Slashdot Mirror
What's up with Lindows?
A reader writes "In this editorial at DesktopLinux.com, commentator Malcolm Dean questions whether Lindows is any sort of linux at all, and suggests that the world might actually be better off without yet another proprietary/commercial Windows wannabe (that runs Windows apps, no less). Dean asks how it is possible that, as Lindows.com founder Michael Robertson manages to claims in his latest newsletter, Lindows' ten million lines of code include a Windows Compatibility Module that somehow works better than anything else available today. "Has Mr. Robertson's team accomplished in a few months what took WINE years?" Where is the substance to back the hype? Besides, what if Lindows does succeed: do we really want to perpetuate the use of Windows software on a linux platform?"
How does this relate to the Wine project? Is there any chance of Lindows ever releasing any code back to them?
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
The problem of Microsoft's monopoly will not be solved by making Windows emulating layers over Linux. Their monopoly is based on the "double" monopoly they have on Office and on Windows. If Office runs on Lindows or on Wine, you can trust Microsoft will find ways to make it runeable only on Windows, as complete compatibility is unpossible with all the undocumented features there is in Windows. IMHO the only way to break Microsoft's Monopoly is to break it on the 'Office' Apps, not on the OS layer.
Why would anybody want to be able to run fewer programs than there was the potential for? There are thousands of extremely useful Windows programs out there (believe it or not, it's true!) and being able to run them on Linux can only be a good thing.
Programs are tools. Why would anybody choose to limit the amount of tools in their toolkit, when some of the forsaken tools could help them get their job finished much earlier?
Good luck to those who would add to the functionality of Linux!
If something isnt broke, why fix it?
Its not that people dont care, they dont know any better.They arent knowledgeable enough to know theres something better than windows better than IE, and so on and so forth.
They use AOL because they believe AOL IS the internet, not a client to access it.
They use Microsoft Windows because they believe Windows IS the computer, and that theres nothing else to use.
You see, if people arent given a chance to choose in a store when they go to buy their computer, they automatically assume that because Windows is all thats being sold, that Windows is all there is.
Proof- Not so long ago, people believe that in order to buy a PC, you had to buy an Intel Pentium, people even called PCs Intel Boxes, or Pentiums. When a person wanted to buy a Video Card before Nvidia arrived, People went for a Voodoo, not because Voodoo was the only card but because thats all that people saw in the stores, sure there were other cards but what card did all games seem to support? The Voodoo cards.
Sure theres always been choice, but if every corperation, every store, everywhere you go, you dont see any choice, you just see one product, eventually in your mind thats it, theres nothing else to choose from. After years of only computers packed with Windows, it will be quite a shock to see a computer packed with Lindows, but if Lindows can prove to the user that its better than Windows,
Like Nvidia beat Vodooo, and AMD beat Intel, Lindows may beat Windows.
However, IF Microsoft forces OEMs to only use Windows from Microsoft, and people like Dell dont even sell you a computer with anything else, well, what do you expect to happen here?
I'm happy to see Lindows stand up to Microsoft and give them serious competition, the problem with OS2 is, it wasnt competition at all, it actually helped sell Microsoft Windows because OS2 sat in the backround, no OEM sold OS2 computers, not even IBM the makers of OS2 sold OS2 on their own Machines.
Just like Mozilla and Netscape cant catch up to IE because AOL wont use Netscapes browser on their own software.
So what do you expect to happen when Linux users dont support Lindows?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Wroot
I'm not sure why your posting was rated as "funny," because it's right on the money.
Take my mother. (Please! No, not really, but I couldn't resist.) A few years back, she wanted a computer. I, being the evil scum that I am, concluded that she would do better on the Mac than on Windows 95. I was right. She's had a couple of PowerBooks. She does a lot. She uses email (not through AOL), can get to the web, does finances on Quicken, writes up test papers and letters, manages addresses, and uses the spreadsheet. She is, if anything, above average as a home user. Every time I visit her, she has questions for me, usually trivial matters, and she's very afraid of making changes. (I bought her a Palm, and she was afraid to synchronize it, because she didn't want to "break anything.")
So, a few months ago she calls to say that some of her games aren't working. A conversation like the following ensues:
I: What changed?
She: I had to upgrade Quicken.
I: Just Quicken? Was there anything else?
She: Yeah, I had to get another number.
I: Another number?
She: Yeah, wait a minute. Here it is. 9.1.
I: You installed a major operating system upgrade without calling me first? That can cause a lot of stuff to break!
She: That's what I'm finding out.
People who are not geeks or computer scientists simply do not know what an operating system is. A minority of them know the phrase "operating system," but it has no more intrinsic meaning to them than "geegaw" or "rang deedio." If they know at all about it, they just know that it has to be there and has to work.
Nor should they, in an ideal world. The whole role of an operating system is to facilitate use of the computer and not get in the way. In the user model the operating system is the computer is the genie behind the screen. When they buy a computer, they buy a computer, and everything they get in the box that says "computer" is the computer. They may understand keyboard, monitor, and mouse as parts, but they don't understand, at all, that the OS is a fungible part of the system. There may be a disc, but they ignore it until something breaks.
The same thing is true of user interfaces. Well-meaning people like Jef Raskin and Donald Norman, as well as not-so-well-meaning people like Alan Cooper have been advocating for clean user interfaces that are invisible to the user for years. They're right, from a technical standpoint. They're all of them totally wrong when they try to explain why user interfaces are bad or how to make them better. The reason that user interfaces are not as good as they are is that the more invisible a component is, the less people are even aware of it when making purchase decisions. As a result, while really terrible user interfaces may result in some bad word-of-mouth, really good interfaces also suffer, because by definition, most people don't perceive them as elements. Beyond a certain level of frustration, market forces don't work on user interfaces and may even work against good ones, because mediocre interfaces have more visible features.