.
Will in Seattle
"See, we have lots of competition! Look at those penguin guys, ooooh scary! We're getting our lunch eaten by folks who GIVE AWAY FREE SOFTWARE! How can we possibly compete with FREE? AIEEE!"
C'mon, read between the lines and figure out who this was targeted to.
"Guess what (usually) happens when an NT user finally "goes over" to Linux?" He gets confused, whines, and then goes back to Windows. Microsoft caters to customers, not geeks, and that's where their strength lies. I haven't had a problem installing Windows in years; I still can't get Linux to work with my hardware because I don't know enoug to tweak it. My own fault? Probably, but it won't stop me from using Windows to save myself the trouble of learning to tweak my OS.
--Brogdon
This tagline is umop apisdn.
Since M$ is preoccupied right now with the government trying to split them up and their .NET strategy, they might not attack Linux with their usual force. And even if they do, will it seriously effect Linux's growth? I personally don't think so. From my experience, the main reason why people switch to Linux is because they don't like Microsoft and/or they are tired of Microsoft products crashing on them all the time (ie Windows). M$ attacking Linux won't make their software any better or more stable.
Josh
The Microsoft which attacked OS/2 like a rabid pit bull is not the same Microsoft today. All empires must fall. They will fight, but there's a strong user base to be reckoned with when considering strengths of Linux vs. OS/2. Although they will probably win in the consumer market, the back end (servers and such) is Linux's territory.
CroyDax
Score = 0 redundant
Since when is Microsoft viewing Linux as a threat news? Since when is it innovative to expect Microsoft to take competetive measures against Linux?
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
So even if the users would see no war, the companies still would all by themselves.
Basically, MSFT exists in the non-server space between Servers (*nix) and Info Appliances (Palm,Linux). The problem for them is that they can't acheive nine nines (they advert five nines as if that's good enough) so they lose in Server space and their cost is too high to win in Info Appliance space.
When an appliance has to price lower than $300 retail, and preferably achieves $100 retail withing two years, an OS that costs more than $10 is too expensive. Hence the use of Linux in automobiles (mostly Red Hat at present), PDAs (just starting), and WebPads (various).
It's just Marketing 101. Always has been, always will be.
Will in Seattle
What's wrong with MKS toolkit? Surely your childhood friend can elaborate a bit. I've been using MKS recently on NT 4 and have had no problems. It works pretty well actually. If it were up to me we'd be using the gnu versions, which are free and simpler to install.
--
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
But - I think it isn't possbile to buy a patent for something what was made available to public. And open source is available to public, right? Can someone who understands patents better than I do comment this?
Kamzik
See, there are only less than 10% CPU in this world running on desktop computer. Other 90%+ CPUs are embedded in various devices, equipments, appliances... where is the real market that M$ struglling to get in but eventually, failed! The rapid blooming of embedded Linux is simply ... wow!
Linux will be everwhere while M$ may only exist in desktop (10%!!!), I guess. They should worry it seriously. The best way to survive is to kill yourself first! So, unless M$ kill M$-Windows, it wouldn't survive for sure.
Perhaps his/her dad, but have you ever seen a user cringe upon seeing:
user@thissystem$
Corel commercial, Debian non-profit.
Corel a company, Debian a distributed effort.
Corel Linux irrelevant suckage, Debian GNU/Linux just superb.
Not labouring the point too much I hope?
--
-- What do you need?
-- Gnus. Lots of Gnus.
Microsoft should be worrying more about Sony using Playstation 2's to direct missles towards the Redmond, WA area. After all, PS2 is a Linux-based console!
- Amon CMB
Men believe what they want. - Caesar
I will never use Windows again. I don't need to. Linux does everything *I* need it to do. I don't care if Linux puts Microsoft into the bread line. I don't care if Linux obviates the need for MacOS, BeOS, or any other OS. The point is that Linux does what *I* need it to do.
Fortunately, my job provides me with the privelige of using Linux on a regular basis. Since I have *faith* in what Linux can do, my employer lets me put Linux into a production environment. I *know* the limitations of Linux vs. Windows NT/2000. I've shown my employer. And I've proved OVER AND OVER again that Linux really is the better server platform for what our company does. And our ROI is amazing. The accountants just love me.
Who cares about Microsoft. If more people spent less time worrying about what Microsoft is doing and spent time learning about what Linux can already do, then the solution will present itself.
The sad thing about a lot of people's arguments is that Linux isn't "user-friendly". This from people who use AOL. Those of us who use Linux had to learn the hard way - why can't everyone else just sit down and learn. Unfortunately, society nowadays expects user-friendliness to be defined as a set of "wizards" that accomplish mundane tasks with a series of pretty dialog boxes. They expect their hands to be held. The cynics will prevail until they are left behind by the practitioners of due diligence.
Ever heard of Darwin?
that show Microsoft for who they really are.
Sounds like they have a sense of humor. That can't be entirely bad.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
This strikes me as a bunch of malarkey. It just seems a little too conveniently advantageous from an antitrust PR standpoint to publicly say, "Oh yeah, Linux! They're real competition! They scare us!" If Ballmer truly considered Linux to be a threat, why would he air his views publicly? Isn't this a bit akin to Microsoft putting money and app development time into MacOS products so they could point to MacOS and say, "See, no monopoly; we have real competition!"
Did he really think that this statment would make him sound smart? Of course Linux is the number one threat but when it comes to your average home user, I don't think Linux a threat at all.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
you should "kep" your eye out for typos too eeeek
NEWS: cloning, genome, privacy, surveillance, and more!
NEWS: cloning, genome, privacy, surveillance, and more!
So your argument is that they just don't care about their customers?
:)
I believe that; that's why I stopped using their stuff whenever possible, somewhere between DOS 6.0 and Windows '95. (I hated Win 3.1, but at least I understood it, and could tweak all the config files; Win '95 was when they really started trying to bolt the hood down)
So I guess if they keep up with that attitude, they won't win on merit...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
they have this thing called the mks toolkit... and while it isn't a unix filesystem, they do add lots and lots of unix commands and tools so you can run shell scripts, emacs, and stuff on nt. it should work on 2k, not sure.
A longtime friend of mine (known him since grade 4) had a co-op term or three at MKS in Waterloo, ON, Canada. The new stuff is utter shit compared to the old tools. I wouldn't reccomend it unless you need the cardboard box for something.
Interesting you should mention it, because the article referenced had this nice little bit:
Now I'm not going to go and shout and scream about how Microsoft is buying off a potential competitor, but it does look kind of suspicious. Here's a company that could do a lot to boost Linux as a desktop competitor for Windows, and after getting a big cash infusion from Microsoft they're giving up their plans to do so. It's not a cut and dried as pay for non-competetion, but it does deserve careful scrutiny.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Well... Yes and no. I do this all the time, but SO is not a drop-in replacement for Office. Yes, 5.2 is a lot more stable than 5.1, and the Office compatability has vastly improved, but in my experience, it's still in the 90% range -- worse when you have embedded diagrams or other MS objects. Believe me, I put a lot of effort into running Linux while living in a MS centric workplace, but there are still times when I just plain have to use the NT box to read something or reply to a Word document, or run a specialized application.
SO is great, but it's no silver bullet yet...
--
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Havn't you figured out by now that Microsoft doesn't have ideas of their own? They bought DOS, bough Office, bought Mosaic (now IE) stole ideas from apple, stolle ideas from IBM, they have copied and stolen ideas from anyone and everyone, there arn't free thinkers over there.
