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Microsoft's 'Hands-On' Linux Lab
aneroid writes "eWeek has a story on Microsoft allowing a third party to present a 'hands-on lab' that allowed attendees to play with a range of Linux desktop software at its annual worldwide partner show in Minnesota this weekend. It was run by Don Johnson (not the actor), who explained in true MS style how the things that are considered wrong with Windows are planned or an advantage. Whether it's for the desktop or server, wasn't clear. People did get to 'see the Apache Web server in action' and a KDE desktop.Is this more of a preemptive strike where the Linux experience is so bad (slow machines, old software) they wouldn't bother to check it out in the future, thus securing an existing partner/client? Or are they that confident people won't stray if they're invited to sample the competition? According to the Register, 'Microsoft is unlikely to stop developers moving to Linux and open source so its best hope lies in articulating a strategy of co-existence to limit the 'damage' to its business.'"
In Soviet Russia, Linux Lab Puts Hands On Microsoft!
Wouldn't be interesting to see them show a fully configured Win98, 2000 and XP systems along with Linux to show what compelling reasons to move to the newest and best MS has to offer.
Linux is only a small part of their competition. Their own installed base is much bigger
Talk about redundant 101.
Microsoft are giving customers a chance to look at linux running in an environment of their choosing because they damn well know if they don't there's a good chance this sampling will take place in an environment not of their choice, by people with a passion for the alternative.
Talk about business 101.
The Mothership
Ladies and gentlemen please watch my assistant as amazing new Microsoft Windows Longhorn cleans tough stains like wine! Blood! Grass! Pet Stains! The leading competetive product still leaves unsightly stains behind even after three applications! Now watch as amazing Microsoft Windows Longhorn foams away denture stains like magic, while the dentures cleaned with Linux are still brown and dirty! Ladies and gentlemen, please observe as amazing new Microsoft Windows Longhorn cuts right through tough grease, while Linux leaves dishes covered with spots! Who will pay just $299 for a subscription to this amazing new product? You sir! And you! And you ma'am, thank you very much! You sir! Thank you! Don't crowd, there's plenty for everybody!
The parent story is highly misleading in regards to the actual article.
"...who explained in true MS style how the things that are considered wrong with Windows are planned or an advantage."
That's hardly accurate. The article says he was MS-biased. It also outlines tradeoffs between Windows and Linux. It's brief, but it fairly states the differences between Windows & Linux. Those are: integration vs. flexibility; user friendly vs. expert friendly; & propriety or single architecture vs. open architecture that runs on multiple platforms.
According to the article, Don Johnson makes no more assumptions than the parent as to what is "wrong" with Windows and "better" about Linux.
So far the Microsoft anti-linux campaign has been driven by FUD. Mostly anecdotal claims to shield the real battle between Windows and Linux.
Now they seem to really believe that Windows is superior. They believe it to the point of "proving" it to the users. I'd be interested to hear the reaction from the attendees. My guess is that a few PHBs got a reality check, linux is actually better off than Microsoft claims. A gutsy move for Microsoft IMHO.
I refer to my boss as the typical PHB candidate. 5 years ago my boss boldy told me "we will never be a linux shop". Last week I got our 3rd RHEL server up in production, and he's loving the cost savings. What made him change his mind? Opinions of other IT directors were a good part of it, but Microsoft helped a little too. He realized that linux was a viable product as soon as Microsoft started their anti-linux campaign. For Microsoft to launch a campaign against another OS must mean it has the potential of market share. A free OS with market share is worth checking out in his opinion.
and it was obvious from the get-go that Microsoft was trying to make Linux look bad. Not only were the running KDE (does anyone use that?), they didn't have Emacs installed (just vi w/o the X version), and they were running it on some pretty crappy hardware; a PIII w/ 128mb of RAM, a toaster, an old shoe, and a moldy piece of toast still in the toaster (which they were calling a Linux blade solution).
/., wrote "erpCON 2005" on their white button down shirts, and had an odor that was detectable from 30 feet away, again all before lunch).
