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Vista Launch Good for Desktop Linux?
Sensible Clod writes "XYZ Computing has an article hypothesizing that the arrival of Windows Vista may be a big opportunity for Linux to make headway on the desktop. Massive feature cutbacks for Vista as well as huge hardware requirements are cited as major factors. From the article: 'As the time gets closer and closer to the public debut of Vista the operating system seems to be constantly losing the luster which was associated with Longhorn...Whether it's the lack of a new file system or the Monad scripting shell, the absence of innovation in this operating system is giving it a black eye'. The article then shows the need for action to be taken to get Linux onto the computers in stores (display models!), and pinpoints a few important improvements Linux distros in general need to make. Very interesting read, and timely."
When I have to use Windows, I use Windows 98.
I don't know of any features in 2000, XP, or Vista that is compelling.
More bloat, that's all.
So long as Longhorn looks a little prettier and the pressure eventually is pushed to corporations/people to upgrade for compatibility, people will move to it.
But then, when they find out that their old applications don't work anymore, the chronic issues getting 3rd party hardware to work, or even the hardware that came with their machine that came with Vista doesn't work, difficulty installing applications, networking issues to their fileserver, office documents will look formatted strange, printing issues, etc, etc.
Then, they will run in droves to Linux. Regardless of their desktop environment -- KDE, Gnome, FVWM, TWM, or hell, just a windowless xterm would solve all of these problems.
FreeBSD, Solaris, and OS X users will also wait in line for the features that Linux has to offer. They will follow like a stampede in the planes of Africa.
Sorry for the sarcasm, but I am a Linux user. Have been for over 10 years. I love it in my server rooms, its easy to troubleshoot, administer, its as reliable as the hardware and power (more so actually), but if I never have to type 'startx' or login to a box that is set up at runlevel 5, thats fine by me.
I even have Linux on a 4 CPU Itanium SGI Prism with 2 dual head graphics cards which might be nice for custom visualization applications, but after logging in and the file manager crashes the first time you use it, and there are these little semi-hidden windows on the desktop when I'm not logged in as root (don't know what they are yet, I believe its an SGI thing). The OpenGL screensavers silently die when you run them as root. The OpenGL screensavers, even on such a highend box, are not completely smooth and flicker free.
I'm not blaming Linux here at all. Linux is fine, its the entire GUI subsystem of Linux and all other *NIX OSes (besides OS X) suffer from the same problems because they are the same GUI.
Once someone, gasp, even a commercial company fixes the GUI and end user issues, then Linux or some other *NIX system will gain mass appeal, not a minute before.
Well, the US is fast becoming a poor country--sure there are a few rich, but what happens when all the non-rich are pushed down from middle-class to poor? There's not enough money in the world to satiate the top 1% in this country. They'll keep taking ours until they end up with all of it. Presto! Poor country! I mean, even the poorest countries have a few rich people at the top who profit from it all. Soon we won't be any different than Nigeria.
And anyway, there are a lot of computers in the US. In fact, considering that China hasn't become super wired yet, the US might have a plurality (51% maybe?), though not a "vast majority" of computer users. That of course will change once Asia and Europe finish overtaking the US in every way.