;-)
You may have just given them ideas on how to compete with Linux, up until now they prolly had no clue what to do!!!
Thanks Alot!!!
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
Its strange that you say that the OSS field is too fractured to do anything close, and then mention several incompatible competitors. It doesn't seem that OSS is any more fractured than anyone else. If there is to be a standard, it will be CORBA, and - oh look - GNOME already does that. However, the one thing you are missing about these object protocols is their complexity. The nice thing about http/ftp/ssh/whatever is their simplicity. Using CORBA, situations can get real messy, real fast. The lightweight services tend to give much better, more reliable results! They are missing several features, but are those features worth the pain? I don't know. If they are, well, we'll probably end up using CORBA, and probably Linux running CORBA.
I think you are also missing how quickly Linux has gained in the server arena. It now has support for Logical Volume Management (like, add this drive, and make it a part of this virtual partition), RAID hot adding/removing, and the like. Consider the following configuration:
Linux
Postgresql 7.1 (database)
RAID/LVM drives on SCSI/SCA hotswap
OpenLDAP
Postfix (mail)
Apache
and you start seeing "heavy-duty server" written all over it.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Why persist in comparing Linux to NT? We know NT is pretty crap, so by saying things like "No worse than NT can be.", all you're doing is elevating Linux to 'just better than crap'.
Why can't we aim to "Make an elegant, well designed operating system" (like Apple are trying to do) instead of "Do things the M$ way, only marginally better"...?
Since Linux is not tied to profit, Microsoft attacking comes off more like that rabbit that attacked President Jimmy Carter's boat in the 70's. Lots of activity but very little threat.
Gates is in enough trouble. He's not going to waste his time swinging at a target that keeps moving around on him. He'll just continue to tell people "You are too dumb to use Linux. Bob is easy. Linux is hard".
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
I hope you're not trying to imply that the Windows registry is better than /etc? The Windows registry is a huge mess. It's extremely difficult to tell which key was added by which program, and to track down the configuration of a single program. With /etc, I can just do a `ls *programname*` and easily find the configuration file.
And in any case, for most programs the user never uses or even sees /etc. Configuration files are generated automatically and stored in ~/.[programname].
Yes, better configuration front ends would be very helpful, but following the Windows registry would be a huge step down hill.
Out goes modules.conf, samba.conf, XFree86Config, etc, and in comes a unified text file format. Out goes ipconfig and friends entirely.
Considering that the file is XF86Config, and the command is ifconfig (ipconfig is for Windows NT 4.0), my guess is you don't have much experience in Linux.
how much longer is "florida election humour" going to be moderated as funny? 'cause it's not...
--
j u l e s @ p o p m o n k e y . c o m
in this age of communication i'm just not getting through
Of course, I've got my own theory that MS is working on a Windows OS with a BSD core, to get the stability of BSD. Now that they've removed the advertising clause, it's possible that nobody would ever know...
--
The dog ate my
look into it.
It does everything you describe and more.
War is necrophilia.
1) Confusing configuration. Get rid of /etc and replace it with something sane.
Oh man I hope you're kidding. It's having all the configuration files for the system in one directory that helps keep things sane when doing a lot of system administration.
And having them be plain text files is just as important. So easy to copy configurations and edit, without special tools. Try to adminster more than a few NT machines on a network (even with remote control software such as VNC or PCAnywhere) for a month, and come back and tell me you don't like text configuration files.
Make the system cohesive. Get back to the UNIX roots. You know how UNIX treats *everything* as a file?
From a programmer's point of view, I agree with you (check out Plan9 from Bell Labs sometime, you'll probably like it).
But from a user's point of view, that is irrellavant.
It would be nice to have Flash 5 huh? You have to understand that if the Linux people care about Flash, they would have made something of there own by now. Look at it like this:
Flash 5 - Don't care about right now.
Dreamweaver 4 - Got programs in Linux can do the same.
Fireworks 4 - Got the GIMP and with the right plug-ins...You have some great looking GFX.
It's not going to take long before the Linux/BSD have the only little program like Flash... Oh just between me and you. I have a friend that's plan on a cross plateform tool like Flash sooner or later. I got him Linux for X-mas(later paid for RedHat 7 Workstation tho) and he started programming some stuff for Linux. I figure if Macromeida don't want to port there stuff then fine... It will be hard for them to jump into Linux a year or two from now.
As for me I work at a CBT company using Director, Flash, Fireworks, and etc. If you ask me Macromedia makes some great easy to learn software. I would like to see Macromedia port some of there stuff over to Linux, but like always I don't plan on seeing it any time soon.
P.S: As for my friend little program? It's still it the works and I seen some of the stuff that is done now...
From Zero to Hero... Starbuck Zero
That is, unless they pull an IE.
And all the average user cares about is free beer anyways.
- He gets confused, whines, and then goes back to Windows.
This may be what happened when your hobbiest pal "gives that RedHat a shot," but the numbers show that people who seriously try Linux to solve their problems find it pleasantly servicable. They don't give a shit that it won't work with the system they bought at Best Buy three years ago. They don't care that it won't run the funny joke EXE their sister sent them this morning.They are server people running enterprise applications. Why do people have a hard time grasping the concept that their technical needs might not be the same as someone else's -- perhaps even a lot of other peoples?
- won't stop me from using Windows to save myself the trouble of learning to tweak my OS.
This statement is hilariously ironic. Don't worry -- you won't get the joke. Go back to sleep.I usually don't bother posting to articles that have these many posts already because I just get lost in the noise. However, I thought of something pretty insightful.
Sarcastic news flash: Steve Ballmer thinks the once a toy operating system, Linux is now competition for the Windows line!
Cough.
Ballmer is claming that this toy Operating System is now the top threat to Microsoft... or in other words, there are no real threats to the Microsoft "empire".
Sounds more like an attempt to drum up some response to the fairly recent rattiness of Microsoft's stocks.
Either way, I will continue to love and use GNU/Linux.
do you want a funny rating or have you really not noticed, that it is steven ballmer who said this? and if you dont know: he is the boss of microsoft since bill gates retired
Put three systems in front of a typical user. One running windows, one running linux, one running a Mac. Which do you think they would be least frustrated with in an hour? My dad had a mac and he never used to call me now that he got a PC I do tech support once week with him (he is 72 BTW).
Windows is extremely confusing. Because the default configuration hides the extensions a person can see two or three things in a folder with the same name. This is an abomination in UI design.
"No dad not the white one the yellow one!" Actual quote from me to my dad when trying to explain to him what to double click.
War is necrophilia.
It may have less to do with the "modern OS" bit than it does to do with the "modern API" bit. As in, besides the wonderful UNIXish multitasking/threading/protected memory/etc of mac os x, development is expected to take place in something called cocoa (: yellowbox : nextstep), an extremely, extremely advanced object oriented API which you are expected to develop for in java or [sound of heavenly voices] Objective C.
One would imagine that doing a from-the-ground-up rewrite developing in Objective C in a ***fully*** OO environment would enable/encourage/force you to produce a much, much more clean, elegant, and thus higher-quality product than clumsily trying to interface C or C++ against the somewhat inconsistent oldskool Macintosh Toolbox APIs.
That would be my interpretation, anyway. I think if he meant they were rewriting Office in Carbon rather than Cocoa he'd not have said "specifically".
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
That's a fine point, but I don't necessarily take perfect hardware support as an absolute requirement for "ready for the desktop".
Average users buy their PCs with the OS installed. The computer company won't sell a Linux system unless the hardware is supported under Linux.
