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Linux on the Tipping Point
Reader stormcoder wrote to mention an article on Enterprise Linux I.T. in which the author posits that even though Linux is built on a legend, the reality of Linux outstrips even the myth. From the article: "..the fact that Linux has traditionally been compared to Microsoft's Windows brand products and not the other Unix variants will most likely lead the general public to perceive all this as Linux sailing on to new horizons while Microsoft stalls out. This perceptual shift should totally reverse the previous mainstream view that Microsoft and Intel were somehow at the forefront of high technology computing -- thereby pushing Linux over the magic edge of a social tipping point."
Oh yeah, every year for the last several years. Examples follow"
March 2003
July 2003
November 2004
December 2003
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It consists of a Linux kernel developed by Torvalds and his colleagues by radically improving an earlier open-source Unix released by Andrew Tannenbaum in 1987 If he is implying Linux was is based on Minix, he is incorrect, albeit, extreamly early versions of Linux did use the minix filesystem and minix to bootstrap. In design, though, Linux and minix are fundementally different. Also I am sure Tanenbaum would disagree that Linux is a radically improved version of Minix -- as he is an advocate of microkernels.
I'm no fan of Microsoft (posting this with Firefox on Gentoo Linux), but to be fair, that's not quite true. Few home LANs use a domain server. Simple LANs should work at least as well as they did in Win98, which was fine for me.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
This was exactly the same way for servers back in 1999, 2000, 2001. In fact, the only ones to get it right was IDG and Gartner, when they proclaimed that Linux would have less than 1% of servers on the internet by 2005. And we all know that Linux on the servers have not gone well. Right? Oh wait....
I suspect that we have allready gone over the tipping point. It is now just a matter of companies such as IDG/Gartner to point out that they were wrong on this as well. Of course, their own income will plummet.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Games are an issue. There is a real chicken and egg problem there, i.e. good games could be written for Linux, and Linux would dominate, but until if dominates there is no reason to write games for it...
Word processing: MS office can run on it; I find Oo.o better for basic paragraphs and formatting, and who actually using the drawing tools in word?
Movies? No problem! Even MS formats that have been only for WMP (even on win32) in the past play ok now. Maybe players could use better GUIs, but that is being worked on with stuff like kmplayer. Besides, most email-forward-type stupid movies are actually flash or Powerpoint. Flash is fine; every Powerpoint feature that I've tried works in Oo.o Impress, with, IMHO, smoother animation.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
No, I think he was touching on the point that such comments that describe stupid practices of Slashdot users have become a stupid practice of Slashdot users.
Was your comment supposed to be witty?
No, not until you get to 10 computers with XP Pro. (There's a 5-network-connection limit on XP Home, 10-network-connection limit on XP Pro.)
Back in NT 3.51, Server and Workstation differed only by a couple settings which you could make and then have a Server. Microsoft got smarter about that as the years went on, and now you can't make the low-cost version look/act like the high-cost. And you're right, Linux is the way to go here because you get full functionality from the get-go (for Free as well).
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
From the article: " It consists of a Linux kernel developed by Torvalds and his colleagues by radically improving an earlier open-source Unix released by Andrew Tannenbaum in 1987"
No, no, no... How many times do we have to tell these people that Linus DID NOT ALTER MINIX to produce the Linux kernel!!! When will these people get it right before blathering on?
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
The only issue with this is that the streaming video systems found on most porn sites don't always work properly under Linux + Firefox/Mozilla...
Sorry, my karma just ran over your dogma.