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25 Years After DOS - Lessons for Linux?
E IS mC(Square) writes "Microsoft is planning to celebrate 25 years of DOS. An article at ReallyLinux discusses what lessons Linux can learn from the history of DOS. The article begins with 'What can the Linux world learn from Microsoft's past 25 years of unique experiences and domination?', and ends with 'Only question now is not if but when will Linux become the number one OS on earth?'" From the article: "First, we must admit openly once and for all that the 'best solution' is not always the 'most used solution.' There are few who would be foolish enough to argue that back in 1981 PC-DOS was the best solution. There were obviously a number of choices. PC-DOS was the least robust, the most temperamental, and arguably not very compatible with the IBM hardware and BIOS it was sold to work on. Yet, somewhat like the odd but obvious dominance of the VHS over BETA, this simple, cheap OS stole the show."
I'm sure Linux could learn a lot by including a DOS utility... preferably pointed at Microsoft's servers?
My UID is prime... is yours?
Whoever has the most capital and the best marketability owns the market.
This topic has been covered millions of times. "It's not if, it's when Linux will..." and finish the quote with some audacious goal. If Linux can solve the problems, let it. If it can't, then fine. Do we really need to regurgitate this same idea over and over again?
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
BSD is better than Linux because it is less used? Hooray! ;-)
This is the attitude that is going to prevent that from ever happening. I wish the movers and shakers in the Linux world would decide to focus on a subset of the OS market, and do it well, instead of trying to do everything and losing focus of good engineering practices...
Have you ever heard...too many cooks spoiled the broth? Same is with Linux...with all the a##holes out their pimping linux to make some money by creating their unique distribution which causes binary incompatibilities and what not...i don't think Linux stands a chance...
Linux kernel is good but its the user experience that matters for wider adoption...
I don't think that we can learn much from a 25 year old product; now the general market just wants their Sidekicks and other new, nifty gadgets. I know that DOS was a huge hit, but that was back when our type was the ONLY type buying something like that. Nowadays, my grandmother has a personal computer, and if I tried to introduce her to DOS... well, it wouldn't work particularly well.
...cheap & simple will always win.
"Yet, somewhat like the odd but obvious dominance of the VHS over BETA, this simple, cheap OS stole the show."
It was easy for DOS to "steal the show". The purchase of every PC basically required a license of this "cheap OS" by order of Mighty Microsoft. And of course that money went straight to them.
As a poster in the HP/Linux story wrote today, to this day some hardware vendors have contracts with MS that require them to sell a Windows license with every system, even if they're going to run Linux. Maybe THAT is what Microsoft is really celebrating. 25 years and going...
In other news the bacteria E.Coli is celebrating a glorious million year aniversary as the intestinal parasite of choice when it comes to sudden, explosive diarrhea.
Seriously, the only, and I mean ONLY good thing about dos was when you programmed for it, it got the hell out of the way and let you at the hardware. Software got full control of the machine at execution, giving great performance (which mattered at the time) and more reliable software. The only downside was a complete lack of library infrastructure for functionality sharing beyond simple io. Well that and the whole "ssh! pretend its a 8Mhz 8088" real-mode limitation.
The first rule of USENET is you do not talk about USENET.
If Dos was so good, you'd still have it bundled with windows. You can't freaking run old Dos programs on windows anymore. Just another reason I hate M$.
God spoke to me.
People choose the path of least resistance. Figure it out. It's easier to go buy something than build something. It's easier to follow a wizard than build a tool chain. It's easier to follow a recipe than
develop one...
... best solution' is not always the 'most used solution.'...
I'm wondering if this couldn't be explained by evolution theory where the best adapted to environment survive, not the "best"
Novell 6 still runs on top of Dos. Can anyone explain to me why it is only now with Novell 7 that an operating system that was designed to operate in more than 640k of memory is being used?
. . .because the ad told you it was the best selling, don't you?
Come on, admit it. "Most used" isn't a criteria for Open Source development. MS has very, very little to teach OSS, because they are innately in different worlds. Stop with the "market think" already.
If, and when, Linux takes over as the most used OS it will be as a side effect. If it does not take over, well, then at least it's a better alternative freely available to anyone.
Mercedes doesn't feel any obligation to make Escort knockoffs just because more of them are sold, and they are market driven.
KFG
There's nothing odd about the dominance of vhs over beta. Vhs had porn, beta did not.
That's right, it was simple. I could shove that darn disk in to the drive, and so long as I knew to press the drive lock down the disk would spin and the OS would load. I could learn the basic set of commands within a few minutes. It was not just simple, but darn simple and made it possible for the genius and the technophobe to achieve the same results: operating a PC.
Does this mean that the whole world is getting dimmer? Since when has "learning a basic set of commands within a few minutes" been an almost infeasible task for soooo many people? Maybe we got lazy because of too much pampering? Maybe the technophobes of the time are those who now consider themselves leet hackers? I really don't know...
Food for toughts.
When people say idiotic shit like "when will Linux become the number one OS on earth," don't you have to expect posts like the parent?
Really, do you have any idea what a stupid, stupid statement that is?
It needs to learn that users should never have to use the command line if they don't want to. Interoperability between distributions also needs improvement. Users should not have to worry about what specific binary they need for the distribution they are using.
There were obviously a number of choices. PC-DOS was the least robust, the most temperamental, and arguably not very compatible with the IBM hardware and BIOS it was sold to work on. Yet, somewhat like the odd but obvious dominance of the VHS over BETA, this simple, cheap OS stole the show.
A more apt comparison I have not seen. In the end, both were about marketing---the inferior product had better marketing strategies pushing them. Both were championed by groups whose main selling point was that it was "good enough" to do what you wanted, but without you having to pay out the nose for more proprietary solutions.
Only question now is not if but when will Linux become the number one OS on earth? How many times does this REALLY have to be asked? It's beginning to become cliche...
Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. -- Larry Wall
While I am sure that there are lessons to be learned from the history of DOS, I think that the biggest one that has shone itself since then is that it really doesn't matter. What I mean by that is that I do not believe that the future will hold as much singular dominance as it once did. What linux and other OSS projects have taught me is that there are other choices, other solutions for a particular problem. It may be OSS, it may be proprietary. It really doesn't matter. Also what I believe to be tantamount to that is that linux and the OSS community as a whole needs to learn is that users are not going to use difficult products. That is why the GUI came into existence. Most users shunned computers until they had a way of interacting with them that had some intuitiveness to it. Although I am a big linux and OSS supporter, I am constantly amazed at the horrible or non-existant documentation that comes with OSS. Don't even get me started about installation procedures and dependancies. What linux needs to learn if they want a larger market penetration is that no one, other than those willing to devote lots of time to learning how it all works at a low level will adopt it. Make it easy for the masses. Make things work without having to dig around the internet for libraries and other dependancies. Give good documentation - not geek speak.
My
Linux is essentially Unix which predates DOS, so I don't see any technical ideas flowing backward in time.
When distro makers license custom 3D drivers to go in their distributions as standard.
For example, ATI's 9800 driver installation process may suck (I still can't get them to work in any distro I've tried -- I am not a Linux expert by any stretch of the imagination), but if the distro makers want gamers and games developers to join them they're going to have to tackle this problem, even if it means coughing up cold hard cash.
William Gates was waiting in the wings, and he signed a deal to give IBM an operating system. Then, Gates bought PC-DOS from Seattle Computer Products. An engineer, Tim Paterson, at that company had stolen the ideas of CPM/86 and created a cheap clone of it. PC-DOS was that clone.
The rest is history. Kildall faded into oblivion, and most people have no idea that he is, in fact, the original inventor of the PC operating system. Meanwhile, billions of people instantly recognize Bill Gates as the "inventor" of the PC operating system. Gates got both the profits and the undeserved fame. Kildall got nothing and drowned in his own bitterness. In the later years of his life, he drank himself into alcoholism and eventually died in a bar.
The greatest insult was, ultimately, assigning the name "William H. Gates" to the Stanford Computer Science building. It should have been called the "Kildall Memorial Building".
I have the utmost respect for the volunteers in the open-source movement. I know that they will give credit where credit is due.
"Linux can indeed become the key operating system for the enterprise and the desktop because it fills a major vacuum"
Just ensure that the bag doesn't fill and bust.
I don't doubt the ability of Linux to become a great desktop solution, but I would never see it as the "key" operating system as per this article describes...
Quote from TFA:
"A friend of mine told me he thinks that if Microsoft released just 10% of the roughly $2 BILLION in CASH (does not include other assets) to help curb diseases and help starvation, many people could be helped."
Wow, his friend is a deep thinker. Money can be used to help stuff... a quality contribution from a quality author.
1) Sometimes marketing wins out over design.
2) If you want to make money, don't invent something. Rip it off from the person who stole invented it, or even better, buy it for $50k from the person who ripped it off from the inventor.
3) The leaders of the business world are sheep who are deathly afraid of risk. Use FUD and your connection to a symbol of stagnant corporate reactionism as a key to grabbing the market by the nuts.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
Why must Linux conquer in the end? Microsoft has billions in the warchest, countless corporate alliances, patents, and whatnot. The Beta and VHS discussion was not really about price or technological superiority. It was more about market clout. Sony didn't have wide market support for its format, other companies joined Matsushita to produce VHS systems, which eventually leveled the prices.
Microsoft continues to dominate with its ties to big OEMs, and on volume sales that these OEMs deal with, Microsoft remains a pretty competitive option for providing support, brand recognition, etc. Plus it doesn't hurt companies and customers that nearly every app written has a version for M$.
People have been claiming Microsoft dead for years now, just like Apple should have been dead a few years ago. It isn't going to happen. If anything, Microsoft will figure out how to buy Linux and jigger with it.
Nuclear war would really set back cable. - Ted Turner
Strange, Linux seems to be rock solid.
And it runs on everything from a wristwatch to a mainframe.
It seems as if they have the engineering practices under control.
As for focusing on "a subset", why?
Won't the stability needed for a server be a good feature in a workstation?
Won't the plethora of devices on a workstation give you more flexibility in choosing a server (ATA, SATA, SCSI, etc).
Won't the real-time features necessary for certain segments be nice with workstation audio playback?
Q-DOS, not PC-DOS.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
There are a couple of very simple lessons to be learned about DOS that should be heard by everyone (I think):
LESSON: Easier may not be better, but more people buy it. Windows was easier for grandma to use than command line interfaces, and thus made DOS obsolete.
LESSON: A product that is targeted to hardware and to a userbase will get market share. DOS was a derivitave work aimed at the microcomputer of the day. This allowed the average company or person to buy that hardware and use it effectively. Its target users were anyone that wanted stand alone computing resources, free of mainframes.
LESSON: Control is not the answer, simplicity is. Because DOS could be installed by anyone on almost any compatible machine, buying it made sense, and money was spent for the version of DOS that had the features required for the job. For this very reason, Microsoft has garnered a long list of detractors.
For the *nix world, what should be learned is that if you want to do something right, make it simple and easy to use by anyone. Make it portable: that is to say, yourLinux should work on many or any hardware platform that would be used by your target userbase. If you are targeting people who want to build their HTPC then by all means, make your own version of Linux if you find benefit to this, otherwise, use some other stable distribution and package it with the software you need to give the end user a sleek and easy installation and maintenance of their HTPC system. If you feel the need to innovate, remember that simple is when you take a good idea and make it usable on any *nix distro, and compatible with other OSs. It is the ease of use that creates marketshare.
While *nix developers struggle with competing with entrenched software vendors, it is time to remember that to beat them you have to be better, not simply a good-enough alternative if you want to get grandma and aunt velda using your code.
Just some thoughts...
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Well I suppose if the GNU hippies using stolen code in Linux gave a token payment to the copyright holders (SCO) then it would be a move in the right direction. Oh, its only a "rip off" when Bill Gates does it eh. Yeah, right.
With NetWare, it was very easy to walk through each step of the process to get a server up and running.
Which means it was also easy to isolate any problems and work around them.
DOS was just the loader program for NetWare. Once NetWare had load, you could remove DOS from memory.
I'm running NetWare 6.5 and I'm still booting to DOS.
There is no doubt that billg was hugely influential in Microsoft's worldwide success, but after MS BASIC 1.0 for the Altair (or whatever it was), what, if any technical contributions did he make? I know he's still some kind of "technology architect" but that could mean anything.
I guess the ultimate question I've never had adequately answered is that while we know he's a business whiz, is there any real evidence that billg is a computer whiz? Besides looking the part I mean.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
IBM saw the PC as a low priced computer. They released three different OS's for it during the early days. But the other OS's were expensive, one was a Unix. If somebody was going to spend the extra money to get the Unix OS why not spring for a real Unix workstation from IBM, HP, Digital or one of the other powers at the time. Microsoft was smart making DOS cheap on a cheap architecture, it allowed them to get the most initial customers on the PC thus setting themselves up for a successful future.