Also, "ready for the desktop" also sort of assumes there's *someone* around that's reasonably computer literate. But that's also the case with Windows. I can't count the times computer dolts have asked me to help them with their Windows problems (something I *hate* doing). So is Windows "ready for the desktop"?
And, personally, I've had excellent luck with Linux recognizing hardware. Even the SB Live and G400 and all kinds of ethernet cards.
Well, that's just great.
This can go two ways. Either things will be like Data General in the 70s, where all of the DEC salespeople told their customers how Data General was an awful company with an awful product and stuff. So the clients would make sure to call Data General and see what they had to say before they made their decision. In this case, MS's attacks will merely serve as extra advertising for Linux.
And companies will port their crown jewels to Linux to give them a crowbar to use on MS the next time they negotiate anything.
Or Linux will die. There are a LOT of interpersonal open-source issues that Linux has to deal with. MS has the advantage of writing a single desktop system. Linux has KDE and GNOME, plus various other efforts. Linux has all of the features of Unix, now it needs to innovate and cover new area, and it isn't doing as well at that.
Plus, remember that MS almost got caught with their pants down with that whole Internet thing and they still managed to come out on top. They have been watching the Linux and BeOS developments for a while. The Halloween documents date from 1998. That's over 2 years of examining the Linux crowd's behaviour. That's NOT their behaviour with regards to the 'net, where they got whapped in the ass and needing to make a costly u-turn.
Gentoo Sucks
Mine was stable for a couple of months. Now it crashes pretty regularly. I think the sql server service pack three did it but I can never be sure. Now I have to wipe it and reinstall for the third time.
So far it has been dismal stability on my dell dimension xps700.
War is necrophilia.
Microsoft is not afraid of Linux itself. They are afraid of all the companies who are supporting linux efforts and open source standards. These companies are spending real money on linux. To get the average guy to use Linux, you have to advertise in mainstream media, and that takes cash.
Microsoft will try cut off the money. Make sure you pat your favorite Linux-related companies on the back! Don't let them fall off the wagon!
--
--
Nothing to see here. Mooooove along...
We have for a whole decade, taught people about safe computing, not to take strange things from strange people, etc. We have drummed in the need to read the readme file. Understand what is to be done.
What is MS's new idea? A single binary install file. No readme, no nothing. You don't have a ghost of a chance until the damage is done. And because this is the only choice, people just trust it.
Like, hey, I've seen computers download a file, install software, and reboot. Is that scary or is that scary. And people trust it. Not just your ma and pops, but even savvy sallies.
The SMS is a joy to watch NOT. From a user's point of view, the program appears on the screen, snatches the focus, and then churns away. Then it closes. I call it Screw my System, a title not widely recieved on MS training courses :). Administrators call it Slow Moving Software. Whatever it is, it allows anyone who can hack a SMS package to do all sorts of damage to a network.
Microsoft is hacking the Common User Interface, so that when you try the neat tricks that work in Windows, they crash other systems. The user then gets a negative feeling about the system, and the system is by this, made to appear unstable.
Microsoft is using its lawyers as well. Linux may well have some cover in its GNU and FSF copyleft, but MS may be scouring its patent data.
None the less, I suspect, be very afraid.
What you Linuxers should do is start ferreting up lawyer types and go microsoft on hazardous design. Get a few recalls under way. [This product is capable of causing damage, and shall be recalled.] That's where I think the copyleft crowd should look at. Seriously.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
With computer literacy increasing every day (young kids treat computers just like any other toy), MS is finding it increasingly difficult to dismay Linux (and other OSes). MS has its place too. I personaly think it shouldn't be as large as it is, but say, 30% of the OS market... and I believe it will happen in the nearby future.
"Some people see things as they are, and ask why. I dream things that never were, and ask why not."
Wait a second here...
Linux is the SECOND biggest threat to Microsoft not the TOP threat..
Linuxes strongholds are servers and imbeded computers.. Microsofts stronghold is desktops and workstations..
Linux is expanding into desktops but at a snales pace..
Microsofts break into servers is stagnet due to Linux and Sun and they are dead in the imbeded/PDA market due to Palm and Linux..
But Linux is hardly a sereous threat to Microsofts desktop market...
Basicly Linux is Microsofts second strongest compeditor..
Apples stronghold is in the desktop and aims an servers... this makes Apple Microsofts number one compeditor..
Linux is develuping a sereous stronghold in the imbeded market.. Microsoft was pushed out long before Linux entered.. so Linux is just the last nail in the CE coffen..
Microsoft needs to fake a strong compeditor in the desktop market.. they fake us...
It's believable to the antitrust judges who don't walk into the stores and see nothing but Windows PCs..
Should we stop Microsoft? No.... not this time...
Say "Hay CompUSA see Microsoft says we are the top compeditor.. so stock up some Rebel computers and some units from VA and Penguin... get some pure Linux boxen in here so you can keep up... You don't your compeditors will.. chop chop"
Say "Microsoft knows and Microsoft speaks.. so heed the words and make your software for Linux"
Some times you don't fight the monster...
But be tactful.. know this Apple whos getting hurt so be prepaired to defend Apple as viable platform...
I don't actually exist.
It's been a full fifteen minutes since the original post, and I've already seen many articles bragging about how Linux can't be bought or otherwise made to "go away." Yet the Halloween documents point out how M$ is going to try to smash open-source: not with copyright, but with patents. They will find (or buy $$$) some lousy, overbroad, fundamental patent which is relied upon deep in the kernel, and while that won't dissuade the hobbyist, it will dissuade the system adminstrator and company management. And they'll keep throwing this sand in companies' face each time they consider using Linux in earnest. ("You, the company are responsible for violating our patents, regardless of how open the copyright is", they will say.) I hope I'm wrong. Perhaps smaller, more self-contained systems such as the *BSD might be less vulnerable, but that's another discussion. Marshall
I think most techies are missing the problems associated with "open source" products. 1. Who pays the developer? Are we to understand that our skills and time are worth nothing. 2. If programmers are not benefitting financially, then that usually means students are working the problems. Not to take anything away from students but I'd rather have an experienced, disiplined programmer working on my projects. 3. Accountability. If you screw the code up... who cares you're working for free anyway. 4. Version control. How many different versions of Linux are spinning around out there already? 5. Capitalism. I understand that is the foundation of the Americian economy. America is extremely successful using this model, it encourages competition, ingenuity, research etc..."Open Source" flies in the face of all that is American, it is a backdoor communist attack!
Maybe you were really talking about Warp/LAN Server. I don't think comparing a server OS to a desktop OS is very fair.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Where's the surprise here?
If Ballmer told me that my pants were on fire AND I smelled smoke AND I felt my ass getting warm I still would not believe him. I think that ballmer may somewhere in the depths of his brain have an incling that there is such a thing as truth but I don't think he has ever uttered it.
Take a look at a history of his press releases this man is the biggest liar on the planet.
War is necrophilia.
And what do you think of the numerous pictures of Tux crushing Microsoft? I think I've even seen a few where Gates's head is in the Penguin's jaws..
Yeah, I think the earlier poster is right, it shows that MS has a sense of humor. Big whup.
There's a tidal wave coming their way and they're still trying to empty the water from holes on the beach with a tin pail! If they were, by some diabolical miracle, able to quash Linux tomorrow, it would no more insure their survival than do the quills of a porcupine when it wanders onto a freeway.
"Everything works if you let it" - The Flying Mouse
Only AOL and palm are the only two companies that have managed to beat back MS so far...
But notice that it doesn't stop MS from trying (new CE devices and a big MSN push recently).
