Linux Replacing Windows More Than Unix

LordNimon writes "Over the past couple years, we've been hearing several Linux migration stories, but they have been mostly migration from proprietary Unix systems rather than from Windows. Well, this story on News.com indicates otherwise: of the migrations, 24% were from Unix, but 31% were from Windows. Sounds promising."

Comments

Unofficial Slashdot FAQ

[ReluctantBadger]

Unofficial Slashdot FAQ
By ReluctantBadger

• "Hi. Yeah. Erm, what the hell are 'boxen', 'VAXen', 'OSen' and 'Virii'?"
  "These are mystical non-words, which have been conjured up by stupid wankers wanting to appear hip, cool and intellectual. Nothing to see here. Please move along."

• "Why is everyone so against Microsoft? And what is up with that dollar sign?"
  "Welcome to Slashdot. Much in the same way that one dog sniffs another's ass to evaluate that individual, so is this practice of marking your grounds of viewpoint. Think of it as a Linux user bending over and farting - It is all about making their views heard.

• "Who is Junis?"
  "The most legendary troll ever to grace the pages of Slashdot. Not only was a Slashdot editor duped into posting a complete article on the opression of Kabul's geeks, but it also spawned a veritable banquet of new trolling material (such as optimum temperatures for storing Commodore hardware buried under chicken huts and the abundance of DivX Baywatch episodes)"

• "What is 'YHBT. YHL. HAND.'? I see it everywhere!"
  "This is commonly seen in comments sections after a pathetic Slashboteer or paranoid YRO fanatic has been suckered into replying to a finely crafted piece of literary genius."

• "Why the hell would someone want to re-program some obscure electronic device that is no longer produced?"
  "Many cock-smoking Slashdot users like to claim that it is 'because they can'. In fact, it boils down to 'because I've got nothing else better to do'. These are normally the same people who think that their university attendance made them technical gods and everyone else is worthless."

• "I recently saw an article on programming, and lots of people posted code snippets. Problem is, most of it was wrong. Why is that?"
  "A high percentage of Slashdot users are still in university, and think that after day 1 of 'Introduction to C' that they are ready to code embedded systems for Boeing or Raytheon. They spend endless hours posting about how they've hacked device x, when in fact all they've done is downloaded the SDK, bragged about 16-bit bus register cron-job front side bus accumulators and watched 'Anti-Trust' for the 797th time."

If you'd like to make a contribution to the FAQ, post a reply or e-mail this 3l337 h@x0r

This troll is dedicated to Nicola Wheeler on ITV's Emmerdale. mmmmm.... top heavy....

It Shouldn't Be Surprising...

[tealover]

since Linux is looking more and more like Windows every day. I'm amazed at how much KDE tries to ape Windows rather than trying to adddress the problems of the Windows interface.

I fear that if Linux continues in this problem we may end the problem of being weighed down by a monopolistic regime but we will still not have bettered the PC computing environment.

Good licensing scheme needed

[anonymous_wombat]

I am sure that M@crosoft will continue to support this trend with outrageous licensing schemes, building more DRM hacks into the operating system, etc. After Linus, they are the biggest supporters of Linux.

Well, they are!!!

Is not flamebait!!

Linux isn't so great...

[evilviper]

Well, you usually hear this as an off-topic troll, but I'm willing to risk a few mod points to be a voice of sanity.

Linux really isn't that great compared to other Unices. It is the media darling, partly because it fits the "built in someone's garage" cliche. It really is an alternative to Windows, and not Unix systems.

Linux rarely gets used on big iron. The only time you'll hear about some fast set of machines is in something like a cluster, for non-mission-critical applications. Even IBM, the diehard supporters of Linux, will openly admits that it just can't compete with AIX.

My personal opinion as to why... It has always just been something cool to hack away at. Very little work has been done to get security and stability overall. As an example, take the filesystem, EXT2.
Anyone who has used Linux for more than a week has had an Ext2 filesystem get corrupted. While I realize that there are other filesystems now, and that example is out-dated, I haven't used Linux extensively for a while, so any examples I give will be outdated.

More than that there are consistency problems. So much work is going into adding new features as quickly as possible, that stability, consistency, and ease of use just goes out the window. Compiling a new kernel should be a simple process (and one that should be unessecary) but instead gives you tons of kernel modules that are unuseable. Not a show-stopper, just another little problem that will take more time.

Linux development just has the Windows' attitude... Not a Unix attitude. I can't speak for anyone else (although it statistically looks like I do) but I don't think Linux has a chance against stable, secure, consistent, high-performance systems. I just think of it as a geek toy... Like a Dreamcast.