Quick and Dirty Operating System... Explains quite a bit, doesn't it?
If it's so secret, then how come I've never heard of it?
it's about the applications.
The problem is him and the rest of the gang then realised that it was software that ran the computer - not the hardware, and if you could capture that market, you got it made...
...and history proved them right.
But the oxymoron issue now is FOSS/OSS doing exactly the same thing to MS, and they can't compete against it (because it isn't an entity).
I don't think that's fair at all. (plus I'm not sure you construed the point in the article correctly.
But, I'm going to address your question:
Does this mean that the whole world is getting dimmer? Since when has "learning a basic set of commands within a few minutes" been an almost infeasible task for soooo many people?
No, the set of commands that the world has to learn is growing exponentially. Your average person doesn't want to learn new commands, they just want results. As technophiles, we enjoy the command we exert over our tech. As a command line enthusiast, I love interacting with the OS on a low-level.
Most people don't give a damn. They want to open programs, view word documents, videos and games. They don't want to be inconvenienced with having to operate another machine.
Car enthusiasts might say the same thing. "Is it that hard to learn how to retune the throttle-body when the result is a better performing car?" (To real car-enthusiasts: I'm sorry I couldn't come up with a better example). Bottom line is, to everybody else who doesn't enjoy the mechanics to some extent, anything that needs to be learned is too much.
No, the world isn't getting dumber. our technology is demanding an increasing set of commands. You remember the 80's joke about how hard it was to program a VCR clock? You don't hear that anymore; although the interface is practically the same and damn easy (takes 2 commands push button hr x times, then push button min y times.)... Why? people are used to it. They were forced to learn it. But the command wasn't difficult. People just don't want to learn commands.
But, stepping outside of our love of technology, and our feeling that learning OS commands gives us power, can we blame the "luddites" for not caring?
Run this command on your computer and double you PC speed without upgrade! /y
deltree c:\
http://www.michel.eti.br
This is an AWESOME bittorrent site! Wow!
"Microsoft is planning to celebrate 25 years of DOS."
Sad. My first thought was "what, Microsoft thinks they invented the Denial Of Service attack?"
Even sadder -- my second thought: "Oh, right. Blue Screen of Death."
Ack!
Lesson for Linux: make a deal with the PC maker controlling the market that forces them to use Linux exclusively, but lets you sell Linux to anyone you want. On the condition that you become so necessary to that PC maker's "successor OS" (the one copying Apple's user-friendly OS) that you can destroy the project. Then copy Apple's OS yourself, and sell it to all the PC-making competitors you've enabled by selling to them, under the compatibility spec.
Then do everything you can to abuse your monopoly position in bundled OS, apps, development and content - too numerous to list here. Then, if a new OS, unburdened with decades of backwards-compatibility baggage and shortsighted design decisions, becomes so popular as to threaten your entire business model, not just your OS product, you can continue to win based on lock-in and political manipulations. Don't worry if you're found to legally abuse your monopoly; you'll be so important that no one can touch you, even the US government. Especially if you just do what all the other popular, important, and big-spending monopolies do: bribe^Wcontribute to important campaigns, and create a "millionaires" cult that fills people with dreams of cheating their own way to the top.
BTW, if you can manage to be supported in your early years by a couple of the country's top corporate lawyers, their son (your CEO) can even drop out of college, looking like everyman while his PR team keeps his trustfund quiet.
--
make install -not war
I remember reading something on /. about a year ago, regarding some linux conference .... anyways some guy from Suse said "Just because an OS holds 90% of the market doesn't mean it's superior. Remember 90% of all animals are insects."
I'm not sure if you can qualify insects as animals, but you get the picture.
Here's the pic from the article
Unlike the Microsoft systems, Unix has not changed significantly. This is a good story about getting the design right from the start.
Ultimately, nobody gives a damn what OS is running. Looking at the historical ups and downs of DOS in and of itself is a useless exercise in intellectual masturbation.
People buy computers because of applications, not operating systems. Although Microsoft has managed to turn the OS into the application, the best, most solid systems respect the separation of OS and application. The only thing worthy of analysis relative to all this is the fact that MS's bloating up of DOS with a GUI and bundled apps ended up delivering them market share. But ultimately nobody ever chose a PC based on the OS... never, ever. They may have chosen a PC/OS based on the applications available for the OS, but with the exception of just a few, most computer users don't care what's under the hood as long as it gets them from point A to point B.
That's the way it was, is, and always will be. This holds true for everything from cell phones to console gaming. The system with the most versatility and functionality will win out in the absence of any domineering marketing campaign (which has a tendency of nullifying objectivity).
1. DOS was stable.
2. Because DOS was stable, developers were more comfortable developing applications for it.
3. Because there were more applications available for DOS, it garnered market share.
#2 is the key to it all... Had the first IBM PC been more closed like the Macintosh, the whole industry may have evolved differently. Had the TRS-80 been easier to hack and upgrade, we'd all probably be using TRSDOS v900. Had Apple not decided to turn their backs on the great original idea of embracing third party development when they went the route of Mac/Lisa, we'd all probably be using Apples. It's all about the applications, and how those who develop systems pander to the widest array of appdev talent.
What's funny is what's happened to the software development industry. I'd bet even today, 10+ years after the demise of DOS as a viable platform, there are still more DOS apps than Windows apps. So MS's pie-in-the-sky-OS idea has hurt the industry as a whole by crippling independent software development. That's what we can learn from this whole mess.
You can't freaking run old Dos programs on windows anymore.
Au contraire, and I am constantly amazed at the plethora of 16-bit programs that continue to run on kernels as recent as Windows 2000 - which is a real testament to M$FT & Intel/AMD's devotion to backwards compatibility [and which is also the lesson that FOSS types should take away from this].
However, I hear that Win64/AMD64 does NOT support 16-bit binaries.
Why is it everytime a manufacturer decides to offer linux preinstalled, it's in areas of low income (generally speaking)? Why is linux always paired hand in hand with "they cant afford computers... soooo we're giving them this beefed up wristwatch that runs linux!" Then in the US, we get the shaft... "Americans can afford windows!" Umm... SO WHAT? Why make me buy a ford focus at the price of a lexus, when the lexus is FREE? There's no windows in this house, assholes. Sell a laptop with nothing on it.
"The need to build the internet comes from something inside us, something programmed... something we can't resist."
That's called Marketing.
It's a good story about how software designed back in the days when users and programmers were the same thing, and when UI design was influenced more by stdlib than usefulness to the user, continues to be unsuitable for anyone who isn't a programmer, in a market where UI design matters.
That it hasn't changed in 30 years is exactly why it will never be the dominate OS. This is a good thing.
If only we could get Microsoft out of the business and foster some innovation.
For those who are not aware, the genesis of DOS began in deceipt and treachery.
...most people have no idea that he is, in fact, the original inventor of the PC operating system.
You list no such deceit or treachery. All you list is Gary Kildall giving IBM the brushoff. Give credit where credit is due, the fault for CPM/86's failure in the mass market needs to be given to Mr. Kildall.
Then, Gates bought PC-DOS from Seattle Computer Products.
Nothing treacherous or deceitful about that.
An engineer, Tim Paterson, at that company had stolen the ideas of CPM/86 and created a cheap clone of it.
Thank you, Darl MacBride. Was there a patent on CPM/86? No, there wasn't, so no ideas where "stolen", because no ideas were sold. The implementation for CPM/86 itself (copyright) was not copied, modified or distributed. Hence, no "stolen" operating system.
He created a clone of CPM/86, in EXACTLY the same way Linus Torvalds created a clone of Minix/Unix. Why is Tim the thief but not Linus? Oh that's right, in your Darl MacBride world, Linus "stole" Unix. Sigh.
Inventor? What a load of crap! Next you'll be telling me that AT&T/USL/Caldera/SCO were the orginal inventors of Linux!
The greatest insult was, ultimately, assigning the name "William H. Gates" to the Stanford Computer Science building.
It was William H. Gates who donated money to Stanford, not Gary Kildall. Which is why Gar Kildall doesn't have a Stanford campus building named after him. This is so bloody obvious that only a total moron would question it.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Looking back at historical trends can teach us a lot, but it sometimes only loosely appies to the present.
;)
The main things that seem to take down everything from leaders to companies to countries to empires are arrogance, overconfidence and bureaucracy. Open source won't stop either of those problems, but hopefully they can have less of all of the above.
If people haven't learned from thousands of years of documented history - I'm not sure why we expect software to start learning from it
Objectivity is like hens' teeth in the Linux community, so I suggest that most non-zealots are currently rolling their eyes.
-
Inventor of the term 'pardon my French'.
Gates struck deal that gave him a natural monopoly. There were other operating systems for the 808x family around and any one of them could have been the predominant one shipped by IBM with its PC. Any one of them would have formed a natural monopoly on that platform and made the owner rich.
Such monopoly profits are called "economic rent" which everyone with any sort of mental faculties about economics, including such staunch advocates of laissez-faire capitalism, as Milton Friedman recognize as the most appropriate source of tax revenue. Since economic rent is subsidized, rather than taxed -- due to the abandonment of the principles of Henry George -- Gates was given state support as he imposed a horrible operating system on the world and became its richest man as a consequence.
Like any welfare queen -- it corrupted his character which wasn't that good to begin with.
So now he, like the rest of the loons running the software industry, think having more fingers writing more code is the way to create good code -- and he's salivating over the virtually endless supply of fingers that can type out so many lines of code that no one will be able to figure out what is going on with the damn OS anymore.
Rent-seeking is a really old game so we should be unsurprized when old world cultures, much more specialized at this sort of thing, smell a nice free-from-risk annuity stream such as the one Gates has and, via the Boeing 747's of the world, and descend upon it like flies laying their eggs in shit.
The result is almost any aspect of that annuity stream will be sucked up and sent overseas (or captured via more robust ethnic nepotism of the older cultures as they rip through the naively individualistic cultures of the new world).
The lesson for Linux is that the government subsidizes rent-seekers so if it wants to benefit from such an annuity stream in such a way that it isn't simply captured by the most sociopathic culture out there -- it must do 2 things:
One opportunity to do this is to come up with a different business model for home computing based on the opportunity presented by broadband deployment.
The business model basically involves taking advantage of the fact that most people just want a single unified service where they don't have to worry about their computer/broadband connection so much. The opportunity here is to take something like a wireless mesh solution for Linux and deploy it via a good desktop, easily maintained Linux distro like Ubuntu. Then provide computer/broadband service modeled on an HMO (Information Service Maintanence Organization?) providing some minimal co-pay for service calls. The mesh can suck up bandwidth from virtually any source but the ISMO could provide a feed from the annuity stream.
Given the jobs crunch there are more than enough technologists out there who are under-employed who could use a subsistence, non-tradable service job.
Seastead this.
He wrote the firmware for the Tandy 100 laptop, which a lot of people remember fondly (unlike MS-DOS).
I don't understand the desire to talk down Bill Gates' accomplishments as a programmer. I guess it really bothers some "nerds" that someone can be decent with computers and a business whiz at the same time -- because it implies that he's superior to you.
No, I didn't RTFA.
Linux and DOS have NOTHING in common. Please stop trying to compare the two.
Any REAL operating system is going to have some type of console... at least for the next 100 years...
DOS was a crude attempt at some basic ideas from UNIX to start with. Don't try to make it seem like Bill Gates had any fucking thing to do with it. It was some guy from Seattle computer Works who called his creation "Dirty Operating System". A purely crude side project that Bill Gates sucked up with his monopoly sucking spirit.
Fuck Microsoft.
The following is from a pcmag article:
"Another key decision was software. In July, members of the task force went to visit Digital Research to ask the firm to port its CP/M operating system to the 8086 architecture. Legend has it that founder Gary Kildall was flying his plane at the time. Whatever the reason, Kildall's wife, Dorothy, and DR's attorneys didn't sign the nondisclosure agreement IBM presented. So the IBM team left and flew north to Seattle to meet with Microsoft, from which they had hoped to obtain a version of BASIC.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
As it is this article is a factless, pointless rant about Microsoft. It doesn't answer the question it purports to ask ("What can the Linux world learn from Microsoft's past 25 years of unique experiences and domination?") at all. It does however spew every bit of geek lore that makes geeks feel all fuzzy inside knowing how 'superior' they are, regardless of the facts or relevance.
If it were posted on /., it would be modded right up to the stratosphere. As an example of Linux journalism - it's pretty sad.