MS is very very persistant and has a big war chest and doesn't seem hesitant ot use it to buy what it can't make it self...
Look for MS-LINUX soon. Heck they might buy a distro if they can't compile there own.
Let's replace /etc with something like the proc filessytem that eforces a common tabular record structure to all the files.
That's would seem to be the best of both the single registry and the flat file worlds.
It could even be a stackable style filesystem if it needs to be.
Joe
Joe Batt Solid Design
Cocoa, on the other hand.. cocoa/nextstep is being reimplemented for UNIXlike operating systems in a project called "GNUStep". Go look for it. Large parts of the API are already finished, but it's still buggy and unstable. However, even if this is finished, these will still be simply libraries-- not really anything like Wine. So you'd still need a recompile. Meaning MS would have to purposefully decide to *use* the gnustep libraries *to* port to linux/bsd, something that would be simple to do but which they woud be highly unlikely to do even were the gnustep libraries usable and complete. It would be technically possible for all this to happen, but i don't see it happening unless the GNUStep people make big strides very quickly and the justice department opensources MSOffice (ha!)
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Have you ever noticed that the right wing always talks about the liberal media, while the left wing talks about the corporate-controlled media?
The fact is, there is no such thing as "the media". It's just a bunch of normal people, like geeks or yuppie or even republicans.
There's no conspiracy. Money doesn't change hands. People aren't "bought."
People can be mistaken, misled, stupid, whatever. But there's really no malice or organization behind it. Trust me. I spent 5 years in one of the top 3 IT trade journals.
Microsoft treated me well. I could call up at get any MS software I wanted. If I had problems, I got project leads and then programmers on the line -- within hours. I'm no Microsoft fan, but that kind of treatment has to lead to good press.
So knock off the "buying press" thing. It's not accurate, and it's just another classic head-in-the-sand dodge for why Microsoft gets good press. The reality is much simpler. Think occam's razor.
By the way, I hate ZD. But I know people who work there and write there, and I can guarantee that they may be wrong, misguided, and confused, but they are not on the take. Nobody is; if that got out it would sink both Microsoft and the trade press.
Cheers, and take it easy
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
MS is very desceptive and they do not really see Linux as the real threat. Apple just announced the changes they made to MacOS X after the public beta has been updated and it is pretty amazing. It has full multimedia features and yet has the power of Unix, just like you want for a server. Add ease of use to that system. That is a double threat to both the MS desktop and server market. I realize the 2.4 kernel was also just released, but that has been a long time coming and will not suddenly sweep over user desktops, not as Balmer is suggesting.
Linux with KDE or Gnome is still quite nice, and the system should convert several users, but by saying Linux is the threat is cleverly deceptive. It draws attention away from the MacOS X system.
You may say that people will not be switching to MacOS since they will have to purchase a new computer just for an OS, but as Steve Jobs explained, the computer is now just a centerpiece to the whole digital experience. For $800 you can get an iMac or spend more and get a G4 with a the new standard CD-RW drives while you already spent $600 for that new Canon Powershot digital camera and over $1000 for the digital video camera and scanner. Since the MacOS supports USB these perepherals will work with Windows or the MacOS. They get driver support more readily that Linux does. The Mac will provide a powerful multimedia base for your new tech toys and will have strong driver support to boot. That is the true top threat to MS and Windows.
Still, I would like to see Linux excel as well. But I do not think we should fall for this deception. By pushing more for Linux driver support we will soon see Linux on par with Windows as a desktop system and once average users convert in droves and more OEMs offer to bundle Linux, we will be able to claim Linux as the threat Balmer is now touting.
Don't agree with this line of thought? Visit the Apple website a while and see what they are now offering. Watch the demos and if you can, try out a Mac with the public beta. Also read about Darwin, the Unix base for MacOS X.
Even if you still do not agree, maybe you will get some ideas for your Linux/BSD project.
Brennan Stehling - http://brennan.offwhite.net/blog/
and its not the first time ....
check this out
were you expecting to see a sig here? perhaps you'd rather see the inside of an ambulance!
Microsoft seems to be looking for a way to maintain a steady stream of cash flow. Over the years they've gone from just selling products, to selling a constant stream of upgrades and maintence plans to larger companies, to the .NET plan where they sell you a service and you never even get the illusion of owning a product.
f'n beautiful mr. pen.
The heat from below can burn your eyes out
And if they put it out closed source.. wasn't there this MS boosted organisation dealing with software piracy? Hello BSA..
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
It all depends on what hardware-drivers, software and service packs you have. Even if you have good experiences, doesn't mean that other people share them. Also, if you use your computer for simple things, it'll almost never crash on you. Try using it for low-level development, that's a good benchmark on how stable an OS is. Hint: An OS SHOULDN'T crash whatsoever.
Btw, the former poster didn't really say that Win2K was unstable (he tried though). He said the applications crashed on him..
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Remember though, the point of the "GNU's Not Unix" is the commercial, closed and proprietary nature of the commercial Unixes. "GNU" is Richard "Information Wants to be Free" Stallman's invention. His beef has always been about software that is "owned", regardless of whether that software comes out of Microsoft, IBM, Sun Microsystems, or RedHat.
So... Linux, and in particular the GNU toolset, is NOT the same as Unix, and in many ways, MS is smart in seeing that the threat of Linux is different from the one Unix poses. Unix, in all its commercial flavors, is just "another alternative to Windows", one which competes on much the same grounds of quality, support and marketing.
GNU/Linux, on the other hand, is a completely different approach to the development and distribution of software and even Intellectual Property. This is what has Microsoft scratching its head.
--
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Problem with Linux there are no business partners to intimidate like IBM. God help us I still think Warp is far superior to Winblown. Too bad IBM blinked... more like they ran with their tail between their legs but it made perfect business sense.
-- Ted tsikora@powerusersbbs.com
OS/2 ? IBM screwed themselves with OS/2 when they decided not to support it at ALL, and stop writing drivers for it, and basically let it decompose when they had a userbase that was just about as big as linux was back in the early '95-'97 era. My dad was a die hard OS/2 WARP user, until he finally gave up because IBM just didn't give a crap about it anymore.
At the end of last year at a Microsoft Direct Access briefing (yes, I'm a member, yes I sell and support Microsoft products, yes I make money out of it - cope with it), they had a video intro type thing for Windows 2000 Professional in which they had a female actress kicking the crap out of a guy in a penguin suit with her saying, "Still using Linux, sissy?", plus other little gems of class and character that show Microsoft for who they really are.
The point they have completely missed is that people are not "still" using Linux, more and more people are just starting to use Linux because it's a more and more attractive option.
/* Linus is The One
Your a typical half-assed user. You obviously have a screwed-up installation on a screwed-up system.
Your the kinda of user I make sure we never let near our PC's since you know just enough to be dangerous.
I've been using Win2k since its release with a grand total of 3 crashes that required a reboot.
Win2k is stable, get over it.
Honestly, I don't see what Microsoft can do to permanently render Linux a non-threat, short of
Even if the most paranoid of these "vicious Microsoft attacks" become reality (many of them are quite likely, and in fact I think we've been seeing some of these already), so what?
Worst case: Enterprise and main-stream business world gets so plastered with anti-Linux propoganda that they start believing it. Linux loses most of its hold in the server market. Linux, however, not being devestated by the sudden loss of non-existent consumer dollars, continues to exist, and to be used by all of us who use it as our personal OS and would never believe such propoganda anyway. So Linux doesn't die, and only loses a market in which it has only recently acquired wide-spread notoriety. A year or two down the road, people will have had, um, a year or two to re-examine the accuracy of what they've heard hitherto, being still able to compare words with a still-existant OS. Eventually, Linux regains its market as before. Since Linux can't be "killed", no matter what Microsoft attempts, why would anyone (except Microsoft) have any cause to worry?