Despite M$ stacking the deck against Linux the audience was captivated by the capabilities of the system and the posibilities of FOSS. I even saw two MBAs port Linux to their iPAQs, pull some code off the Internet, teach themselves C and perl, and write a complete ERP system for their business (which they are submitting to SourceForge soon) all before lunch (as an aside, in that same time they grew beards, joined
Amazing how Microsoft's attempts to undermine the community were undermined by the community.
I once read that the best way to get someone to swallow a lie is to mix a little truth into it. They showed the people Linux, then showed them the propaganda, disinformation, and blatant lies of their "Get The Facts" campaign.
1) Johnson seems to feel that one must know the command line to use Linux....
My parents have used Linux since Red Hat 6.2 (what, 7 years now?) and have been quite happy with it.
They don't have to know how the command line works. If that is necessary, I will walk them through it (haven't had to in years) but I do the same for WIndows customers so that doesn't matter.
Of course if you want to run a web server, you might want to know the basics of the OS you are working on and be willing to learn the command line, but that is another matter...
2) Integration of user experience: Both KDE and GNOME offer this sort of integration to a large degree. Larger OSS projects like OpenOffice also offer such integration within themselves.
3) The flexibility of Linux does NOT just come from the ability to tweek and recompile the software. Instead it is the fact that you have a lot of pieces that do things well and can easily strung together (by someone know knows the system) into more complex systems. There is no reason I could not write a Perl/GTK program that could take a large number of programs and automate them behind the scenes. For other examples, see FileRoller, SimpleCDR-Tools, and a number of other packages that can make people's lives a lot easier when it comes to Linux. But this is more of a RAD environment than a user environment.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
This way, Microsoft can show their strenght.
Windows administration is all about graphic tools, integrated with the interface. Personaly, I don't like them... but there are people who find them usefull.
I know that KDE has pretty advanced frontends to configure stuff, but they're not as "easy" as the Windows ones. For instance, there is no frontends readly avaliable for Apache, LDAP administration, DNS, DHCP and others...
While I know that tools like Webmin exists, and are very capable, an average person will expect something integrated into KDE.
Also, there are dozen of minor fauts, and rought edges on a default Linux/KDE installation that can be used by them to show Windows still has "superiority" on the desktop.
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
I wonder if this is the first wave of the new ideas Daniel's got for the Microsoft crowd. (see here for the backstory)
and bullshit..
"Linux runs on just about anything, whereas Windows has a targeted platform focus," he said, adding that one of the main reasons people started looking at Linux was to avoid vendor lock-in.
No. Try again.. People quit M$ because they are sick and tired of dishing out bucketloads of money everytime they want to do anything, because they are sick of rebooting 400 times a day, because they are sick of BSODs.. And on and on and on...
An entire OS on a single CDROM that does NOTHING out of the box except get you on the internet and get infected before you can patch it..
I didn't want to spend hundreds and hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a word processor, a paint program, virus protection, firewall, etc...
For the cost of a blank DVD and an hour or so to download an ISO, I can have everything I want and more.
And the absolute best part is is that I no longer have the big pain in my wallet and my ass called M$..
Oh yeah, and I have ZERO pirated stuff.. ZERO...
No warez, no serialz, no gamez, nothing...
It was run by Don Johnson (not the actor)
Well, now he is.
JMHO.
I run various versions of linux, and windows, on the same PC all the time. Franking, in a 5 minute demo, I think windows would win. Especially if viewed by a total newbie, or somebody who only knew windows.
Windows has a sharp, snappy, display. Plenty of eye candy. Applications launch fast. Linux is okay, but I think windows would win *that* sort of comparison.
After a few months, of going back and forth between both systems; I think a lot of people would chose Linux. With Linux you don't get the software rot, or the adware/spyware/viruses. Also, once you learn a little bit about how to use linux, it's more powerful and flexible. And with Linux, you don't have msft on your back.
Again, all totally based on my guess.
Microsoft should get in bed with Linux and go to work. They keep trying to play with it. Microsoft could clean up if they had a Microsoft desktop environment or something similar. They did it with the Mac? With Office, why not write software for Linux?