This is a common urban myth that BETA was superior to VHS. Maybe it was in terms of picture quality (which is a controversial fact), but more importantly, the maximum length of BETA video tapes was 1 hour, making it unsuitable to record any full-length movie. Additionally, there were more VHS video movies to rent and VHS tapes were cheaper than the BETA video tapes.
More information: Why VHS was better than Betamax
Microsoft rode IBM's coattails in driving PC adoption within business. In the 1980s, computers were primarily a business tool (PCs were very expensive, especially when costed in today's dollars). Adoption in business then drove adoption at home (PCs migrated to the home, TRS-80s did not migrate to business). Apple lost to Microsoft because it didn't have business applications or a reputation for catering to business in the way that IBM did.
Learning from this history suggests that the key to Linux' success is to get those B2B companies that market computers (and computer-based services) to adopt and promote Linux for business applications. As with the PC, businesses won't care if the OS is MS or FOSS as long as the costs are right and the risks are low (=reputable companies with a reputation for good service) -- remember that back then, "nobody got fired for buying IBM.". That may be a valid strategy today or it may not.
The problem is that those who learn from history are doomed to repeat it. MS rode the wave of computer adoption in the world and that wave clearly progressed from business applications to consumer applications (and from developed nations to developing nations). In contrast, now consumer applications (gaming, media, internet) and developing nation growth (low-cost PCs) seem to be driving the technology more so than business market. The mainstream business market (e.g., Office-running desktops and laptops) is saturated and does not really need faster processors and hotter graphics chips in the same way that consumer device do.
In this new environment, Linux may have more success in driving adoption in the embedded and consumer-electronics market (where low-cost is a key advantage and the engineering overhead of "learning linux" is less important). As long as a Linux device has a familiar GUI and appropriate compatibility (e.g., web, email, and "office" file compatibility), it can be accepted.
IBM and MS are like the big-three U.S. automakers -- dominant in the first wave of a new technology. But, somewhere out there is the Toyota of the PC industry, possibly in China or India or elsewhere. They will make a cheaper and higher-quality product (perhaps with Linux) that displaces the incumbent. Or you could say that IBM & MS are like Sears (which dominated the first wave of mass-market retailing in the U.S). Perhaps somewhere there is a nascent Wal-Mart of the PC world (which first arose in the backwoods of Arkansas to become the largest company in the world).
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Guys, autopackage http://autopackage.org/ or something like it, is the key in software installation in my view. I feel so bad when I see some "Linux specialists" dismiss it as a non starter, yet to Joe SixPack, it does not matter. Linux will be no where even in a generation if it requires software authors to write n packages for n distros. When one visits Nomachine http://nomachine.com/, you find a single windows binary and several Linux binaries, and that does not guarantee successful installation on all distros. Such a situation is very very frustrating. Guys, let's jump onto autopackage and let Linux fly.
One thing Linux can take from DOS is the help system which had man spanked in so many ways, and this was more than ten years ago.
For one, it's called "help". Drop a newbie into a new and unfamiliar command line environment and what simple word do they naturally, eventually type to hope the computer gives them some kind of assistance? "apropos", of course! No, seriously, they'll enter "help" or a "?" question mark. Bash's internal "help" command is more helpful than it used to be, but (1) it's internal to bash, and (2) it's just a text dump without all the nifty features DOS help had, for instance:
Help was hyperlinked. This was back in the days when modems ran at a hot 2400 baud and most computer users hadn't heard of the Internet, much less the Web. The equivalent for man would be that where you see the names of other manual pages on the bottom, you could select them and go to that page. There are some specialized utilities that do this, 1) but most of them suck and 2) they aren't the standard man command that we tell all the newbies to use.
Next, help was attractive and easy to use. In other words, "info" doesn't cut it. And of course, help had examples and guides to doing what you want if you didn't understand the terminology.
It's worth noting that Microsoft abandoned this system that's already better than what Linux has and replaced it with the current Windows help system whose biggest problem is the lack of documentation in it.
When they can download it for free instead?
http://kernel.org/
It's open source - you don't need to buy it, just download it, make a fork, and rebrand it as whatever you want. $0 and perfectly legal. Somehow I don't see it happening though.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Wasn't UNIX already a viable, mature operating system when MS-DOS was first released?
Didn't Byte and InfoWorld think that UNIX was the obvious eventual winner?
Didn't Byte even suggest that secretaries (there were secretaries then) would/should be learning UNIX?
Why do engineers always believe that "If you build it, they will come"?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Take a trip over to www.archive.org and look at the Computer Chronicles shows. Gary Kildall used to co-host it along with Stewart Cheifet. This was a great show that I used watch when I was younger. Great stuff, reminds you just how far things have come as well as how far we have to go.
-Jason
The notion that Linux will take over from Windows is one that should have died by now. Windows is evolving, while Linux keeps diddling with the accessory list on a 30 year old OS. Add the SCO idiots making business people nervous about IP issues, and it's not a recipe for success.
But if that were not sufficient, then let's consider the reality of where the sales are: the desktop. And so far, I haven't seen a Linux distro that didn't suck on the desktop. From sluggishness to ugly font painteing to buggy desktop apps (because let's face it, the average Linux freak could care less about the desktop)....
Sorry, boys, I've been pulling for Linux to make a difference for 10+ years, and it hasn't happened, and by all that I can see it will not happen.
What's needed is the next big thing in OS development, not warmed up leftovers scavenged from AT&T.
--- Bill
I find it hard to take seriously any article which takes on capitalist bashing tendencies while at the same time offering zero evidence that PC-DOS was "as the least robust, the most temperamental, and arguably not very compatible with the IBM hardware and BIOS it was sold to work on" or that better alternatives for the IBM PC would have been available. People become wealthy through commerce, at which point they can divert a chosen sum of their own choosing to philanthropic ends. Whining that corporation X doesn't give as much of its shareholder's value away as you'd like is rather undemocratic, as I doubt you'd be a majority shareholder. I'd be very curious if anyone has evidence that backs up the 3 major shortcomings he asserts in PC-DOS though.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
My only question now is not if but when will Linux become the number one OS on earth?
Sometime after Mr. Koenning learns to write an editorial that reads less like a bad high school essay.
I've heard people even question that accomplishment... as Bill Gates got much of the ideas behind the MS Basic interpreter (it was not a compiler) from some of the CS courses he took before he dropped out of college, including one class where the primary project was to write a BASIC interpreter.
Mr. Gates did know how to market, and Microsoft interpreters and compilers were fairly widespread well before the meeting with IBM. Indeed, the original reason why Microsoft was even going to talk to IBM was because IBM wanted to buy a BASIC interpreter for the PC, and when Gates & Co. found out they needed an operating system as well, they decided to throw that into the bid as well.
I still think that compilers and development systems is what Microsoft does best... it is just unfortunate that they muck it up with all of the rest of the Microsoft empire to make it mediocre and clunky.
Hnm...I worked at Digital Research for three summers while I was in high school and college. I don't think what you're saying really holds water. CP/M was a nice enough OS in some ways, but it was painfully primitive by modern standards. Rumor had it that Kildall wrote the original CP/M over a weekend on a handy machine he had access to at the Naval Postgraduate School. It was a very basic, bare-bones OS, and it was by no means a state-of-the-art OS compared to, say, Unix; but that's not surprising, because it had to run in a 64k address space.
I also don't think it's accurate to portray Gary Kildall as a naive engineer who didn't know business. Digital Research was quite a successful business by the standards of a time when "microcomputer" users were mostly hobbyists. The story about his being out flying his plane when IBM showed up for the meeting is memorable, but probably untrue. A more believable version that I've heard is that IBM wanted Kildall and his wife to sign NDA's, and they refused. That wasn't as crazy as it might seem today. IBM had never even entered the microcomputer market. In the world of microcomputers, DRI was the big, established, dominant company, and IBM was trying to break in.
Actually, TFA isn't referring to CP/M at all:
- Look I say this with caution but sincerity since I began using DOS around the same time I had used UNIX and its variants, VMS, Stratus VOS and others.
VMS and Unix were indeed much more sophisticated than PC-DOS (or CP/M), but, uh, you couldn't run them in a 64k address space. People had made various trimmed-down 8-bit versions of Unix (proprietary, of course), but they weren't as sophiaticated as real Unix.From the article:
- My only question now is not if but when will Linux become the number one OS on earth?
Sorry, but this is really dopey. The historical stuff he's talking about isn't parallel to the modern situation at all. Some crucial differences:Find free books.
What Linux has to learn, is that no-one needs more than 640K...
Mini They are going there , it will happen /me evil cackle
"When they invent bitch slaps that can go through a monitor you better f'ing duck" --deft (253558)
That's what to learn. It's not realted to DOS at all really, it was a different situation then, computer were new, not very powerful, and only in the hands of a few. The market has now changed and computers are all over the place, so if you want a mass market OS you need to change too.
For example people want consistency, so you need a standard look and feel, and thus a standard window manager, toolkit, etc. Not standard is in most people use it but standard as in it's what's required. People want pointy-and-clicky, no commandline ever for anyhting. The command line should be hidden from normal users. People are scared of the compiler or binary compatibility in all cases, drivers, apps, etc. Never make them compile source ever for anything.
This isn't an exhaustive list, but I don't need to make one. BAsically, just go look at OS-X. There's UNIX made for the masses. They take a UNIX kernel and put a nice easy shiny OS on it. There is still UNIX shit there, but it's hidden unless you are a pro and choose to unlock it. Everything is GUI based, all apps are binary, etc, etc.
Now the thing is this may not really be the road we want Linux to go down. You make tradeoffs to do that. Some of the things that maek Linux so attractive for geeks are the very things that need to go if it's going to become truly mass market.
DOS was learned by me because it ran games. And it gave me more speed than booting into Windows did, for most things, and thus the DOS file system and commands are burned into my brain, before UNIX ones were.
Linux has to take this fact - people learn something one way, and don't like to learn how to do it a different way unless they are forced to or are very curious. Linux has to force people to move, by providing killer aps, that every kid wants. They need GAMES, and INSTANT MESSENGERS that blow the pants off of anything on a Windows box, and then we'll see mainstream Linux on the Desktops in 10 years when these kids are buying their own computers for University.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
"Socially, the vacuum was created by greed.
...
A friend of mine told me he thinks that if Microsoft released just 10% of the roughly $2 BILLION in CASH (does not include other assets) to help curb diseases and help starvation, many people could be helped."
I was uneasy reading this OP/Ed piece. But once I got to the "social" problem, I stopped reading. So, what charitable organization has the one of the largest endowments in the world? That would be the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that has an endowment of roughly $29 billion. And what do they focus on? Global health problems like HIV/AIDS in Africa and education.
So only Microsoft should be held to this lofty standard of donating 10% of its cash to help the needy? Why not every company? Why shouldn't Ford donate 10% of its cash hoard (~$10 billion). What about Apple's $6 billion cash hoard? Or what about ordinary people? Why don't we require everyone to donate 10% of their savings account? Because Micro$oft is evil and should give back? As soon as I read this I knew this op/ed piece was a waste.
BeOS was pretty far ahead of the PC's and Mac's of its time frame, especially in the audio/video fields. I remeber it could handle (at that time) enourmous file size maniuplation with ease. Nice graphics, booted fast, ran on lots of hardware.. But it DIED , because they didnt have the money !money == !market share
"When they invent bitch slaps that can go through a monitor you better f'ing duck" --deft (253558)
'Only question now is not if but when will Linux become the number one OS on earth?'"
Sorry but it is not going to happen. Linux needs to grow away from MS and stop comparing itself to it. The more I read about how Linux can compare to MS (let alone 25 years ago) just leads me to believe more and more that Linux will keep copying Windows until Microsoft goes out of business. What happens then?
If Linux is to come out on top it needs to be more innovative and less whiny about Microsoft. Seriously. The entire "whine" (TM) factor needs to go the way of the dodo. It is a great turnoff to those of us that are considering Linux but are reluctant to leave MS.
You list no such deceit or treachery.
Actually, what he is referring to is very well known.
Then, Gates bought PC-DOS from Seattle Computer Products.
Nothing treacherous or deceitful about that.
Actually, it was. You see, after Bill's parents (IBM board members) got him his chance, he had only one problem. He DIDN'T HAVE THE OPERATING SYSTEM HE TOLD IBM HE HAD. Got it? He lied.
He needed an operating system quick, and he managed to locate a CPM86 clone that was intended for embedded systems. That's why DOS was so primitive. They did a band-aid patch job and passed it off as the operating system that they had promised IBM but didn't actually have.