Well, there is only one company that I know will now buy into M$'s bull: TechTV.
I've watched it for about half a year now and I don't think I've heard them refer to M$ as Microsoft once. No matter what they are talking about its always something like Microshaft, Moneysoft, etc...
Truly though, the only people who are gonna buy into this is all about of 10 people who are microsoft whores.
And anyways, shouldn't Windows be on Microsoft's threat list? I mean, my god, Win98, well 'nuff said there, we know the rest.
Oh well, nuff rant, Later yall
But I agree, if M$ attacks Linux full force they will hurt themselves. If they use some sneaky and careful tactics, though, they can sabotage the acceptance of Linux by the clueless majority.
heres another story on the same thing:h ives.asp?ArticleID=22871
.brad
http://www.crn.com/Sections/BreakingNews/dailyarc
Drink more tea
organicgreenteas.com
flesh eating ants records
We at Microsoft have always believed there should be a marketplace for innovation and competition in the IT-field. Linux is a threat to this, because it is free. There is no innovation of value going on under Linux. After all, Linux is an attempt to rebuild an operating system that reached the peak of it's popularity in the 70's. And because nobody pays for Linux, there will be no incentive to innovate. We at Microsoft try to make a better operating system and to take care of all your computing needs.
Linux is a threat to free markets and free competition because it's free. Why would anybody pay for Microsoft products when they can get Linux for free? After all, getting something for free sounds good when you consider the short-term benefits. But over time, this will stiffle competition. Everyone will be using Linux, and progress will stop. After all, when nobody pays, where will the money for innovation come from? If you worry about the long-term IT strategy for your company, you should go with Microsoft. Microsoft stands for innovation and competition in a free marketplace.
Oh, and remember, this was an attempt at sarcasm, so before you flame me, remember that this was an attempt at visualizing future Microsoft marketing strategies, not my personal opinion.
You just wait and see.
And it will start out really nice, then it will start getting ports back from 2000, and the dependencies on MS libraries will increase. Games too; Microsoft knows programmers love 'em.
These libraries and games will run on Linux too, of course, but will be in binary form. Once they become ubiquitous, they will slow down the updates to the 'free' versions.
Those of us who run 100% free software needn't worry too much. The rest of us... well, you loaded the gun that shot you.
*sheeh*
...
Who in the world really cares what Ballmer thinks are threats to microsoft? Okay thats a bad question. Who should really care? Microsoft shareholders? Microsoft VARs? MCSEs?
Slashdot needs to grow up. Its about time to stop fueling these petty discussions. Nothing of merit ever comes out of them except a lot of AD impressions and a lot of people making asses of themselves (like this post Im making). I see the editors of slashdot go on weekly crusades against one innane thing or the other, or even better call for protests of sites. Well if you are adult enough to call for such actions you should be adult enough to not keep pushing this crap along.
... rant over
--- I do not moderate.
While I do agree that Linux is the biggest threat to MS, that's not saying much. While on the server front, Linux has a fairly easy trip to the top, the desktop market will be a much harder road.
/etc and replace it with something sane.
/usr, /home/_username_, /usr/bin, /usr/lib, /lib, /opt, /usr/local/*, ad nauseum, I doubt he could handle it. I barely can. (Of course I'm just terribly pampered by /boot/apps and /boot/home/config/lib)
/etc, in comes a nice, organized config structure. Out goes LinuxConf, MandrakeConf, RedHatConf, DebianConf, ad-nauseam (yea, I'm making these up, but you get the idea ;) and in comes UnifiedConf. Out goes modules.conf, samba.conf, XFree86Config, etc, and in comes a unified text file format. Out goes ipconfig and friends entirely. Use text files or use programs, but choose one for god sakes. Well, you get the idea.
A) Linux still hasn't proven itself on the performance front. Even after several months, the Linux NVIDIA drivers are noticably lower in performance than their Windows counterparts. This happens even at low resolutions where the bitblit thing is not an issue. And with DirectX 8 and, later, Whistler promising huge increases in 3D performance, I don't know how Linux will deliver. Of course, MS could be overinflating their performance claims, but if NT4 and DirectX7 (which essentially made DX faster and more featureful than OpenGL) are any hint, MS *can* make good products, it just depends on if there is the motivation. When you add mediocre 3D performance to the slow desktops (in comparison to Win2K's, anyway) and high memory use (same as Win2K) then you have little reason to use Linux if you're looking for (desktop) performance.
B) Linux's stability won't play much of a part in this. Win2K is very stable, to the point where the average user (meaning one that shuts down at least once a week) won't be able to tell the difference.
C) Linux is still hard to use, and problematiclly, disunified. MS has been taking more and more steps to make configuration and control of Windows more "sane." Linux has been taking more steps in the other direction, especially with new distro like Mandrake that introduce prorietory config scripts. Adding hardware in Linux is not the simple (plug the hardware and the disk in) that it is with Win2K, and doing anything non trivial (meaning intermediate level use) is decidedly difficult. While the desktops are more or less easy enough to use, the system itself needs major retooling. Here are the problems I see
1) Confusing configuration. Get rid of
2) Stupid directory structure. My dad can handle installing programs, but with the mess of
3) Make the system cohesive. Get back to the UNIX roots. You know how UNIX treats *everything* as a file? You know how all UNIX console apps work together in a nice harmony of streams and pipes? You know how UNIX programs can be chained together to do complex work? You know how UNIX (well, BSD one's anyway) tools have more or less the same interface? Starting to get the idea? That means out go GnomeAPI and KDE-API and in comes Unified-Linux-Desktop-API (with GNOME and KDE serving as implementations) Out goes
Sadly, I enumerate all of these EVERY time an article like this comes out, and while everybody screams about how Linux has come so far, all I see are more propriatory configuration files, more stupid config programs, and a more fragmented set of APIs. Disgusting...
BTW> Don't get the idea that I don't like Linux. I really do. I just can't stand to use it.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I'm pretty sure the main reason that Zdnet likes MS stuff so much (apart from all that ad revenue) is that they're not very technical and don't mind having Microsoft tell them how they should work. However, Microsoft has been known to pay reporters for good press and start up fake grass roots movements in the past. Try searching google on "astroturf" and "microsoft" and you'll get some historical references. Possibly the most amusing example of this was the 1994 COMEDEX in Atlanta, where I and a good bunch of Team OS/2 members showed up and ran across "Team Microsoft" -- Apparently Microsoft employees trying to do the same thing we were. We were the ones who got the press, though.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
...they not only gave away a product for free, they had an incentive to respond to user feedback, to accelerate the development process, and to make a decent product.
Look at IE5.
This might have a positive impact.
And no, I am not sympathetic to M$, in fact I am leaving Wintel for MacOS.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Linus, Alan Cox, or Richard Stallman ought to make a public statement saying that Microsoft poses absoluetly no threat to the Linux project. =) Besides, isn't this kinda like the oil industry saying that greenpeace is their top threat?
-3Suns
~~~~
The Revolution will be Slashdotted
I'm sure Mickeysoft is ready to load the newsgroups up with disgruntled Linux users extolling the merits of Windows. It worked for OS/2.
