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Windows in 2020
sasha328 writes: "I came across this article on LA Times while I was reading the LinuxToday news site. It is very funny, and points out the in layman's language, the problem with homogeneity in computer OSes. Well worth reading."
You're right about the blind MS bashing -- it's idiotic. Linux is not better than Windows, and Windows is not better than Linux. It's all a matter of what you want to do, and what your personal preferences are.
Homogeny is bad no matter what system it is. There are a few reasons for this. First of all, all the computers running the same OS are potentially vounerable to the same exploits -- whether than OS be Windows, Linux, BSD, Mac, BeOS, Solaris, IRIX, HP-UX, OS/2... you get the idea.
The reason people tend not to realize, though, is that some people have different preferences! Personally, having used Linux for three years, I have decided that I like Win2k better. I am guessing that many people here would disagree with me on that. I don't care, and neither should they. You want to use Linux, use Linux. Fine with me. But I want to use Win2k.
The thing is, the more people use one system, the harder it is for other people to use other systems. If everyone used Win2k except for Linus Torvalds himself, he'd probably have a hard time finding software to run on Linux. If everyone ran Linux except for Bill Gates, he'd have a tough time finding software that ran on Windows. Homogeneity encourages software developers to write non-portable code.
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When you write software that isn't portable, you are limiting you users' freedom of choice of operating system. This is bad, no matter what system you are writing for.
I talked to a guy recently who was writing a free (open source, I think) 3D modeller. He was complaining about getting Direct3D and MFC to work together, so I suggested that he use a cross-platform toolkit and OpenGL. That way, I said, his code would be portable. He told me of his personal distaste for Unix, and that he didn't think there was any value in porting his software to it.
I was shocked. I'm sure many of you were, too. But then, how many of you have written non-portable software for Linux? You probably figured Windows sucks, and there was no reason to support it. If so, you were no better than that guy.
Wonderful platforms like BeOS are suffering because people won't write portable code; there is a serious lack of good software for any OS other than Windows, Mac, and Linux (with a few Unix's managing to get easy ports of the Linux stuff). All because people seem to think that there is no reason to support any platform other than their OS of choice.
Sad, isn't it?
Now, being open source does NOT automatically make your software portable! If you use POSIX system calls all over your code (and I'd hate to see your code if you do), porting the thing to Windows would probably be harder than simply re-writing the damned thing from scratch. You must consider portability from the beginning!
I'm not saying that you should personally port your software to every known OS -- that would be impossible -- but make sure you write it in such a way that it can be easily ported. Use portable libraries, and abstract away any system calls you need to make. Then, port it to as many platforms as you have available. If your software is open source, you can rely on the users of the target OS to port your program, provided that you have written it properly. If your software is closed source, you will probably find that porting to alternative OS's is fairly cheap and, in many cases, well worth the money -- again, if your code was written to be portable. Just, please, don't force your users to use *your* preferred OS! Give them a choice!
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One thing I noticed is that the whole "homogeny" thing is based around the fact that Windows is the only operating system.
Isn't that pretty much true right now (and for the past 5 years)?
In short, no. If you take all the computers in the world and worked out what percentage are Intel based you get a figure less than 0.2% - of those, maybe 80% are running Windows.
The problem is what you identify as a computer and as an OS. The article discusses traffic lights, shavers, etc. and these are examples of embedded systems. An electric shaver may have a very simple embedded system in there, bordering on an OS. A traffic light system has something a bit more complicated. Your video recorder or DVD doesn't need anything particularly fancy, but still has something bordering on an OS in there. Same goes with your car's engine management, your burglar alarm, your microwave, etc... Just because almost every desktop you see has Windows running on it, doesn't mean every computer in the world runs it - far from it in fact...
This article is talking about the day when all those things are running some version of Windows. As somebody who studied Software Engineering and therefore embedded systems at Uni (although now I work in ISP as it's more interesting), I suspect that day will take some time to get here, and Linux is already in the lead - how many embedded Linux systems are there out there in comparison to Windows?
As soon as I am no longer able to use Win2k and force to upgrade to the next Microsoft Operating System will be the day I move to Linux.
Right now Win2k is perfect for me. It's stable, fast and easy to use. Now from my point of view I look back to what I was using just a few months ago. I was using Win98 because of motherboard issues with Win2k. At the time I was in no position to go from Win98 to Linux because I didn't have the time to learn everything again. I have toyed around with Linux in the past, but not fully because I needed a system right then and there I could fully use to my knowledge. Now anyways, I look back to Win98 and I see hell. Unstable, buggy and just a general annoyance. I look to the future and I see WinXP. I don't like the idea of my operating system phoning home or disabling my system if I move my hardware around too much because it invades my privacy. I have other quarrels, but I just want to basically point out my reasoning.
To sum it up, Win2k does everything I want. Going back to Win98 isn't an option, going forward to WinXP is a definate no-no.
As soon as Win2k can no longer function for me, that is the day I move to Linux.
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