Servers with a Smile

9jack9 writes "Fortune Magazine has this article entitled Servers with a Smile. While they probably get almost as much wrong as they get right, it's still an interesting article, if for no other reason than it's in Fortune, with a readership undoubtedly consisting of people more focused on business than technology. To me the strange thing is that in portions of the computing world Linux and related phenomena (GNU/Linux, OSS, etc) does seem to be "the hottest thing", but in other parts of the computing world it is all but invisible. It reminds me of NT in the early days. There is also a related article Does Software Yearn to be Free?."

Comments

Everyone in the media bashes GNU/Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Some say that business aren't moving to GN/Linux because of the marketing machines of Micro$loth, but I think the real reason most businesses aren't moving to GNU/Linux because the media is so biased against users who want to keep information free. Some idiot at the worthless anti-GNU/Linux site called World Tech Tribune wrongly accuses GNU/Linux as being to blame for the few people that trade copyrighted material on P2P nets like KaZaA. He also makes the outrageous and wrong accusation that GNU/Linux has viruses like Windoze:

" 'So what? This isn't Napster with servers you can shut down. You can't stop us because we're everywhere on millions of machines around the world.' However, all it takes is one self-replicating P2P worm like 'Slapper' sent to those 120 million+ Kazaa thieves and the police boarding up the doors of Sharman's offices in Australia and Europe. Remember, most of you have all claimed that you're all untouchable yet watched in horror as 'secure, stable and virus-free' Linux was repeatedly raped by Slapper... "

He can't possibly be paid to write tripe like this (unless Micro$oft is paying him)! Plus, that website's Microsoft ASP based forums are a joke - censoring words like "tit" in the word "Constitution" (maybe it's because these morons don't recognize the Constitution).

Re:Journalism has never been a hard science.

[Ctrl-Z]

One draws the impression from this statement that these capitalists are using the word 'free' to describe the cost of Linux, rather than its nature.

You have to remember, of course, that to much of the business world, it is the bottom line that counts. Most could care less about the ethical grounds behind free software.

Re:Journalism has never been a hard science.

[Ian Wolf]

This has always been the biggest limiting factor, but the sands are shifting faster than I think you know.

Thanks to Codeweavers you can have Office, Notes, Quicken, IE, and many other windows apps running flawlessly in Linux. Thanks to Transgaming you can play many windows only games in Linux, such as Warcraft III, The Sims and many many more. Now, unfortunately, Loki is gone, but I'm glad I got my Quake III, Railroad Tycoon, and SimCity 3000 before they went under.

Last but not least, UT2003 will have a Linux version at the same release as the windows version. Return to Castle Wolfenstein runs in Linux and so will Neverwinter Nights, if Bioware ever gets it out the door anytime soon. If it wasn't for Battlefield 1942, I'd never boot into windows.

Plus there are many great apps on Linux already like Bluefish, GIMP, Grip, XMMS, Evolution, Ximian Connector, and Red Carpet to name a few. I think this is no longer a real issue, but that's just me.