-- Ted tsikora@powerusersbbs.com
Windows is pretty good for getting a system up and running quickly - but I find that the annoying quirks live on long after the benefits are taken for granted - plus there's the built in system of you have to pay a fee for about any kind of useful add on and upgrades. For example, trying to add Internet mail to an Outlook 2K client yesterday, it wanted the install CD, so I back out, drive over a couple of miles and get the CD, come back, put it in, and this time it completes w/o even hitting the CD. Just little crap like that eventually drives you to drink, plus it's always a nail biting experience w/ mission critical apps and demos worrying that some 'issue' is going to show up at the wrong time. Msft is some kind of madness pretending to act logically. I have yet to run into any Msft product that doesn't come w/ some little quirk, bug, oddity that makes the lay user look at ME, the McSE, and ask, why did it do that? And all I can do is say, "That's Msft!" and they still think it's something I'm not doing right because Msft is worth billions and must be good, ergo it's the installer/admin's fault.
Anyway, after getting a useable business system up and running to fulfill their real needs, I have time to roll out the Linux servers and slowly add the FREE SERVICES like a good sendmail or HP Openmail setup, Apache, SAMBA, etc, and that's where I really earn my pay as the client doesn't have to keep paying license fees, they get real benefits, I get systems I know and trust and have confidence in being able to solve ANY problem with, instead of just holding a binary you can't do anything with other than workaround or wait for a patch that may or may not come, depending on Msft business plans.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I think M$ is building up linux on purpose so it will look like there is legitimate competition out there, showing that they are not a monopoly.
Of course, they want the minimum competition that will keep the trustbusters off their backs. And sadly Linux is perfect for this as it is much discussed, much hyped, but unlikely to significantly eat into their desktop market any time soon.
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think that's true. MS can make their own Linux distro
with their own binary libraries if they want. They can also port
the Office suite to Linux with binary libraries. Hell, they can even use their Install Wizard to replace GPL'd libraries with their own. How many Joe Sixpacks would notice that?
-- Cheers!
ALL WEB BROWSERS DO NOT RUN ON WINDOWS. Konqueror, lynx.
Most software? nope, and neither does any operating system. I think Linux has a bigger base of software than Windows does. I run binarys from OSF/1, DigitalUnix and whatever compaq is calling it now on Alpha. Similar things on other platforms. Plus, lots of windows applications run under Linux.
Easy to use GUI? Oh, the blue screen thing? No, really, twm is MUCH easier to learn, as are several other window managers.
I agree that the US is rather Socialist, in some respects, but that is not MS's problem. MS's problem is that they do not understand how their own operating system works. See the DOS code left in ME because they are not sure they can remove it without killing the os. Windows has gotten moldy. Linux can just rewrite the code, because it is understandable (even a little to me), and not some huge monolithic thing. Linux is basicly free, and improving, Windows costs a lot and has not really changed since 1995, and any changes are made with a "i hope this works" attitude.
Please refrain from posting unless you look at least a little bit outside your tiny world.
M$ has never made an honest statement, so if they're acknowledging that Linux is a threat, do they *really* mean that it's *no longer* a threat? Shouldn't we be concerned?
But maybe they know that we know and they're just messing with us... but...
My head hurts.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
If Microsoft comes out with its own distribution of Linux, we're doomed.
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn. Or a juggernaut.
I know you're really excited about Linux, but sometimes it's important to see the problem for your critic's perspective:
I've long predicted that in the next recession, Linux use will grow by leaps and bounds. That's because licensing issues will be more important to people, and companies will be looking for more ways to save money.
That would be nice, but I think it's pretty optimistic. The difference is you see Windows as an acceptable (and in reality, a preferred) casualty. Many business and IT types do not. For them, ditching Windows for Linux to save money would be the equivalent of switching from light bulbs to candles because the electric bill is too high. Many people think of Windows as an essential part of what a PC is.
The best part is -- there's nothing MS can do about Linux! They can try FUD, but enough people know the truth by now to make it really effective.
If there's one thing that Microsoft has taught us, it's that FUD does, in fact, work with a significant quantity of the population.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
"I think you have to rate competitors that threaten your core higher than you rate competitors where you're trying to take from them," Ballmer said.
What the fsck is that supposed to mean??
--
This isn't a boxing match.
This isn't some kind of a game.
This is technology and operating systems, the instruction that runs computers and their application all around the world.
Microsoft isn't a battleship. It doesn't attack. It is just business. And they are corporation. They don't have mind.
As far as consciousness, it all comes down to the thousands of software engineers, quality assurance members, marketers, sales reps, accountants, lawyers, secretaries, graphic designers, animators, reasearch teams, computer scientists, and ganitors, executives, and administrators---each of them in their office doing their own thing that is described on their job description, wondering why the heck you care so much about what Balmer said to some press people.
OS/2 wasn't "beat". Its just not used that much any more. That's okay. No animals were harmed.
If GNU/Linux serves your needs right now, then why would you stop using it? Will GNU/Linux stop functioning somehow because of Microsoft "attacking" it? No, of course not.
You slashdotters are too fearful. Don't worry, there is no war. No one has sunk your battleship.
After all, it'll be fully compatible with Microsoft Office, which, whoops, requires a binary only library that only ships with MSLinux. And besides, this next gen of Linux users wouldn't be geeks, they'd be the current generation of Windows users, and they wouldn't even know what was different. They'd just think it's cool that Windows 2003 seemed really stable.
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
Many observers consider Linux 2.4, which was released late last week, to be a much-improved operating system kernel that can compete more aggressively against Windows 2000 and Unix in the enterprise market.
There's a reason Amazon and Ebay don't run Windows NT/2000 on the backend, and it's because NT/2000 virtually never crash if spoonfed properly... and that isn't good enough! Datacenter and mission-critical backends need something that NEVER crashes, PERIOD!
That's why Linux/*NIX are the thorns in Microsoft's side, and will continue to be until Microsoft cleans up the shoestring and Scotch® tape that holds together its operating systems.
--
Sheesh do I get tired of the anti-MS whining. Linux will or will not succeed compared to Windows based on the mass market appeal Linux can gain in the coming few years. Microsoft will market their product as any company does, and if there are weak points in Linux (and there are) to be exploited in their marketing efforts, then of course they're going to use them. A company has to make money!!
it's ok because linux is like a house infested with cockroaches. sure he can squish the corel roach. it's a relatively small one. now that big mutated thing in the corner giving balmer the bird that's star office :). it has koffice/gnumeric/etc running around at its feet.
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
not really, if M$ makes their own distro for linux it would have to follow GPL... so any modifications would be public for other disto's to use... might actually be good for the community
MS should fear itself. MS will dig its own grave! we are already seeing evidence of it.
Nah, that's not the way I see it. The way I see it, Microsoft regards a threat just like the Borg. At first, they are oblivious. But when the enemy makes the first visible threat to Microsoft (most notably, decent USB support in 2.4), they react. Slowly, but surely, they trudge up to their enemy and disable them at first. Then they assimilate them. For instance, where's the Hosts file in Windows NT? Right, in c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts by default, along with lmhosts, networks, protocol, and services. Also, remember that famous "look and feel" lawsuit brought up by Apple? That was assimilation as well (with a few changes to prevent infringement), albeit a noble act of assimilation to enhance the UI of Windows.
Either way, Microsoft's message to Linux users and programmers (and to Linus Torvalds himself) is clear: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
RealBASIC's very nice. But, like Kylix, unless they're shipping it for Linux, I can't really use it, now can I?
Until that time, I'll resort to doing C/C++ coding or quick knock-offs with XBasic.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Microsoft fears Linux now because it can't squish out the competition [Linux] by buying it. The classical tactics that M$ has used in the past to beat the competition simply won't work. And even if they tried something, you can bet the DOJ is watching M$ really closely.