They are acting like a bunch of babies, "We are Microsoft, we are better, so we won't worry about Linux.". What a bunch silliness. Same thing happened when they didn't take Java seriously. What JVM does Microsoft support, version 1.1? A 10 year-old could write an update to date virtual machine. Microsoft, get a clue.
---- Berlin Brown http://www.newspiritcompany.
"Is this more of a preemptive strike where the Linux experience is so bad (slow machines, old software) they wouldn't bother to check it out in the future, thus securing an existing partner/client?"
The article didn't say but just in case this is what they are up to, I think real Linux users need to show up at these things with well configured modern laptops running the latest versions of Linux.
That way if Microsoft tries to "prove" Linux is inferior by running old and misconfigured versions we can say "And here's what it looks like if you don't try to screw it up."
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
The truth is that this type of tent show will sell, because for the average user, Linux is not there yet, and really does not, can not compeat with Win2k or WinXP desktop. Not for the AVERAGE USER.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Microsoft isn't willing to open up its source but by flying the flag of interoperability it's suggesting FOSS people can "seamlessly" move data across platforms.
Recently I've been doing alot of reading about The Xen virtual machine monitor and The Xen virtual machine monitor, interestinly MS is/was involved in both projects. There's never any doubt in my mind that the wet dream of every large corporation is to own everyone from the cradle to the grave. I've no doubt MS will never give up the idea of owning the web, and, further that interoperability is just another way to say "come into my web said the spider to the fly."
Behind it all, I suspect, is a gameplan that has MS software as a utility piped into thin clients in each and every household and business.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
When I teach free computing courses to the community, I often teach that a lot of the frustrations that many of us have with computers are a result of trying to make them user friendly. This is because the original idea of a user friendly computer was that the user should be completely abstracted from the operation of the software (think Mac OS 8). So we are left with an opaque "magic box" and when it breaks we feel helpless because the error messages aren't helpful.* Furthermore, not only did Microsoft completely screw up this concept and impliment it badly but nobody bothered to actually tell the developers that error messages like "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down" don't help users feel empowered about their computers.
When I worked at MS (PSS), you would be surprised how many people calling tech support mentioned that their first reaction on reading this error message was that the police had been notified. Fortunately with ME and XP the inappropriate tone of the error was finally fixed.
Then comes the fact that many versions of Windows allow you to go ahead and destroy your system because there is no concept of permissions (Win 9x) and so users have become quite resonably afraid of destroying their system and losing their work.
Say what you will about Linux and userfriendliness. However, I have found that novices are quite easily able to feel comfortable quickly on Linux. Intermediate users take a little longer. And there have never been any of these alarmist error messages that bring to mind swat teams coming to one's door... I guess the most alarmist error message one can see in Linux is a "Kernel Panic" but for people who spend their lives in X, they never see the text of the error message.
Linux provides a more comfortable environment for learning how to use the computer for many users. I can't tell you how many of my customers are now using it for this reason. My cusotmers know that they can accidently delete their work, but they can't crash their system unless they are logged in as root. So they tend to be more adventurous about learning new things.
* Compare with a transparent system like Linux where often the error messages are very descriptive, but the user doesn't have to know what they mean. But when you call support, it is usually *extremely easy* to pinpoint the cause. For example error messages like "Error in line 156 of httpd.conf: tomcat.so Is this really a valid dynmaically shared object?"
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I believe that this is a falicy. I feel that sometimes that Linux-based Operating Systems (Especially Ubuntu) do have the same, if not more, hardware support. I have Ubuntu 5.04 and it picked up all my Centrino hardware, which pleased me to no end. XP picked up the hardware, but did not configure it correctly as Ubuntu did. I mean honestly, the balls on Microsoft must be big to say such a statement without checking out the competition thuroughly.
My 2 cents, take it or leave it...
"C++ is to C as Lung Cancer is to Lung"
I'll bet the 3rd party was Novell.
Novell and microsoft seem to get by with each other well enough, and I could see them allowing them to make a demonstration.
That said, I'm sick of the lack of innovation on Microsoft's behalf in their OS department. That ALSO said, I don't think that there's much more that a desktop OS should offer that Win2000 doesn't already offer.