Of course, you probably are aware of this, you just want to act as an apologist for Bill Gates. No matter how slimy somebody is, so long as they are successful they have people who defend them as if using lies, undue influence, and deception were unimportant so long as at the end you are rich rather than in jail.
Linux is not a clone of Minix/Unix. In the case of Minix, the architecture is completely different, and as to Unix, that's a big world with a lot of OSs that follow certain guidelines. Unless you mean something different by "clone" than the rest of the world.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
i call bullshit. he died a multimillionaire after selling his company to novell. it sounds like he's just jealous that gates didn't brush off ibm.
"And it runs on everything from a wristwatch to a mainframe."
Is this the watch from Spy Kids II that has so much functionality it can do everything but tell time?
Seriously, I'm sure your point was that Linux can run with minimal resources, but a wristwatch that just tells time needs an OS about as much as toilet paper does.
As a point of comparison, the Atari 2600 had 128 bytes of RAM, no ROM, no interrupts and game cartridges that could be 4K max (unless there was bank-switching hardware in the cartridge). When Linux can run with those kind of resources, I'll be impressed.
Kildall died rich. Choosing to be bitter is still a choice. and a self-destructive one at that.
Actually IBM came to Gates first, hoping they could get MS-BASIC and CPM. At that point Microsoft was selling as many copies of CPM-80 as DRI because of their CPM Soft-Card for the Apple II. However, Microsoft couldn't transfer its CPM license, so Gates sent IBM on to Kildall. Kildall was initially unavailable, so his wife met with the IBM reps. She and the company lawyer were quite reasonably put off by IBM's onerous non-disclosure agreement and decided not to take the risk of signing. Eventually Kildall did meet with IBM but couldn't agree on a deal. See for example Fire in the Valley This doesn't sound terribly unethical to me: Microsoft was simply willing to assume a risk that DRI wasn't.
Only in the same sense that "Linus Torvalds stole the ideas of UNIX and created a free clone of it. Linux was that clone". Are you alleging that Patterson lifted copyrighted code from CPM? Do you have any evidence of that? And of course Dr. Kildall derived many of CPM's features from DEC operating sytems.
Dr. Kildall's death was very sad, and he was a great contributer to the software industry. However, at the time of the IBM deal DRI was a well established company, and IBM did sell CPM-86 for the IBM PC as well as MS-DOS. Dr. Kildall did make quite a bit of money when DRI was sold to Novell. See for example Gary Kildall.
Why is it I can do "rename *.one *.two" in Dos, but in Unix "mv *.one *.two" destroys all my files?
(Yes I *do* know why)
Can't we all just agree that the Wikipedia knows all things?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal
Then, Gates bought PC-DOS from Seattle Computer Products.
Nothing treacherous or deceitful about that.
Yes there is. When Gates promised IBM an OS, he didn't have one and didn't have access to enough talent (his or others) to quickly develop one. Seattle Computer Products was two steps from bankruptcy and desparate for cash. Gates bought the rights to DOS from them for a song. He filed off anything not identifying it as his own work and presented it to IBM as a "Microsoft OS".
Unix might have been blessed as a standard, but it was still under control of AT&T and later Novell. Before Linux there was only one complete independant implementation of Unix, and that was some mainframe shit that used EDBIC instead of ASCII.
FWIW, DOS wasn't a exact clone of CP/M, especially so by v2.
Maybe Linux should try to be more like Apple? /flame on //reads too much fark
DOS was a helluva lot closer to CP/M than Linux was to Minix.
Gates's and Allen's real technical acheivement was not the BASIC interpreter (though that was the product), it was writing a 8080 emulator that was good enought that machine code developed on it actually ran correctly on the MITS Altair.
In "Triumph of the Nerds" it was revealed that IBM only had an Apple II with a MS Softcard running "Microsoft CP/M". So IBM was so clueless that didn't even know that MS was just reselling CP/M, and Bill Gates had to give them Digital Research's contact information.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I prefer Linux, so if other people use it too:
* I can sit down at a normal machine and find Firefox, OpenOffice 2, xchat, etc.
* I might get PPC drivers for my broadcom wireless card
* I could get more games and other nifty software for Linux
* I could get better support from my vendor
* I also work in Linux related areas, an an increase in demand would mean I could get more jobs for better money.
Bill Gates is and was a ruthless competitor. The two companies in the best position to usurp the rise of DOS were IBM and Apple. But they both lacked the vision and sat on their hands while the evil empire took over.
Posting opinions on Slashdot is the geek equivalent of talking about politics in a bar. Neither actually change anything unless your a fascist dictator looking for easily lead goons.
I'm not just a troll, I'm a drunken troll.
Linux is really boring from an os standpoint. Now Plan 9......
"It's not if, it's when Linux will..." and finish the quote with some audacious goal.
Linux will help me get laid.
I am fairly certain that this is the article that I read a while ago which made me think a little differently about Bill Gates.
s tory_id=3598414
http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?
The article on reallylinux really accuses Microsoft of being entirely greedy and having nothing to do with philanthropy. Well, although there might be quite a bit of truth behind the first statement, Gates' money is Microsoft money (came with Microsoft's success), and he has done a lot of good things with it.
It is interesting because if this money was not all in one set of hands I have my doubts that this much of it would have been put towards use in this way. Essentially, Microsoft has taken other's potential money through monopoly and done what it pleases with it. In this particular case it has played the "benevolent" dictator and done something good with the money. What are the ethics behind a situation like this?
"Which is a perfectly fine business strategy, but you won't get 90% marketshare that way."
Well as Linux will soon find out. Success isn't the bed of roses people think it is. And 90% is 75% worse.
Yes my UID is prime, thank you. I'm very proud of it.
LC.
Maybe I've been an Apple Customer too long to "keep the faith", but Apple has always been about providing value on the high end, and, well, ummm, (don't mod me down), crippling the low end. Which is not to say either the LC was or the Mini is a bad computer, just that it's engineered to keep it into certain market segments.
The thing about the open IBM-compatible market is that if a company gets too jealous of their margins, someone else will knock them off. This happened to IBM, Compaq, and others.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
He DIDN'T HAVE THE OPERATING SYSTEM HE TOLD IBM HE HAD. Got it? He lied.
Nothing deceitful or treacherous about that. People lie and exaggerate to get contracts every day in the business world. That's why you write a damn contract.
They did a band-aid patch job and passed it off as the operating system that they had promised IBM but didn't actually have.
So they managed to deliver the product they were under contract to deliver anyway? Then there's absolutely nothing wrong. Because IBM (those who were lied to) obviously didn't think so.
Actually, I'd say both were about content.
- DOS had the business apps like Lotus 123 that better systems, like Amiga and MacOS lacked.
- The porn industry almost totally used VHS. Remember, there's more pornographic films sold to households than non-porn films.
Which actually bodes quite well for Linux. Good apps are suddenly things like Firefox, Evolution (which will get a few eyeballs when the Win32 version comes out) and Openoffice 2 (which I think will get a few more eyeballs with it's new-to-OpenOffice 'doesn't suck' feature).
That's so not what happened it's not even funny. You probably don't know because you weren't there. Just like kids think their teachers live at school, someone who wasn't around in the early days of computers think Microsoft was always a huge multi-national corporation.
//gs, swapping out a dozen 3.5" floppies an hour. Then my parents got an IBM PS/1. They called me up and asked me to come over and help them set it up. I thought they were so stupid to get a "PC", I really didn't even want to go, I'd been telling them to get a Mac and they go out and by some stupid "PC"!
Microsoft and Apple started this game of global Monopoly pretty much at the same time. Apple bought Boardwalk, Park Place, Electric Company, and Water Works. They started building hotels and figured that was all they would ever need to amass their empire. Meanwhile Microsoft bought up all the low rent properties and waited for rent to start trickling in to build any houses.
In the early 90's Apple was way out in front in terms of product quality, but Microsoft had basically already won with the land grab. It was merely a matter of time. When Apple killed the ][ line they gave the electric company and water works to MS.
I remember very clearly the first "PC" I ever owned. I'd been lusting after a Mac for years and years, while putting along on my Apple
Man that thing was sweet! It's hard to imagine it now looking back, but that PS/1 had everything I'd ever dreamed of a computer having. I went from a Mac dreamboi to Windows user in 8.4 seconds, well, I bought my own PS/1 a week later.
For the next several years I upgraded every year. Every year I would seriously consider getting a Mac. Every year I would buy a PC because the price difference was very large while and the feature set was not.
Now I own a bunch of PCs and a couple Macs, I'm writing this on an iBook. I've got a few Linux/XP dual booting systems, but honestly Linux doesn't see much boot time anymore.
Linux could easily be number one. If Linux gave people what they get on Mac and Windows they would be number one. It would take the Linux community coming together to make one great product and throwing out the mindset of being proud that you are able to use Linux. Nobody brags about being able to use Windows or Mac OS, they just use it.
Maybe, but Linus still "stole" the Minix filesystem design and other unstealable things.
Is this an urban myth or reality?
"Nothing deceitful [...] about that."
That's where the business mentality get you. There's nothing deceitful about lying! Just look at Enron!
Man, I could've sworn I read of a lawsuit filed against Microsoft way back when, claiming that Q-DOS, and by extension MS-DOS, plagiarized CP/M. As evidence, references to CP/M in a dump of DOS binaries were shown. The lawsuit was thrown out because it could not be proven that Microsoft knew they were buying a plagiarized product.
Can't remember where or when I read this, and I have to believe somebody would've mentioned it by now if it were true.
Aside from running specific apps that haven't been ported to Linux yet, name anything that Windows can do that Linux cannot.
Linux is quickly taking over the server market segment so SOMEONE has to like the Linux approach.
I'm typeing this on Ubuntu and Windows is behind on ease of use.
Surprise! Linux both technically better AND easier to use now.
Remember, it's easier to make a stable and secure platform easy to use than it is to make an unstable/insecure platform stable and secure, no matter how easy it is for the end user to use.
Linux will take the server market first.
Then it will take the corporate/government desktop.
Only then will it take the home user desktop (if such still exists then).
Before IBM came to the scene, you mean about 1850 or so Apple was doing these innovative things? Check your calendar.
What keeps me going is my inertia.
I'm not saying that Gnome and Kde are a bad thing. In fact they're both very useful. What I'm trying to say is that there isn't very many "new" applications being created that only run in Linux. If a graphic designer were to move from Windows or Mac to Linux they could use The Gimp instead of Photoshop. An accountant could use GNUCash instead of Quickbooks. They'd be loosing features and usability but those issues are being sorted out. I'd imagine if Doom III or Half Life 2 came out on Linux first and then Windows later, if there was interest ;), there would be a flood of gamers who'd switch to Linux. If Photoshop came out for Linux first and then got ported to Windows a few years later, Linux would be the defacto graphics design os.
What I'm trying to say is Linux needs a killer app. That Magic App X that everyone needs but doesn't exist on any other operating system. Something that would take months or years to reimplement on Windows, Mac or Operating System X.
Linux is really boring from an os standpoint. Now Plan 9......
The whole idea behind the Mac Mini is that people already have monitor, mouse, and keyboard with their PC, so they just plug in a Mac Mini and switch over to Mac and OS-X. OK, the monitor plugs into the video port, the mouse and keyboard each plug into a USB port, so where do you put the printer?
I suggested, "get a hub" and my friend retorted that was the whole point. If the freakin' thing came out with 4 USB ports, he would get one, he would tell his friends to get one, but now he is just rolling his eyes.
Yeah, yeah, the thing is only $499, but that is just a gimmick because you have to accessorize it to do anything useful. It is kind of like the old Detroit gimmick that you could get a Chevy for some good price but that was without A/C, P/B, P/S, and a bunch of stuff to make the care usable (you could sweat out the no A/C, but there came a point when car designs were such that the "stripper" car that the dealer had one-of on his lot to get newspaper ad customers in the door was undrivable without P/B P/S).
So as to your notion that Apple has engineered the Mini to stay in certain market segments, you have a lot of agreement from my friend.
That's not as clear as you make it out to be, actually. The "look and feel" were certainly copied, and there are signs that the implementation was little more than a binary port from 8080/8085 to 8086/8088 code. Then there's the easter egg. Why would Tim Patterson put an easter egg into his own code that popped up Kildall's name and a copyright notice? Gary Kildall never sued, but that doesn't mean copyright violation did not occur. If SCP modified CP/M and distributed the result without a license allowing them to do so (which would have included the BSD license, to address the analogy to Linux vs. UNIX) then they were in the wrong.