It [Linux] is a big threat because they can only fight it in the technical arena, period. That is what M$ fears...
I can't beleive that you are naive enough to take Ballmer at his word. The man is not going to announce that Linux is their greatest threat and then turn around and authorize dirty tricks, FUD and other slippery maneuvers. The folks at the top of Microsoft are world-class strategists. An NBA player doesn't tell his opponent what he is doing - he fakes, he jumps, he slips by him. Ballmer is no different. The funny thing about working with geeks is that they actually believe what they hear, even if it is from their opponent. C'mon!
... they do with all the other distributions (Mandrake, Debian, RedHat, etc).
Thus, M$Linux won't make any money for Microsoft... So there's no motivation to do it.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I hate to say this, but you are wrong. Ignorance is a threat to Linux. Lack of vision is a threat to Linux, don't tell my mother to go get a vision or write code. As time goes on, the number of developers will become smaller while the users become larger, thus it is fairly important that by that time, the linux community has improved it's development process. (read "the emperor has no clothes" argument on the kernel dev list)
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
"As IBM found with OS/2, once MS percieves you as a threat, they attack like a rabid pit bull. I expect we'll see a lot more negative Linux press on zdnet, reporters paid to laud Windows and slam UNIX, fake grass roots movements, and all the other favorite MS tricks." Well, I'm not that quite that paranoid, but I'll be keping my eyes open"
:)...
I think negative media will not effect Linux as much as it did OS2. It's very easy to target a product of a single company and push it under the rug by trying to bring down profits. Since Linux is open source and many many companies distribute it targeting them all will be very difficult. Attacking linux as a whole will still not remove the core linux users and if one company was to actually have problems there would be 7 more to replace it. Also unlike OS2 linux is free. I don't think people will have the same problem of trying to decide do I want to spend $200 on OS2 or $200 on winXX with linux. Instead it will be, I'm might download Mandrake(it's just an example don't get huffy cause it isn't your favorite distro) and try that Linux thing... won't hurt since it's free... It's hard for people to turn down free
And don't forget about all the free marketing Linux gets. How many of you have participated in an install fest with your local LUG. Generally I've noticed a very good turn out for all the ones I've attended. The local lug here also does community service here by setting up computer systems/networks using linux for nonprofit organizations. That's a lot of publicity for free.
In the long run Linux will be very difficult, even for Micro$oft to sweep under the rug.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
Linux is still hard to use, and problematiclly, disunified. [...] While the desktops are more or less easy enough to use, the system itself needs major retooling. Here are the problems I see
/Applications, /System, /Users, and /Developer. The BSD directories like /etc are still there, but they are hidden from the GUI and the user is not expected to interact with them. They are mostly there for running BSD apps. There are a few different APIs available (Carbon, Cocoa, Java), but all native apps use the same base application services for rendering and such.
Interesting, for virtually every shortcoming you mention, Apple is working to address in Mac OS X. This isn't purely a OSX evangelist session (I'll save that for later). But perhaps rather that working so hard to emulate Windows, maybe Linux developers should look towards OSX for inspiration (though stopping short of making exact clones of Aqua). From a system design perspective, Linux is far more similar to Mac OS X than to Windows.
Apple has already solved a lot of the problems Linux distros are struggling with. Mac OS X stores a substantial amount of configuration information in NetInfo, a network-distributed database. This software is open sourced, incidentally. The remaining config information is stored in XML files in both the user's home directory and in system directories. Frameworks and Bundles greatly simplify software development and distribution. XML files (with DTDs defined by Apple) are used to store meta information about applications such as icons, localization information, and architecture-specific settings.
Most of the many directories are named normal things like
And to top it all off, the installation process is extremely easy and swift. Beats the pants off a Windows install. Don't be fooled by the casual appearance of Aqua. This is a brilliantly designed operating system, both in terms of architecture and interface.
Apple is even making strides in making unix-based server functionality accessible to just about anyone. I suggest taking a look at the completely revamped version of Mac OS X Server which will be available this spring. I've used things like Linuxconf before, and it just can't hold a candle to the first-hand demos of this new version of OSX Server I saw at Macworld Expo.
And in case anybody thinks I'm some sort of Mac bigot, please note that my servers currently run Linux, and I've been using various forms of Unix for around 6 years, including Solaris, SunOS and FreeBSD.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Since when is unix a phenomenon? Linux, maybe... but unix has been around almost 20 years longer then Windows?
On another note, if we want to see a version of Microsoft Linux one day, why don't we all just go out and buy a few shares of Microsoft stock? Slowly but surely, Microsoft will be ours... {evil grin}
-MR
-Michael Roy Some people are like Slinkies. Not really useful, but you can't help smiling when you see one tumble down
Open Source Software WILL make MS change their entire business model -- or die. And sooner that most people think.
I've long predicted that in the next recession, Linux use will grow by leaps and bounds. That's because licensing issues will be more important to people, and companies will be looking for more ways to save money. With OSS, no longer will companies need to pay exorbitant amounts of money to stay in the Windows/Office loop.
And the recession seems to be coming -- just after KDE2 and Helix GNOME, Nautilus, etc. are finished, and Star Office is made GPL'd, with its excellent Office interoperability. Just when Linux is REALLY ready for the desktop. And yes, with a few exceptions that will soon be rectified, Linux is ready for the desktop.
The best part is -- there's nothing MS can do about Linux! They can try FUD, but enough people know the truth by now to make it really effective.
*sheeh*
Who in the world really cares what Ballmer thinks are threats to microsoft? Okay thats a bad question. Who should really care?
Microsoft shareholders? Microsoft VARs? MCSEs?
Slashdot needs to grow up. Its about time to stop fueling these petty discussions. Nothing of merit ever comes out of them except a lot of AD impressions and a lot of people making asses of themselves (like this post Im making). I see the editors of slashdot go on weekly crusades against one innane thing or the other, or even better call for protests of sites. Well if you are adult enough to call for such actions you should be adult enough to not keep pushing this crap along.
(try #2)
--- I do not moderate.
Most of those people that run windows machines either at home or at work deserve to run windows... Those people are allowed to run windows, are allowed to like windows, and can try and convince me that windows is the superior OS all they want...
These are the people that I dont have to worry about and the people that stay out of way... They can stay content with their PC's for as long as they want. As long as they stay off my Unix Servers/Workstations...
This is not a flame towards Windows Users as I have come across many intelligent people that just dont want to deal with running an environment that is different from what they have to support...
As for which is the superior OS, Windows has been a gaming platform for a number of years... Nobody can deny that one... In fact, DirectX was probably one of the coolest things to come along until OpenGL. With the article posted a week ago about the fancy startup logo for Linux... I think that its all a part of getting the majority to accept something that they dont have to understand... I do wish they would start to make a Linux Gaming platform... Turn off everything that is not needed for gaming and network and tune it out for some awesome gaming...
just my 2cents worth...
Sarcasm is the recourse of a weak mind...
--
You've got your analogy of "Japanese Car Effect" all wrong. The early Japanese import cars were absolutely awful. Cheap little rattletraps that were always in the shop and had a very short lifespan (tell me, when did you last see a vintage Datsun?) Their only buyers were those who couldn't afford a Detroit-made car.
The consumers didn't start flocking to Japanese cars until the Japanese auto makers pulled their heads outta their asses and decided to make a truly competitive product, that was actually as good as Detroit's product.