Longhorn will be a step in the right direction, but 2000/XP are minimal enough to leave a very low overhead and not be noticed too much. Personally, I like it when the OS isn't in your face. Until Microsoft can justify the whiz-bang features in longhorn that will suck up my resources, I'm quite content to devote my processor time to the applications i'm using.
Yes, I also use a mac and love that too, and I find it hard to have some sort of happy medium where you have the minimalism/low overhead that I like. Windows sucks at managing multiple windows -- this could be improved, and linux/macOS have a definite advantage.
But, on a whole, since switching back to windows from my mac after 2 years for work reasons, I'm finding that despite the loss of all of the cool producitivity-boosting features MacOS has (dashboard, iPhoto, Expose, etc.), Win2000 satisfies my needs just fine.
Microsoft is going to have a hell of a time pushing OS upgrades to corporations from now on. Windows as an operating system would seem to be almost complete (apart from a few glaring security things). All they can do now is tack stuff on top.
Linux on the other hand, needs to figure out what it wants itself to be. It's in an eternal conflict between being super-feature-rich(KDE/Gnome), and being uber-minimalistic (you're forced to go to the command line on a daily basis. this is something that almost never happens on other platforms, and rightfuly so). Comparing a linux desktop to Windows is just embarrasing for linux.
Comparing linux to MacOS is humiliating. With a tiny team of developers (compared to MS/Linux), apple built an OS in 5 years that is considered by most to be the most 'modern' operating system available to consumers. Sure you can debate this, but OSX/Darwin has stuff that windows and linux are hurrying awfuly fast to copy.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
It was run by Don Johnson (not the actor), who explained in true MS style how the things that are considered wrong with
Why should I change my name? He's the one who sucks.
There's a good article on Groklaw about Anti-Linux Strategy for Microsoft.
The high virus infestation rate is an incentive for sucke^Wcustomers
One day they'll invent a key that allows you to delete previous characters, so that people will no longer have to type "^H" or "^W." I imagine it will be called a "delete previous character" key, or perhaps a "backspace" key.
Who knows! The future is limitless.
I just installed Linspire for my father (57 years old, non-technical) after his PC went down due to virus/spyware infections.
Regardless of your opinion of Linspire as my choice, he prefers it to windows. He loves the Click-and-Run. According to him, "it has EVERYTHING you could possibly want to run".
I like the fact that he's much less likely to get viruses and spyware.
True, he only uses it for surfing the web and playing solitaire, but still... Linux on the desktop is going to make a bigger and bigger splash.... no matter what Microsoft does or doesn't do.
Proposed names for this fabulous new key:
I think we would be better served by a drop down menu with choices about deleting the last character, word, sentence, paragraph, etc. Perhaps this could be a new feature developed for Longhorn and backported to XP.
Oh, don't forget lots of "Are you sure?" boxes to click on.
Sorry for the rant, I've spent the last 8 hours supporting crappy MS programs for stupid people.
Don't save Windows XP! http://www.petitiononline.com/jjw1xp/petition.html
"Introduction to Christianity" courses by Osama Bin Laden.
since 90% of what Windows has on Linux happens before the two are fully configured. What Microsoft brings to the table is an OS that can be admined by $12 dollar/hr employees instead of $50 dollar/hr ones. With hardware so cheap (and with value added upgrade cycles so short) this makes perfect sense.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
microsoft is evil if it includes a web browser?
Microsoft is a monopoly on the Operating System market. This has been proven in court.
Microsoft have a relatively featureless, uninnovative browser compared to the competetion. Why is it so popular? It is because Microsoft are using their desktop OS monopoly to force people to use Internet Explorer (see Windows Update for example). Browsers like Firefox and Opera are put at a huge disadvantage.
If you were the boss of a browser company, I am sure you be complaining too.
Why is it ok for linux to include everything but the kitchen sink
Including multiple options is OK. I think there would be less complaints if Windows said 'Would you like to install Internet Explorer, Firefox or Opera?'. It's not going to happen though, unless forced by the courts.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
The whole reason that $50/h Linux admins (and therefore Linux itself) makes sense is that it doesn't require as many hours to admin.
The other thing you're overlooking is the consequences of "you get what you pay for". A $12/hour Windows admin just isn't going to be able to provide the same quality of work as a $50/hour Linux admin (otherwise, why wouldn't they charge more than $12/hour ? If they're good, they should be able to at least charge something like $30/hour ?), which again will increase the number of hours that you'll have to pay the $12/hour Windows admin. The quality of the functionaly equivalent jobs won't be the same with such as disparity between the per hourly rates.
Comparing the platforms based purely on a per hour admin rate, irrespective of the actual time and effort involved, is a way too simplistic comparison to be useful.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
They don't buy things because "no-one got fired for buying IBM/Microsoft". They buy things at the best value, because the people making the buying decisions are spending their own money.
These people look for value. I know some small entrepreneurs who are using OpenOffice.org because the £200 license for Office is a fair slab of their business.
People often host small sites on LAMP. Over time, some of these small businesses are going to get larger.
I'm starting to see activity on jobs in PHP occurring now (this also co-incides with a noticable trend towards people building more and more browser-based apps).
From the article:
What?! How on earth is the difficulty of installing a new operating system IN ANY WAY comparable to the difficulty of being physically prevented from doing something because of vendor-installed hardware, or even just vendor-installed proprietary software? Much of the vendor-installed software is specifically engineered to make it more difficult to alter or remove it. Unless I'm mistaken, no one in the Linix distro world does that... not even Apple. Is the author of this story changing the definition of "vendor lock-in" now?
Backgrounder - still needs some work before it can become a proper movie treatment
Following on from the lowering of T1 into the foundary cauldren at the end of "Terminator 2 : Judgement Day", the steel was eventually used to make 1000s of paper clips. These paper clips each inherited a small part of the T1 intelligence, however, because of the heat, the software resorted to the evil, malicious intent of the T1 originally shown in "The Terminator".
Individually, these paper clips were harmless. However, when kept in a box, their collective intelligence could combine, such that they were able to execute Skynet's dastardly plans.
Out of a black-ops / skunk-works-type covert, federal lab arose Detypinator, who set out to detype the Skynet, and restore the paper clips to their original, benign uses - holding lumps of paper together, and annoying the hell out of MS Word users.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
My comment is directly based on how often I have to upgrade my Linux box due to security updates verses how often I read about "critical" MS security patches on Slashdot. It is also based on what my friend says about the Linux servers his work run verses the windows servers and desktops they run. I'm fortunte that I got out of Windows desktop / server administration before the Internet became popular, and therefore these problems became common.
Windows advocates are more likely to make assumptions than Linux advocates. Windows advocates usually haven't used Linux at all, yet they're willing to repeat what other people say about it, without having any personal experience to indicate to them that what they are saying is the truth. It is hard to provide realistic or credible criticisms of something that you don't have any experience with.
Linux advocates are usually ex- or even current Windows users (sometimes not by choice, due to their work situation), so they're typically speaking with a level of experience.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
What I think they're overlooking is that the "Integration" problem of Linux is something that used to be, and still is, a problem for the Computer Operator (he who came before 'sysadmins'), and that seperating this 'problem' into different roles of administration, you actually put the User/Operator positions into a better perspective.
Integration isn't supposed to be a user problem. Its supposed to be a problem of the person who is setting up and responsible for the computing system being used in the business case.
Microsoft have made a great deal of hoop-lah over the years over the fact that "you don't need a sysadmin to run Windows"
But it seems to me that, conveniently, they're overlooking the fact that Linux, in fact, makes better Computer Operators; you don't really get a fully-Integrated computing system based on Linux without at least performing some of the 'old-school' functions of the Computer Operations hat. And, if you put that hat on and do the job properly, regardless of if its full-time or not, while using Linux you actually learn the bits you need in order to maintain the operator function during the course of use of the system by the business.