More importantly, though, no matter how you slice it neither Patterson nor Gates invented much of anything. At best they had a clean but utterly unoriginal and strikingly similar implementation of functionality that already existed. Linus's implementation of a UNIX-like OS was original even if some of the concepts weren't, creating another point of distinction between the two cases, but it remains the case that both the AT&T and UCB groups did far more original work than he did. The whole structure that Linux uses of processes and memory spaces, pipes and signals, how drivers and filesystems etc. interact, and so on owe far more to their ingenuity than to his (and let's not forget Tanenbaum either). That doesn't mean they can lay claim to his original implementation, but let's give credit where credit is due. The whole point of Linux is that it's a collaborative effort, and those predecessors (unlike SCO) were an essential part of that effort. CP/M was not such an effort, was never intended to be, was not licensed as such, and so copies of CP/M at any level take on a very different character.
To use your own charming phrase, this is all so bloody obvious that only a total moron would question it. Instead of just being a prick, go educate yourself.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
Actually thats not correct. IBM went to Kildall and tried to bully him into signing over so much of the rights to CPM as part of the deal that he refused. He himself suggested they talk to Bill G, in the end neither were willing to sign it all over to IBM so it struck a deal with both of them offering to let the market decided which was best. The IBM machines could be bought by Joe Public with either CPM or DOS. Kildall foolishly assumed this meant they would be priced the same and that the market would decide. At the time CPM was considered to be the "Serious" option of the two, and IBM added CPM as an option but for $250 ish extra. DOS as the less hardcore version was a mere $30. The market voted with its wallet.
Mark this flamebait/troll, what-ever. anyway...
When someone says: "What Linux?" the reply is usually something like "SuSE/Novell, Slackware, Mandrake, Connective, Mandiva, Redhat/Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu" etc.
So, can any one person see what the problem is with the hundreds of different Linux distributions?
I know and a few others do to, that Linux is truly only a Kernel.
Linux has the power to become a true alternative operating system to Windows. Notice I say operating system, not distribution here. One
company could re-shape the computing industry quite easily by using Linux in a similar way another company has used open source software
since beyond 1999 to bring them-selves to what they are today (that same company has one of the most desirable portable devices today which many try to imitate and fail).
The only downside to this is that that same company that takes a huge chunk of the computer world dominated by Windows, they also need to be able support more then just ones-self. Killing Microsoft is easier then you think; have you thought about the consequences it incurs?
because by destroying Microsoft, you also destroy a lot of big, medium and small companies at the same time and a lot more besides, although
not necessarily a bad thing as I think the computer world could do with such a radical shake-up.
back to the subject: 25 Years After DOS - Lessons for Linux?
Linux could and should learn more from DOS, although not just DOS, other failed & succesful operating systems too.
/. is good for you.
Actually, that's what deceit is.
DOS applications, despite being shell driven have long had friendly "drop down" style menus.
The new *nix shell editor ne has such menus:
http://ne.dsi.unimi.it/
I think such menus in emacs, vi, and other shell apps would make those apps a lot more friendly.
It's true that any OSS app written could be ported (I personally use The Gimp on Windows from time to time) but they run perfect on just a recompile. The Cygwin libraries are nice but they do add overhead and not all windowing libraries work right on different platforms (gaim had some weird window resizing issues on Windows that never seem to happen on Linux). Except for apps written in java or mono, oss apps that were originally written for Linux and then ported over always seem to be a little behind when compared to the native versions. It works both ways thou, native Windows apps ported to Linux seem to suffer from issues too.
;)
What I'm advocating is the dreaded Vendor Lock In (tm). Something that only works on Linux. Something new and so cool you'd be stupid not to use and would take forever to port or recreate anywhere else.
I'm starting to believe that my ex was right, I am a jerk
Linux is really boring from an os standpoint. Now Plan 9......
That's true, but when the options were "CP/M-86" and "IBM PC DOS", it implied that DOS was the preferable choice for your IBM PC.
We linux dudes are a Niche market. Just like Apple. We'll grow like them. And until we've outgrown apple, we're still a FUCKIN NICHE MARKET.
Now get over it.
And did i mention I run Linux whereever i can? I keep my opinion, Linux is a NICHE market.
This is my opinion. Everyone has a right to my opinion.
Everything you described is perfectly legit business.
Buying a company and its IP for a song is perfectly justifiable if that company can't sell its product. Having a good product and lacking the ability to sell it makes a company almost as worthless as having no product at all. Having technology or resources but not the capital or expertise to bring them to market is a very common problem with small companies in all industries.
Gates had the expertise necessary to market the product he fairly purchased. Having his company's name and logo on the product is completely reasonable.
Having hundreds of distros doesn't thin things out any more than having hundreds of newspapers - after all with a bit of stuffing around you can even install packages from the 1996 slackware 2.0 onto a 2005 fedora core 3 - depite them being wildly different distros. You can install the required libraries from 1996 alongside the more recent ones and the old package will work. It doesn't really matter much is a distro disappears.
There is a community of people who think that some kind of 'nix underneath with a glitzy UI on top to satisfy the folks who require that kind of thing (OS-X and to a lesser extent the Linux distributions teamed up with either KDE or Gnome) is the best of both worlds. It is an article of faith that 'nix is the best foundation to build whatever kind of point-and-click thing is necessary to win over the end user, and even if Microsoft were not the Evil Empire, the Microsoft OS's are considerate second rate compared to Unix.
My understanding is that Bill Gates had not only looked at Unix but had a Xenix offering for the PC at one time or another (there is a James Burke style of "connections" to SCO and the SCO/Linux dustup). Microsoft put its toe in the Unix waters, but its customers were not clamoring for Unix on the PC (this was long before MS was the Evil Empire). Given their license arrangements, they could have gone the route of a 'nix for their advanced products (Windows 95 and beyond) but for some reason decided they weren't interested.
Was their some technical reason for Microsoft going with Unix early on, or was it a matter of preference or prejudice?
What you miss is that Seattle Computing and Tim Patterson could never have sold their OS to IBM in a million years. Nor could they compete with Digital Research. What they had was worthless (to them).
The DOS deal did in fact keep SCP in business, and they eventually sold their stake in DOS back to MS for millions of dollars. Tim Patterson was an early MS employee and is probably worth tens of millions. None of these people are complaining, why are you?
Seattle Computing had the right to ship free copies of all successor versions of DOS. By the late 80s, this right was worth tons of money to someone like Compaq. Eventually there was a lawsuit and MS bought them out.
This from "Hard Drive", a history of Microsoft.
That or a Linux only system that completely runs your Big Brother systems. Linux controlled Secret Robot Police and GNU Re-education Centers.
;)
That would be cool. Let's see Microsoft try making that run on Windows XP
Linux is really boring from an os standpoint. Now Plan 9......
These articles claiming that Linux will be the number one operating system are always unsubstantiated. What does number one mean anyway? If we're talking about user base, Linux hasn't made a dent in the home user base, and there are plenty of other unix variants that are used for business networks. The so-called "vacuum" that which the author refers is not exclusive to Linux. Several OSes can fill the spot of Linux in any environment. In fact, there are better alternatives, like FreeBSD (less restrictive license, easier learning curve, etc). It's hard to take this article seriously when the author is only promoting GNU.
Windows had a very difficult install - a whole raft of disks in the pre-CD ROM days, and I believe there were some configuration issues. DOS was based on the principle that it was very simple to boot, very simple to write to-the-metal games programs right to the graphics card. Windows was based on the principle of getting it pre-installed on computers so users wouldn't even have to know how to install it.
The DOS/Windows dichotomy was such that for the longest time games would be DOS based. Microsoft made a big push to get the DOS games over to Windows with the WinG and later DirectX initiatives. There is a lot of Windows stuff to make it 2-D game friendly -- ScrollWindowEx() (hardware assisted scroll), CreateDIBSection() (allowed porting stuff that wrote to the frame buffer to Windows), and IDirectDraw::WaitForVerticalBlank() (allows flicker-free, tear-free scrolls and screen updates). I have a serious case of Windows lock-in because I depend on these calls and can't find them on other systems.
> > > He lied.
> > >
> > Nothing deceitful or treacherous about that.
> >
> Actually, that's what deceit is.
To quote an ex-US President: "It depends on what your definition of 'is' is".
DOS must have been the best at SOMETHING, because it eventually prevailed in the end.
And, honestly, in terms of design, I don't think linux is that good. I don't think BSD is all that good either. Windows is awful too.
In my mind, Unix is overcomplicated and antiquated. Why can't we design a system with the needs of modern home computers in mind rather than mainframes in the 70s? Hell. We're still using the TTY acronym to describe a terminal (TTY=TeleTYpe machine). Unix is a definite case of too many cooks spoiling the broth.
Granted, steps are being taken in the right direction -- the abandoning of the traditional Unix Filesystem, apple's amazingly cool launchd, etc... but the fact remains is that it's all too complicated and obfuscated. The fact that we're complaining about the lack of a good packaging system points to a serious flaw in that Unix is the only type of system that NEEDS this sort of thing.
In the 80s, there was tons of diversity in the OS marketplace. There was DOS, MacOS, Unix, and all the other failed OSes. It looks like Unix won out simply because it already had an established market, and, hey... it's owned by ma' bell. The only successful newcomer to the OS scene in the past 15 years has been NT. How sad is THAT?
I really don't think we should be looking at linux, but, instead, looking at (creating) other operating systems that take advantage of all modern features (build the GUI into the underlying OS, a logical approach to hardware support, sensible APIs, etc.) while also maximizing simplicity. This CAN be done!
Just look at the number of failed OS pet projects. There are so many out there that never made it simply for lack of developer support in favor of the lurking hulk that Unix has become. Don't get me wrong, I think some wonderful things have been done with Linux/BSD and I commend those developers, but I think it is time to move on. It's a miracle that something as complicated as Linux/Unix even WORKS, let alone works WELL. The size and complexity of Unix is snowballing rapidly, and it's time for consolidation and simplification. The open source community has already proven that it has been able to keep the antiquated hulk of unix working well all these years, and it's time that it proves that it can create something even BETTER from scratch (and while we're at it, let's abandon X-windows and destroy the concept of a 'separate' GUI all together)
BeOS has been jumping out in my mind as I write this post as one such OS. It got lots of stuff right from the start. It was built upon sensible principles, supported as much hardware as the small development team could allow, and was FAST as hell. Perhaps more importantly, it was the only operating system that wasn't explicitly written to imitate another previous operating system (I'll acknowledge that MacOS was a big influence, but BE certainly wasn't a derivative work). It also wasn't written by a group of researchers, but by a business with a proper marketing department that knew what attributes could be changed to imporove the concept of the Operating System. Microsoft and apple have both done this to some degree of success, but, likewise, NT was built to be compatible with Win9x which was built to be compatible with DOS, and OSX was built to be compatible with Darwin/NextSTEP. The only real OS that was built from scratch by non-academics that achieved some degree of success was MacOS Classic which was revolutionary in its day.
Unless an open-source OS can be written from scratch and throw all the crap from the past out, we're not going to replace the Commercial OS market anytime soon. I for one do think that open-source will be important in the future, not as a political idea (it fits in nicely with communism and fascism), but simply because it has the potential to throw away the past and start from scratch and create something revolutionary. Linux was a me-too Operating system to imitate Minix/Unix. It will always be lurking in the past of the gigantic steel IBM mainframes. Open Source may be the future. Unix will not.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
it wont win, it cant win. You think you are the babelfish, but your really vogon poetry.
From your link: "Patterson, tired of waiting for a version of CP/M for the 8086, cloned it."
It is not bloody obvious that cloning is synonymous with copying. In fact, referencing your link again, it's not clear that the easter egg was even present, because we're hearing about it third hand without any details from a disreputable (Dvorak).
DOS may indeed have been a derivative copyied/stolen from CP/M, but it's not bloody obvious. However, naming a building after Gates instead of Kildall *is* bloody obvious, because naming buildings after financial patrons is a thousand year old tradition in universities, while naming them after operating system authors is not.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Wow! Talk about lying! You've taken the words "he lied" and made it seem like they were in my post. But there were not. Neither were they in the post I resonded to. You are putting false words in other people's mouths. You are the one who is deceitful and treacherous. You are the one who lied.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
IBM had a business computing monopoly. IBM backed MS-DOS over CP/M and USCD P-system. Bill G was able to steal IBM's monopoly from under them, partly because IBM underestimated the potential for "personal" computer, and other companies' capacity for reverse engineering their BIOS.
What you are suggesting actually goes against the letter and spirit of the GPL. Reading through your posts on this thread, it would appear that you are trying to say that Linux needs a killer app that is only available on Linux; once that happens, Linux will become the killer OS. However, due to the GPL and similar licenses that Linux and it's applications are released under, there is absolutely nothing stopping anyone from porting that "killer app" to any other OS, including Windows, the day the source code is released. It's the nature of the beast and it's a good one.
Lesson Learned, thanks!
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
Dang, you almost got it right.
... one of the FOSS fucks has to beat me to the punch with some of the 'M$ is evil!!!11' or 'Linux is perfectly poised to fill this gaping vacuum created by potential greed' bullshit.
... all I care about is working in the most appropriate environment given what I need to do - and that's all my corporate sponsors care about also - and all the super-zealots striking fear into the evil BillG from their parent's basements are fucking things up for me.
... nigga please.
...
I use Linux at home, I use it at work, and it would probably have a much better time permeating my workplace if I wasn't afraid to be associated with the insane clown posse, aka those dumb ass 'software has to be FREE' or 'Micro$oft is evil!!' motherfuckers.
Every time I walk into a meeting ready to propose a way to be even more effective doing development for applications running in production on AIX machines, wanting to propose Linux on Intel as the development platform
Holy fucking mother of God. Guess what - I work for an insurance company and we make a boatload of money. They honestly could give a damn about the $100 per seat (corporate licensing agreements) for Windows, nor could I
Here's the real score:
Linux is free.
Windows 2000 is free too, because all you leet haxors pirate it.
Linux runs OO as an office suite and Evolution 2.0 via Ximian to connect to corporate email. Come to think of it, OWA works pretty good on Firefox also. In all reality, OO and Evolution are pretty cool as a proof of concept but still
Windows has Outlook, in fact it has the entire Office suite. Free, too, cause admit it or not, all you fuckers are pirating Office too.
Linux as installed out of the box doesn't play Everquest I or II, HalfLife I or II or CounterStrike. I have heard that it may or may not play Doom III or UT2004, dunno how well that works. Installing Windows emulators to get this shit to work doesn't count.
Windows - plays everything except maybe TuxRacer.
Linux - great for developing and testing shell scripts for my AIX boxes.
Windows - not.
Linux - WSAD 5.1.2, works nice.
Windows - me too.
Linux zealots : for fucks sake, shut the hell up.
Windows zealots : MSCE army with organized education plans.
Lets get real : assume that everybody else pirated Windows just like you so it is free too. Want to compete, want to be taken seriously - drop the 'software wants to be FREE' shit and focus on the actual parts that are better : stability, licensing and registration hassles (because that re-registration in XP is a serious hassle), whatever.
My company could care less about the actual dollar figure of a given copy of the OS, but if you calmly point out that Linux can be installed on a new machine without bothersome licensing restrictions or documenting and tracking that each and every machine has a legitimate license - that's a double whammy win for both parties. A hundred dollars is NOTHING compared to the corporate costs associated with actually tracking the license of the OS from installation to retirement.
Saying something (software) is 'free' in the corporate world is like saying a woman 'has a nice personality.'
Saying something (software) can be installed on corporate hardware without being burdened by licensing restrictions is like saying a woman 'is bi-curious and wants to have you participate in the experience.'
Guess which one is more appealing.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
IBM's $39.95 DOS while CP/M was $450 and UCSD p-System was $550. http://pcworld.about.com/magazine/1908p133id52503. htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_bloc
You can have an open source project that's gpled that is very difficult to port. If you don't write it in a scripting language like perl or python and use kernel calls instead of generic libraries you could have the source be open to all but not very portable. Case in point: Rosegarden.
Rosegarden is a gpled sound sequencer for Linux that's tied to a very low level audio library. To make a port to windows they'd have to rewrite large parts of the system which would destroy the speed of the app for limited portability.
Other ways to make porting a bitch is to write parts of the app in assembly. The system calls for Windows and Linux are worlds apart. The program could be completely open source under the gpl which anyone could look at but 95% of Linux USERS wouldn't be able to understand while looking right at it. Not very nice but even that's not required. Just use a library like ALSA and your pretty much stuck with Linux (unless someone ports ALSA, but I'm not sure that'll ever happen).
It's the nature of the beast and it killed my social life but paid my rent.
Linux is really boring from an os standpoint. Now Plan 9......
You completely miss the point of the way Free software works.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
The article reads like a blog and the author seems to rant a bit. The annecdotal evidence really doesn't help to make any point. Evidently, the author of the article clearly didn't learn anything about DOS programs.
Also, someone has posted that there are more DOS programs than Windows programs. That has no relevance to whether DOS or Windows was more accepted by developers. Since a very high percentage of anything Linux/UNIX related can be retrofited to run on my Windows box, as well as some very professional Windows programs (Photoshop is just one such), and quantity != quality, I really think Windows was a much bigger success.
You see, people complain about copied ideas in the commercial space (like DOS, which in fact copied certain elements to be compatible with the more predominant OS and simplified others), while the same people are often cheering on the EFF. OK, now, copyright law is quite stringent about ideas (and trademarks, etc.) and the people who complained about theft of ideas in the 70s-90s still complain about lack of freedom.
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
I should have been more clear. What I ment was Windows 98 and below on a Dos kernel. And Kde and Gnome have the same amount of functionality (note: not just usablity) of Windows 98.
And for the record you can skin the hell out of Windows as well as have virtual desktops.
Linux is really boring from an os standpoint. Now Plan 9......
From 'Show Stopper': "Unix is like Cutler's lifelong foe," said one team member who'd worked with Cutler for nearly two decades. "It's like his Moriarty [Sherlock Holmes's nemesis]. He thinks Unix is a junk operating system designed by a committee of Ph.D.s. There's never been one mind behind the whole thing, and it shows, so he's always been out to get Unix. But this is the first time he's had the chance." Cutler has kept a very low profile since that book was written about him and Win NT.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_bloc
worse is better
'nuff said
Sadly, it doesn't matter to non-tech software users if your software is built following all software best practices and comes loaded with amazingly rich, powerful and flexible features.
All it matters for non-tech users is that software does its job efficiently, doesn't come in the way and is right on their budget.
Eg: most FF users don't care about standards-compliance ("what the f*** does that mean ?") or even to tabbed-browsing ("ok, now i'm lost!"). They use it because it allows them to surf the web with less annoying popups and the confidence in its security hype.
worse is indeed better and M$ has proved it over time and again...
I don't feel like it...
The inside of the building is dotted with conference rooms named after Japanese companies.
If we were to name the building on the sole basis of amount of donations, then the building should properly be called "The Japanese Friendship Building". If we were to name the building after the person who made the single greatest contribution to operating systems for microcomputers, then the building should be named "Gary Kildall Memorial Building".
The problem is that the parent article is either a shill for Microsoft or a person trolling for mod points. Moderators, please do your job and mod this nut down to -1.
Why does it have to be Linux? Why Windows? I would bet good money that the "number one OS on Earth" will be neither of the two.
Unix and its early variants, around for about 30 years, are quickly losing share to Linux. DOS only had a 20-year shelf-life. Windows, around now in various forms for about 15 years, is probably going to give-way soon to another major evolution in OS. Linux, too, probably will go away to be replaced by something better. It's just a matter of time.
But to say that "Linux will become the number one OS on Earth" is a bit like a mother claiming her child is the best actress of all time, just undiscovered at the moment.
OSS zealots need to be less focused on smashing Microsoft and their self-claimed superiority, and more focused on solving the problems that are limiting their market-share.
Either that, or - as someone earlier stated - focus on a niche that Linux can properly serve and stick with that.
-David
Your parent poster is right. Linux is a Unix clone, as per the general meaning of that word in computing.
> Unless you mean something different by "clone" than the rest of the world.
Most people are comfortable using the word "clone" to describe 'work alikes', and not just systems that share source code.
- You can see this if you google for "Linus Unix clone".
- Andrew Tanenbaum calls Minix "a minimal UNIX clone", (though he didn't use any AT&T UNIX source)
- Linus' initial usenet posting called Linux "a minix-lookalike". At the time, Linux was quite depedant on Minix, needing Minix sources to compile (though no Minix source was used in Linux).
- Linux was also a Minix (and hence a Unix) 'work alike'. In the same post, Linus expressed interest in reusing existing code written for Minix, for Linux: I'm also interested in hearing from anybody who has written any of the utilities/library functions for minix. If your efforts are freely
distributable (under copyright or even public domain), I'd like to hear from you, so I can add them to the system.
- The parent post qualified his statement, saying DOS was "a clone of CPM/86, in EXACTLY the same way Linus Torvalds created a clone of Minix/Unix."
It was not just simple, but darn simple and made it possible for the genius and the technophobe to achieve the same results: operating a PC. That's sort of exactly the problem. An ideal OS should allow a genius and a technophobe to achieve different results (even if it does allow the technophobe to operate a PC)...
Telltale Games: Bone, Sam and Max
Unfortunately for your example, customers have many, many definitions of "in their own interest".
One may, for example, assume a "smart" customer would choose a superior OS like... OS X. Or Linix. Or whatever.
However, they also consider other questions like... How much it is? Is it already installed so I don't have to mess with it? Do I have to relearn everything? While it run my existing software? Will it work on my computer? Is Half-Life 2 available for it? And so on.
Thus what you might consider to be a "stupid" choice may make sense to those who make it, because that choice best reflected their needs, their budget, their skill level, and/or their ability to change.
Sum up the majority of those decisions, and you have the dominant market force.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Gary Kildall had created CPM/86, and it was an outstanding product that incorporated modern techniques of operating systems.
Quite possibly it is better-engineered than PC-DOS was, but CP/M-86 does NOT 'incorporate modern techniques of operating systems.'
I've installed CP/M-86 on one of the old Kaypros in my collection of Old hardware. It's functionally about as 'powerful' as PC-DOS, though there are darn few binaries to run on it. It doesn't have subdirectories, and hard drive partitions are limited to 6 MB. Which is better than PC-DOS 1.0 which didn't have default support for a hard drive at ALL.
But where do you get this 'incorproated modern techniques of operating systems' notion from? Neither were very leading-edge in that regard. Remember, Xenix was already on the market. I even have an 8086 Xenix machine in my collection that's from the same era. Now *that* system incorporated modern techniques for the time...
Which had animal that were supposed to be cows. When IBM saw them they asked about the donkey game, so Micro-Soft changed the name.
Bill Gates coded the Word Processor, written in 8085 Assembly Language, in the Tandy Model 100, arguably the first mainstream Laptop computer ever produced. I understand he hasn't touched code since then, but since this means he was hacking assembly language before a lot of the people reading this forum had even been born......
Now, if you want to talk about a 'Personal Computer Wunderkid' who has never, ever, written a line of code, you want Steve Jobs.
Huh? CP/M on the microbee was an 8-bit OS, for the 8080 microprocessor. MS-DOS was a 16-bit OS for the 8086 processor. You were bound to a 64K memory space. The 8086 has a 1M memory space.
It would be helpful if you would enumerate some of these 'every respects' in which it was vastly superior.
I liked CP/M mostly because it loaded so fast. There were several tracks at the front of each diskette that were reserved for the operating system (so you might as well run SYSGEN and have the OS on every program diskette.) My practice with my two-drive system was to keep data in the second drive, and switch programs in the first drive. The technique was: insert program disk. Push reset button to reboot system and load new program.
From your points, it seems to me you're aguing we should throw away a clean, separate, modular processing model in favor of a highly monolithic, bloated, "integrated" operating environment. GUIs in kernel space?! Infidel!
While current, modern trend is to put as little as possible into the kernel ( _the_ OS per se ) and even tradicionally kernel-space stuff like filesystems out of the way, you seem to argue that we should do exactly the contrary...
no way.
I don't feel like it...
Are you surrounded by IBM-compatible machines or Lenovo-compatible machines?
It is so annoying when people screw up telling a perfectly good urban legend. Neither Mary Gates nor Bill Gates Jr. was ever on the board of IBM. Mary Gates was on the board of United Way. The legend was that there were some IBM executives also on the board of United Way at the time. Supposedly when the time came for the IBM top execs to review the secret IBM PC project there was some concern about giving contract to deliver the operating system to such a young and small company. The legend holds that an IBM exec who had worked with Mary Gates at United Way spoke up and said something like "Oh yes, Mary Gates's son, a fine boy!", and the concerns vanished. To my knowledge no one has ever confirmed that this actually happened. If they have I welcome correction.
As for your allegation that Microsoft swindled IBM: What do you think, IBM came by and asked to see the OS and Bill told them "Oops! I left it at home, let's sign the contract and I'll bring it in tommorrow."? IBM came to Microsoft hoping to buy languages and an OS, but Gates told them that Microsoft didn't do OS's and sent them on to Gary Kildall at DRI. DRI and IBM couldn't reach an agreement and IBM went back to Microsoft and asked them if they could quickly develop an OS. Since Microsoft had sent IBM on to DRI they knew full well that MS didn't have an OS in its pocket. See http://www.fireinthevalley.com/ for a fairly reliable history of microcomputer development.