The Detroit mfgs didn't pay any attention to the fact that the formerly-crap Japanese cars had caught up to Detroit's quality and were in the process of surpassing them; they just assumed that since the early Japanese cars were crap by anyone's standards, they current ones must still be.
The real point is, if you assume your crap-quality competition is going to stay crap-quality forever, that assumption might just bite you in the ass.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Its only 7:30 am and I have already gone the whole span of emotions that I am capable of experiencing.... (mildly amused to REALLY REALLY PISSED)... The day starts our with a health dose of /. Just like any other morning. I find an article called "Ballmer: Linux Is Top Threat To Windows". I click on this and begin to read. It makes Michael midly amused. See link:
http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20010110S0006
I should say that at least MOST of the article makes me happy. Except for one thing. There is mention that Corel might be announcing that they are dumping their linux line. Remember that money that was invested in Corel by M$. This also leads me to another article:
http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/INV20001117S0005
Now let's be realistic. I don't think that anyone will argue that the loss of the Corel Linux distro will be of any big loss to anyone. However Corel is not an OS company. (Duh) They are an applications company. And frankly, I was very happy to see a mainstream (although one with less market share) app company create apps for linux that really have been pretty good! WordPerfect for linux for example is a favorite among many linux users. (Like me) And that applications base was growing. Applications that had the same basic look and feel of the Windows counterparts. The same features. The same file formats with out converters or filters. If linux is going to succeed, their will need to be more apps like this!!!
I have always felt that the Mac's biggest problem was a lack of such applications. Now it looks like M$ is going to buy the same problem for the Linux OS. If Corel wants to dump its os... Fine... I doubt any one will miss it. But I sure hope that they stay the course with the applications. (As well as other companies following suite.)
You're right!
I don't think he knows how to use computers... or he hasn't been using right drivers for his install of Win2k
I've been using Win2k for nearly a year now (wow, has it been out for a year already?), and I don't recall explorer crashing at all. Actually, I don't recall Win2k crashing at all... but of course except when:
So if you were to run some Microsoft OS, use Win2k (and please stay away from WinME!).
One more thing about these all these OS wars and how we're all acting like kids saying, "My OS is better than yours!" This has been said over and over. Use whatever that fits you. Deal with its problems. Don't like it, try another. No one is holding you back.
I'm fine with what OS I'm using (Win2k for workstation, FreeBSD for server). My choice, my problems. Have a nice day :)
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Neafevoc
I wonder if the fact that microsoft owns part of apple, which makes osx has any impact on things.
Microsoft already has some control over a potential competitor based on BSD.
Without getting into a flame war about the merits of BSD vs Linux, does this mean anything? I wouldn't have a clue. Sure someone else could shed some more light on it...
how about no. How bout not enforcing any common structure, but have a standard. if a program requires some more complicated configuration files it can do that... sendmail.cf?
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
If you are in a true It department and not just a support department this is very wrong. Every day I am asked for solutions and what I reccomend. some time's It's NT but more and more it has been Linux (Redhat in particular as the GM has stock in it), the solution get's in place, works, and we thrive. IT department costs have dropped steadily and productivity has shot through the roof. Why? I can honestly say because of the replacement of NT with Linux in key locations. and management knows this. (I let them know every day..)
Linux can do things that NT can never do (or is so danged difficult it isn't worth it) and that is the bottom line. It's not X is better than Y so NYAH! it's... "X works and Y didn't, let's use X."
simple sweet and it scares Microsoft.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It's not Slashwin. It's \. That's Backslash-Dot. Accurate in both the fact that it uses Windows semantics and in the direction it's existance would probably take the industry.
Standard Embrace, Extend, Extinguish philosophy. Now their real challenge is getting someone who codes _worse_ than Taco to write it.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
If by 'free' you mean zero-price, then yes, that may be true. But I would have a heart-attack from surprise if Microsoft ever releases anything that is truely free (as in speech)...
While having the source is certainly useful for self-support, there's also the crucial point of what I'm free to do with the source. Again, I'd be extremely surprised to ever see Microsoft respect my freedom by getting involved in free software.
As such, they have long ceased to have my support, and as a result, I don't need theirs.
Where the value of X-Mailer: is the true measure of a man...
The only area where I see MS finds Linux as a thread is in the Server market. In fact, Linux is a thread to *any* OS in this segment.
/. readers to get out of Ballmer's claims, is to ask (and answer) the question: when will Linux be a thread to MS (or any other OS) from the client end and at the home market?
What I would like
Frankly, I don't see that is happening any time soon, not even by 2005. Do you?
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
That's doubtful, as it would be based on the Cocoa and Aqua APIs. Unless those are ported to Linux, which is even more doubtful :-)
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
My PC has a 3 year warranty, less problems, cost half as much, and is cheaper to upgrade than my unstable G3 and broken Apple Monitor that I just paid $325 to fix after it broke a month out of warranty. (there is no Apple Care for just a monitor, and at premium prices why should I have to buy it). (I fixed it because the new monitors are for G4's only according to Apple's site).
Yep, OS X and Apple hardware is just money down the drain. Now, Redhat 7, easy to install, configure and run, now that's an OS!
Hey, you think your house is cool?
you forgot:
stole scandisk from norton utilities 'ndd'
stole defrag from norton utilities 'speedisk'
stole doublespace from stacker
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
When I first heard this in the news a while back, I exhaled deeply and thought:
- Fsck, this doesn't help Linux...
- Wow, Corel must be pretty desperate!
- I hope Corel can get back in the black soon.
Then I thought some more, and I realized it was Microsoft's idea all along to walk up to Corel and say "You're hurting, and we can help you... if you help us."This indeed doesn't help Linux's penetration of the desktop market, but many people (myself included) feel that Linux isn't ready for the desktop of Joe Average User anyway.
So where am I going with all this? Well, Microsoft has only set back Linux on the desktop... not in the server room. That's where all the money goes (in licensing and whatnot), and their $150-million expenditure has done absolutely nothing to halt the adoption of Linux in the server room, which is where it really counts, IMO...
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
This resulted in a lot of snide remarks and one-upsmanship from the Linux advocates. At the time, OS/2 and Linux were a close match (and are still somewhat competetive depending on what you want). The Linux guys finally won the debate with one simple point: no matter how much I (or Team OS/2) loved OS/2, it was IBMs decision to promote it, improve it or continue it. As long as there is one person who really wants to use Linux, Linux will be alive.
The only way Microsoft can threaten Linux is to put out a product so great that people will be willing to pay for it rather than get something free. In addition, Microsoft has to support it so well that people don't feel like they need to source so they can support it themselves. If that happened, we'd all be happy, but I expect it these events will occur right after the release of OS/2 Warp version 6 with accompanying Super Bowl ads.
The real issue is whether or not we get to use Linux at our "real" jobs, which is increasingly the case. That's something that needs to be fought for and counts on market share, etc.
Linux being a threat to Micros~1 is PR BS to throw off the DOJ, just nother tool in the attempt to avert the breakup.
I know a lot of computer semi-literate people who have never heard of Linux, BSD, or any other technology that Micros~1 doesn't want them to know about. With a PR blitz, they will go from not knowing anything about Linux to knowing that it is BAD.
I remember a friend who got angry with me after I explained what Linux was to him. He got a confused look on his face and said "Why would anyone want an operating system that isn't from Microsoft ?!"
As if I had suggested that pehaps there wasn't a God...
This is the face of the average computer user. They LIKE AOL, think Windows Me works great, and have never heard of souce code.
Putting on Aluminized Suit in preparation for the flames
I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords