Windows Beat Unix, But it Won't Beat Linux

Onymous Hero writes "The amazing thing isn't that Windows beat the pants off Unix; it's that so many of the Unix companies survived until today. An article from eWeek looks at why Linux has been so successful where Unix failed." From the article: "While the Unix companies were busy ripping each other to shreds, Microsoft was smiling all the way to the bank. Because the Unix businesses couldn't settle on software development standards, ISVs (independent software vendors) had to write not a single application to get the whole Unix market, they had to write up to a half-dozen different versions. Which would you rather do? Write a single application that would run on all Windows systems, or six different ones, each with its own unique quality assurance and support problems? "

Comments

this article's ignorance is astounding

[Anonymous Coward]

has he ever actually tried to install a 3rd party piece of software in linux?

imagine if Microsoft had to edit the source code of every 3rd party application in order for the 'setup.exe' program to work.

that is the situation we have with linux, where some programmer must modify the programs installation code so that it will work on a particular flavor of linux.

go and try to download almost any 3rd party program for linux. it will either be in source code form, or it will say something like 'rpms for mandrake, rpms for suse, rpms for fedora core, debs for debian' and then various versions of these depending on mandrake 9 or 10, fedora core 3 or 4, etc etc etc.

to get java installed on the various linux platforms requires editing various text files and visiting several different websites.

the 'linux standard base' is a wonderful idea but people have been trying it for 10 years and it hasnt worked. there is something fundamental in the 'open source' leaders in general that destroys ideas of backwards compatability and simple consitency.