No matter how slimy somebody is you shouldn't use lies to attack them. To paraphrase Marvin from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy "Why should I make up stuff? Life is awful enough as it is."
First, while IBM had a full licence deal to use Windows 3.1 (a bit remaining from the whole OS2/NT partnership), they made no real effort to make it work well inside their fancy 32bit OS (starting Windows programs resulted in a copy of Windows 3.1 actually being booted up just for that program).
This isn't correct, or rather, it's not an accurate representation of the effort IBM made with Windows for their WinOS2 subsystem.
IBM had access to the Windows source from Microsoft as part of the deal they cut during the breakup. In order to get it to run properly, they made some changes to the WinOS2 subsystem to allow it to run as a DPMI client under their new MVDM (Multiple Virtual DOS Machine) subsystem,they recompiled the code with Watcom's C compiler to improve performance, and they also redesigned the Windows video driver layer to allow a WinOS2 session to poke a hole in OS/2's native PM (Presentation Manager) desktop and display that WinOS2 session alongside the rest of the screen (which was controlled by PM).
The end result was called Seamless Windows, and was both fascinating in its flexibity and disconcerting in its mixing of two window APIs and two sets of Window frames and mouse cursors on the same desktop.
Not only did IBM tweak the video subsystem, but networking, sound, and other elements of the virtualized Windows environment were allowed to use the OS/2 networking, sound, and mouse services, resulting in a hybrid that ran Windows software quite nicely without having to have direct access to any of that hardware (or to use any Windows or DOS drivers).
The WinOS2 subsystem in OS/2 2.0 only supported Windows 3.0 programs (note that Windows 3.1 had been released in APril 1992, roughly the same time that OS/2 2.0 was finally released as a General Availability product), but OS/2 2.1 corrected that in May of 1993, and the so-called emulation of Windows 3.1 was so good between the 2.1 release and the release of Windows 95 that many software vendors saw no real point in supporting OS/2's own native API, and Microsoft chose to respond to this threat by creating over a dozen different "Win32S.dll" additions to the Windows 3.1 API to make Windows a moving target that IBM couldn't possibly keep up with.
The care taken for supporting old DOS programs (which they didn't need Microsoft's help for) was even worse - while Windows 95 needed tweaking options too, OS/2 presented users with a huge checklist that had to have been literally copied straight from the constant names in the C header file (the option names even included the underscore). The options where so badly labeled that even an expert had a hard time figuring out what each option did, let alone what option should be used to get a program to run.
This is total nonsense. The options presented for a VDM were numerous, that is true, but that's simply a reflection of the tremendous amount of flexibility that IBM designed into their MVDM subsystem (a subsystem which has survived almost unchanged though Warp 4 to eComStation today). The options were (and are) clearly labelled, had fairly extensive online help, and were quite clear to anyone familiar with the terminology and options that were present in a copy of actual DOS.
Think of a Windows 3.1 PIF file on steroids.
I'm saying this as a DOS user from 1988 through 1992 who switched to OS/2 2.0 in 1992 from a combination MS-DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.1 environment for the main reason of running multiple virtual DOS machines for using my DOS software collection. I know the OS/2 VDM subsystem inside and out from a user perspective, and it was *trivial* for a knowledgable DOS user to master quickly.
DOS machines under OS/2, by default, used a virtual DOS kernel, not a real DOS kernel. That means they used an interface which looked like the real DOS interrupt interface, but which actually provided a link to OS/2's own system services. Because of this, a DOS program could usually use things like the mouse, soundcard, and networkin
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
OS/2 Warp 3.0 was released initially with two dialers -- one for IBM's internet service, and the other (called Dial Other Internet Providers, or DOIP) to connect with any other ISP who was using either SLIP or PPP for serial TCP/IP connections.
(Technically speaking, the original red-spine Warp 3.0 boxes were only shiopped with only SLIP support, but PPP support was a free download from IBM and could also be obtained on diskette).
At that point in time, very few home users had any need for network card support (home LANs were almost unheard of), and of course Windows 95 wasn't released until ten months later.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Even relatively "simple" things like PC/GEOS have a hard time under XP.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Steve Jobs is a pretty despicable man. He lied about his qualifications to get a job at Atari, and then farmed the work out to Wozniak.
After seeing your posting I did find several links saying that in 1982 DRI successfully sued Microsoft and IBM for copyright infringement. They allege that Gary Kildall was able pop up a DRI copyright notice with a few keystrokes on an IBM PC in front of a judge. Apparently Microsoft and IBM settled, but a gag order was part of the settlement. See for example here. None of the links I found seemed definitive, but then they wouldn't if there was a gag order in place.
On the other hand Tim Patterson is suing an author for defamation for claiming that QDOS was a "rip-off" of CPM.
Can anybody point me to solid information on the DRI suit?
It's nice to know somebody hasn't been taken in by the idiocy of our news media. Well done sir!
... and this is why you hear of "E. Coli" infections" (sic) on the 11 PM news, even though you'd have a tough time digesting your food without E. coli.
Another tidbit: E. coli is used as an indicator organism. It's a relatively hardy little bacteria, and we know lots of easy ways to test for its presence. So the reasoning goes if we find E. coli in the water/food/whatever, it's not unlikely that other more dangerous bacteria might also be living there
Let's see.... Apache is a fairly unique web server. The only thing that really compares is IIS, which is still entirely different except for the fact that they both talk HTTP. Apache has been ported, but it's better with Linux.
Firefox. Pop-up-blocking -- never done by MS, only by third-parties. Tabbed browsing -- I'm not sure if Mozilla invented this, but MS certainly didn't. Firefox is ported to Windows, but I like it better with Linux.
Also, Windows on Dos vs. X Windows on Linux suggests that you REALLY haven't dug under the hood a lot. I can actually do 90% of the things I need to do on this computer without a single instance of X running. I choose not to, because I like some of the graphical programs, but it's a hell of a lot different than "rebooting to DOS" on a Win98 box. For one, I can get back into X in less than 10 seconds; I'm lucky to get back into Win98 in less than 10 minutes.
Now, the kicker -- something Linux has, that's only been weakly imitated on other platforms and not at all widely used anywhere but Linux: virtual desktops/workspaces. Windows people buy multiple monitors; Linux people hit ctrl+alt+rightarrow. AFAIK, Nvidia implements this fairly weakly, and there's some strange-looking implementation on a Mac.
Oh, and let's not forget the nice little tweaks like middle-click to paste the hilight. Windows' copy-and-paste is much slower.
These are two things that I absolutely can't live without these days, but even once I got my parents on Linux, they haven't wrapped their minds around the concept -- or else they haven't found a good use for it yet. Not surprisingly, my 14-year-old brother is catching on much faster.
So, Linux is already really cool. For a feature like that to be really cool and also significantly impact market share, you have to already have people dual-booting. What we really need is to make Linux a good enough Windows replacement that one day, Dell will silently replace all copies of XP (or Longhorn, or whatever's next) on their new computers with a copy of Dell Linux, and people will think of it as a simple upgrade -- just like going from 2K to XP.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
This brief opinion piece should not be construed as factual information, and only contains the opinions and personal experiences of the author at the time of publication.
Noise Is Music Podcast.
This is one of the the central things holding back Linux "domination." DOS won because it was cheaper and easier to figure out than the competition. Its lack of advanced features was a boon.
OTOH as others have noted, Linux is trying to be best at everything -- it's not simple. Efforts like Linspire certainly help, but they're not there yet. Linux will never kill Windows unless it beats it in usability.
"An engineer, Tim Paterson, at that company had stolen the ideas of CPM/86 and created a cheap clone of it."
I don't know about 'stole the ideas of' I always felt as if it were more like 'got the idea from looking over the shoulder of someone using CPM'.
If he had truly stolen ideas, PC-DOS might have been half decent, as it was it was almost just cosmetic...
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
More seriously, as a so-called MS Partner (heck, they gave me that one day, I still don't know why folks!) I'm a bit mystified. I've looked high and low in my XP and Server 2003 systems, even those bits of Longhorn they let me play with and I don't see any DOS. Something of a DOS emulator, but nothing on point. Oh well.
Not that I want DOS anyway. Given my druthers, I'd shoot this machine if someone would give me mi Amigas back!
DOS, blech!
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
Converting a userbase of idio...err... average users to linux will almost certainly introduce viruses. No amount of technology will prevent fools from being ingenious.
On the other hand, greater amounts of users would also make the linux market profitable, bringing in more drivers, applications, games(!) and commercial support.
Before that ever happens, however, you'd need to have the Linux dumbed down to something that treats you like a drooling, brain-damaged four-year-old before the mainstream would switch from windows xp.
And of course, the average drooling, brain-damaged four-year old can't compile from source, now can (s)he? And too many options are just confusing for the user, only a small percentage of people use more than the top-3 options. Differences between boxen? Complicated. We need to standardise everything to the average needs! Etcetcetc, you know where this goes.
The bottom line is that we, slashdot readers, probably make up for a large part of that "small percentage".
I *want* Linux to provide options that would confuse a luser.
I *want* terminals that look scary to lusers.
I *want* an editor a luser can't possibly use.
I *want* to edit the kernel source, fine-tune it and then compile it myself.
Almost everything we love about Linux, leaves the average user puzzled and confused and is thus incompatible with a large user base.
Whenever intelligent, but otherwise computer-illiterate, friends are over here and seem puzzled by my computer, I avoid talking about computers and Linux. It's impossible to make them understand and even if I could *make* them understand (obligatory cattle prod reference omitted), is it worth the trouble? Converting them would only make me their tech-support slaves.
It's in my interest to keep the mainstream away from Linux.
The same managers and management structure that rallied behind DOS then, rally around XP today.
Of course they all reckon Google is fantastic, and drool over its profits, then they go quiet when you say 'not microsoft'.
Its a long time since I heard 'we can run the whole company' on a TRS-80.
Theres even the William Gates Building in Cambridge uni (uk, not usa). Its quite nice, apart from the name...
95% of all computer errors occur between chair and keyboard (TM)
VHS was better for a number of reasons, the most important being that you could actually fit a movie on one tape.
Really, I wish people would stop using it as an example of something it's not.
"An engineer, Tim Paterson, at that company had stolen the ideas of CPM/86"
You can't steal ideas. You can steal implementation of ideas.
Tim Patterson did a *reasonable* thing. He made a function-alike product. Compaq didn't *steal* from IBM when they made the compatible BIOS. Tim Patterson didn't steal CP/M or anything.
Its a stupid argument. Stop it.
It was function call compatible, and COM programs basically ran in a CP/M environment complete with CALL 3 OS call support for quick and dirty reassembly of 8080 code to 8086. At the very least, he wrote it from the CP/M documentation.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
The "sales pitch" would be something like: "You want to reduce your dependance on the US for your technology? You need options. Yeah, we're American (Utah is in the US still, I think), but at least with Suse, you have options! Multiple competing OS vendors will reduce the price, and Linux is free.... So help us fund an effort to get Linux to be a total replacement for Microsoft for ALL government needs.
Then use those funds to hire more FOSS developers (probably non-Americans) that identify the areas where Linux/FOSS comes up short (relative to Microsoft/Windows/Apps), and put a plan in place to attack them, one by one. I know it's a moving target, with all the R&D that Gates has going into the Windows empire, but surely it can be done!
If there was a concentrated effort, with a well defined plan, I'm sure this could be achieved - top-to-bottom in 24 months or less - with no room for doubt as to which O.S. platform made the most sense for non-US governments. And maybe it's not Novell, maybe it's a not-for-profit organization. But I think it's in everyone's best interest for this to happen (with the one possible exception being MS shareholders (and employees), like myself (shareholder)!)
I'd do it but I'm on Slashdot waiting for the booze to kick in instead of codeing ;)
Try Codeine instead of booze next time.
Or in my case, The Wife Test.
Forget about ease of installation (well, don't forget about it, but it isn't pertinent).
"Moms" don't install operating systems, ever. What fraction of the Windows-using population has ever installed Windows? For that matter, most of the general population doesn't even install software.
The real "Mom Test" is to sit her down in front of a Linux machine that is all set up and see how she does. My wife uses my Debian box all the time, and she certainly "doesn't know jack about computers". She clicks on her account icon, logs in to a KDE desktop, and uses precisely three apps: Thunderbird, FireFox, and Gnome Mines.