I believe in the separation between "Operator" (what some people call 'Administrator') and "User", and I believe that OS's that provide modular functionality for the "Operator" to apply in building a working, productive computing system end up in a better "User" experience. One thing I have always abhorred about the Microsoft way is that they seem to have tried to build one tool that does many jobs; e.g. I don't want to have to use a GUI if all the machine is going to do is serve files
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Quote: Linux has been written for those who have more IT expertise and knowledge, whereas Windows is designed from the ground up to be user-friendly: "There is a steep learning curve associated with using Linux," he said.
Rubbish.
I have Linux desktop users who are every bit as productive, as they were on MS Windows, after and hours tuition. I have others who are confident, after playing with a Live CD distro, without any input from myself.
Desktop Linux is no more difficult to learn than it is to learn XP when upgrading from 98 or ME.
In the above picture, I've naturally left out the commercial interest in improving Linux. Suffice to say that distros and tools are now embedded in a far more competitive environment, because of the relative ease of transition between distros and tools. This means that good enough is no longer good enough, especially if the free tools are perpetually playing "catch-up". Perpetual innovation is now the rule for a successful company that is using Linux as a base.
Wikileaks, no DNS
I have a 75 mhz IBM thinkpad 365XD which runs linux, slackware 10.1 with Xfce and alsa. This was originally designed for Warp OS2. If I put a good bit of effort into it, I could probably force this laptop to run Windows 95... which isn't supported or even close to resembling secure any more since it has been dropped form MS's radar.
I also have a small development server at my home running Slackware 10.1 with Apache, ProFTPd, BIND, IMAP (etc), which is used from a 395mhz Athlon K6, which barely ran windows 2kPro.
I think a lot of businesses, especially small to medium sized businesses are in the same boat. I have a couple of new-ish computers that run XP, but half of my equipment is sadly outdated. Microsoft targets businesses with brand new servers, brand new workstations, brand new computers, slam full of RAM with uber-processors and an army of people who can barely check their email using Outlook. I would think (in my opinion) that they just don't want their bankrolls, er uh... prospective clients I mean, to see that other smaller businesses without an unlimited budget are using Linux and Unix with success.
Microsoft isn't evil. They're a business trying to make money. No one complains when the Ford car salesman talks bad about Chevy's, or when the Dodge car salesman talks down Hondas. It's part of having a business. You make money by targeting groups of people. Microsoft is doing just that.
Meanwhile... I'll stick with Slack. Not only does it "just work", but it works one heck of a lot better than other OS's on my sadly outdated equipment.
Evil Walrus >83=
I run HP and Dell with one IBM stashed away to work from my couch when I feel lazy. Why? They all offer alternative OS as an option. HP-UX, Red Hat, and IBM's push for OSS has a good bit to do with it.
My wireless card for my laptops? Netgear. Why? They offer alternative OS drivers (Red Hat, but still, a step forward and it's not hard to mod them to Slackware)
How about instead of complaining that vendors won't support Linux/Unix, we make a pact to stop buying from companies who refuses to support it? There's enough companies out there who offer products and support for *nix distros, why don't we just band together and support those who support us? Maybe if some of the other companies see a 5-10% drop in sales, they'll look into why people are buying more from other companies with OSS support.
The solution isn't in pleading with companies to help us... it's with taking our money elsewhere. They don't care about *nix, they care about their bottom lines. If we can make their OSS support directly proportionate to their bottom line, we'll be making progress.
Evil Walrus >83=
"Or are they that confident people won't stray if they're invited to sample the competition?"
Microsoft has been trying to push people away from their systems for years by making awful software. Not that many people seem to be straying away. The way I see it, people will suffer greatly before they switch to anything different.
I have a friend that I setup with a really nice Linux system. It does everything he needs. It does not crash, it does not blow up. Yet he still fights with his Windows system and the Linux system just sits there. Every time I talk to him his Windows system is doing something like crashing or rebooting.
I had a business partner that has a Windows computer with a virus that calls europe every 10 minutes. He can't install a virus scanner because windows is so busted that all the install programs crash. He has to unplug the phone cable then mess with it then get back online to do things. The funniest thing is that he has a brand new Mac Mini still in the box that has been sitting there for over two months.
I'm not kidding about either of these folks. What I have wrote is true. Maybe I just don't understand because I haven't used Windows in 10 years.
The above is not worth reading.