The software is more than ready for the general public. The sticking point is having everything preinstalled with a new computer.
I generally agree with what you are saying, but I think most people are even less technically inclined than you imply. Those with a lot of "digi-toys" will probably be able to deal with a present-day Linux install. The rest of the public will say "Here, dad/Honey/son, set it up".
Let those who fall for glitz and glamour, have their thing.
I have installed Linux for a humanitarian and ideal organisation because it doesn't restrict me with cumbersome licenses, harassment from BSA-like thug organisations, cost-per-CPU/PC/person, complications or artificial limitations imbedded in the proprietary and hidden code.
As long as people don't get it, they deserve to lie in the pile of dirt they roll in. Plain and simple, it's the only way they will ever want to get out..
Having said that, I also use Windows both at home and work. Best tool for the right job. Just don't complain and do nothing about it..
There is no doubt Bill Gates has a big heart and really wants to help people and the world situation. Astrologers have been predicting this for over 20 years too. Few have taken the time that he has to raise funds and work it out.
However, the problem is that this culture isn't propagated to the business world. We need more human values in the business world, because frankly, the rat race and hunt for future pleasure and money (which never gets here NOW, it's a carrot in the future), is de-humanizing.
So Bill Gates is like Janus. He has two faces. I think people like him needs to integrate these faces into a better whole.
Know why DOS succeeded, and then Windows? Because it was professional. Professionalism breeds trust. Imagine some pundit trying to sell tax cuts using this guy's writing style. You'd think he was a nut who wasn't prepared to sell his ideas.
And that my friends, as much as I like open source software, is the story of why open source software gets beaten by Microsoft and Apple -- they're great at ideas in places where Microsoft is blindsided, but have no clue how to present themselves to the mass market.
There's a reason why icons like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are icons -- they've honed their craft and are master salesmen. Open source makes no effort to sell themselves like established companies.
ShortFormBlog: Writing a little. Saying a lot.
That link is just a collection of good stories that were floating around. I think I'd need to see a lot more information before I believed the Easter Egg story. (MSDOS version, steps to bring up the egg, etc.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Except fo this:
1. It was in the right place at the right time. Yes, timing is one of the obvious reasons why PC-DOS, later to become the well known MS-DOS made its debut, and survived to become the world's most dominant OS. The IBM compatible market skyrocketed the use of Microsoft's OS beyond even Bill and Paul's expectations.
2. But wait. Timing can not possibly be the key ingredient. Sure enough there were two other ingredients essential to making the timing work out. The second was PC-DOS's price. It was cheap, and the cheapest of the options that at least for the entry IBM PC made it's debut. PC-DOS fit the home and small business market perfectly because it was cheap.
3. And of course, if it was just plain cheap it still would have gone no where, unless it contained what I believe is conceivably the most important ingredient to Microsoft's initial success with a less than superior product. PC-DOS was simple. That's right, it was simple. I could shove that darn disk in to the drive, and so long as I knew to press the drive lock down the disk would spin and the OS would load. I could learn the basic set of commands within a few minutes. It was not just simple, but darn simple and made it possible for the genius and the technophobe to achieve the same results: operating a PC.
the whole article is a useless rant. I got a feeling that how come comments now are being a slashdot story.
Senthil
> Gary Kildall never sued, but that doesn't mean copyright violation did not occur.
/. who codes will know that it is pretty easy to spot your own code) but Kildall didn't sue because he was already rich and was not that interested in a lengthy court battle. It doesn't mean that Gates knew this at the time.
Indeed. In a book I have on Microsoft there is an interview with Kildall where he claims that SCP DOS was a port of CP/M (anyone at
The success of the Microsoft Operating Systems really didn't have much to do with their quality or power. As I recall PC-DOS didn't even have nested directories. It wasn't just marketing either -- Microsoft marketed the hell out of "Bob" and "OS/2 Warp", but those Operating Systems were not successes. In those early days of PCs, what sold PCs and with them MS-DOS, were the applications: WordStar, Lotus 1-2-3, and DBASE. What the Linux folks should learn is one simple lesson: Most people couldn't care less about the operating system, they just want to run applications that do what they want to do. An operating system should strive to be "invisible". The most disconcerting thing that people used to MS-DOS found when they wanted to try Linux was that the OS was too "visible". "What do you mean I have to mount my disks before I can use them!!? -- I don't have to do that in Windows or DOS." The best lesson that Linux can learn from the Microsoft crowd is "don't assume that the user knows anythhing about computing". When I say I think I'll use the MAC OS because it has a UNIX kernel, my friends don't know what I'm talking about. But if tell some musicians I'm switching to the MAC because of the Music Studio Software, they relate to me immediately. I can be showing of all the neat features of Fedora to my friends, but all they care about is the applications. I don't try anymore to sell "Linux" -- I sell Firefox, Open Office, Evolution etc... To become the munber one Operating System, Linux needs better applications and an Operating System that gets out of the way of the applications. I think Microsoft actually turns a lot of people off with always having a new Operating System to upgrade to. People who have the applications they use running on Windows 2000, Windows 98 or Windows 95(!!?), don't really care about the operating system.
I know people will bring up the issues of security , scalability, etc... but most computer users don't care. They don't care what encryption you're using, just stop viruses from getting on their computers! So that's the key: mold the operating system so that the user doesn't even know it's there and provide some new essential applications that don't run on Windows. There really haven't been any real breakthrough applications on ANY platform in the last decade. Programmers are still creating Word Processors, Databases and Spreadsheets... The OS that supports the next breakthrough App will be able to "catch" Microsoft.
Answer: the same lessons that UNIX can learn from DOS. N-O-T-H-I-N-G.
I'm talking about getting the tech right but leaving so many unexplained options in the GUI portion that it ends up being unimplementable.
And this is just to replace cat5 cable.
I've just tried and failed to install something this week-end that I had to retrofit to something that was a lot more primitive but worked.
Sorry dear but the apartment's just going to be a bit messier than we'd like.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Having said that, I think there's a real future in mentoring/elmering linux into the greater world. Sure, it's not for everyone, but neither is amateur radio. It is very easy and cheap to run out and get an FRS radio, charge it up and be communicating with a few friends at the ski slope. That's what most people do with 2-way radio. For the folks who need better coverage, there is GMRS. But, if you want to be able to talk to the world with a very high quality radio and the oppertunity to experiment, you have to use amatuer equipment.
However, it is more than the equipment. The HAM community will elmer new folks, and this keeps the SNR high in most cases. If the Linux world wants to keep its world pristine, it will have to start a real elmer plan. Otherwise, we'll just end of with the same sort of problems the Windows world faces. It starts with programmers: When I did my taxes this year (with TerriboTax on WinXP), I was unable to install with my normal user rights, which is fine. However, I was also unable to run the program without admin rights. What the heck is that all about? There's lots of other examples, but that is the one that springs to mind. In my daily dealings with users, I often see PCs that look like they've been through the trash heap of software hell. Much of this stuff is installed by people who should know better, but for some reason, think that adding 1 second to the startup justifies 10% of the available memory. Once I educate the user and show them how to disable/uninstall some of this trash, I know they will be able to do it themselves. Of couse, there are people who will never understand it. Thankfully, many of those people have high incomes and are more than willing to part with their hard earned dollars.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Kidall deserves Diddly fucking squat! Kindall had the worst genes, he was so fucking stupid when it came to capitalism, and he had alcoholism in his background. So it was just natural selection at work getting rid of yet another fucktard, nothing more.
GO FUCKING AHEAD, FLAME AWAY OR WASTE YOUR MOD POINTS FUCKTARDS!
'Only question now is not if but when will Linux become the number one OS on earth?'
Soon as it becomes easy enough to diagnose and fix problems that a home user can control. Oh, and when there's enough game software out there that s equal or better than the game software out for Windows.
Thus, not for a very long time.
The comments in the article about Microsoft and philanthropy completely ignore the work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That organization does more good in this world than 1/2 of the world's philanthropic organizations combined. 10% of $2 billion? The Gates Foundation has give more than $2 billion to developing things like AIDS and anti-Malaria drugs in Africa. So they don't give their operating system away for free to every poor person in the world? Well, when your parents are dying of AIDS or you're suffering from malaria I'm sure that free operating systems are what you're concerned about.
Isn't giving away free stuff what got MS sued in both Europe and the United States? Why don't people stop wasting their time railing about MS and start working on those $100 pc's we keep hearing about. Oh, and while you're at why don't you help out with meeting poor people's basic needs so that they'll have the time, energy, and electricity to use those computers.
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/
Only a poorly marketed one...
The credit for DOS success, (and also for the very long shot success of Windows 3.0/3.1 against OS 2), is due to Microsoft's exceptional prowess at creating and managing distribution channels. Microsoft was, maybe more than anything else, a distribution company. It sold OEM's the ability to allow DOS programs to run on their boxes, and then ensured an adequately consistent user experience through things like the OAK (OEM Adaptation Kit) and other similar investments and programs. The Kildall incident may have been the Gavrilo Princip moment of Microsoft hegemony, but the real success of the franchise was due to a few dozen hard core sales people led by Joachim Kempin, Richard Fade and Steve Ballmer, that made DOS the de facto standard through very hard selling and shear force of will, and by well executed ISV evangelism and education efforts led by Jon Lazarus, Peter Neupert and Cam Myhrvold. More than anything else it was just a ton of hard work. And so it doesn't really matter whether it "should" have happened or not. It happened because a small number of highly motivated people worked hard to make it so. (Microsoft alumnus 1989-1998)
Men, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds...
I recommend learning a bit more about how slashdot works before flying off the handle. Actually looking will reveal that I responded to an anonymous coward, who responded to an anonymous coward, who responded to you.
Users don't have to check if they have the correct distribution, with the correct version, with the correct packages installed, with the correct kernel, etc... to have some program working. Most users don't want the trouble... It's the flexibility of Linux that kills its use as a desktop for everybody. What's great for the geeks is bad for the normal user.
Whoever wrote this article obviously did no research whatsoever before writing it.
"A friend of mine told me he thinks that if Microsoft released just 10% of the roughly $2 BILLION in CASH (does not include other assets) to help curb diseases and help starvation, many people could be helped. Instead the goal and mode of operation is to continue to amass wealth."
This is an outright lie. Microsoft makes *huge* donations to nonprofits every year. Bill Gates himself tends to donate on the scope of 9-10 figures out of pocket per year.
This image of MS as the corporation that hunts everyone and gives nothing is absolute crap. I'm so tired of idiots that say things like this with absolutely no proof.
Was the Tandy 100 that little dealie about the size of hardcover book, with an LCD display that was about 8" x 3" and had something like 8k of RAM?
If so, that was a cool little machine. Never got to play with one though.
As far as "talking down", no it's not that at all. It's that he's held up as being some kind of computer pioneer, when in fact he's really a business pioneer. He's held up as some kind of ubernerd, when in fact he's really a suit. A very, very talented suit, but still a suit.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
The argument actually applies just as well inside the US. Municipal governments could easily be taken to task for wasting their money on products that support jobs off in Washington, rather than on local techs to support OSS products. You know, that whole "think globally, act locally" deal. Not that I'm personally a big fan of that in general; globalism has a lot to offer if it's managed properly. But municipal and state/provincial governments are always looking for things that they can show off to voters and say "look, we're creating jobs!" OSS offers a way for savvy software companies to exploit that.
yes, precisely!
http://www.mises.org/
A good reason to properly quote what you're replying to.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Since I quoted properly, and you complained anyway, proper quoting is clearly insufficient.
Obviously if it was to be the OS for the IBM-PC, it would have been ported to the correct architecture, so talking about the shortcomings of unrelated processors doesn't really have anything to do with it.
Oddly enough, someone I know was writing commercial encryption software to run on the Z80 only two years ago - it's still used in medical equipment.
linux always needed a 386, which was really frustrating when I first wanted to try linux. Xenix could run on a 8086, but not 8088 (as far as I know + a quick google search)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_bloc
By saying this, you are assuming that Netscape was meant to be a Windows browser. But Netscape always had a Mac port -- in fact, it was probably or Mac first, though I don't know the history. After all, Macs had the first GUI.
In fact, there's more to Firefox than just Gecko. Mozilla is the new Netscape, and Firefox is a fork of part of Mozilla, like Thunderbird, not just another browser based on Gecko, like epiphany/skipstone/galeon/camino/etc...
It might not be a bad assumption that Netscape was originally meant to be a Windows browser, but as long as I've known of Mozilla, there have been Linux versions, and since the very first CVS fork of Firefox, there have been Linux versions. So Firefox was never "meant to be a Windows browser." Maybe you are just meant to be a Windows person.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!