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

WTF!!!

[paradizelost]

WHat is up with all of the osnews.com clone stories????

Re:How RedHat's Linux Can Defeat Micr$oft's Windoz

[FlynnMP3]

To the AC in the corner. You know who you are.

I commend you on the post. You write and communicate your ideas and thoughts very well. That will help greatly in your programming career. I do however, take exception as to the content of your post. You simply need more experience in dealing with different areas of computers.

Kill the command line? What about all the people who have to administrate these machines and automate that process? Command line tools and scripting is still the best way to do that. Until somebody makes a fully comprehensive set of GUI tools that duplicate the power and flexibility of command line tools, the command line will be of utmost importance to the productivity of computer professionals everywhere. Maybe you can start on that conversion process. Not a completely bad endeavour.

Red Hat should not allow their source code to be seen? I hope you meant something else and I misunderstood your intent. Please read up on the tenents of Free Software and Open Source and take those words to heart. This is your career and livelyhood in computers.

Too many flavors of Red Hat? Red Had is not my favorit distro out there, so any words I say will be biased in that regard. But in a sense, that is the core point. With so many different variants and distributions of Linux out there, people are free to pick and choose which one suits their needs the best. And when their needs change, they can change distros as well. It is a double edged sword. There is great power and flexibility in multiple versions, but that power is overwhelming to those who are just getting into the world of Linux.

-waves

Re:And his point was for the earlier era

[tomstdenis]

I hate these lines of thinking.

This is 2005 [almost 2006!] not 1991. If you're forced to use software from 1991 it's because you're an idiot and didn't demand your vendor document their data structures and file formats.

I dunno about you guys but when I write crypto software that is "closed source" I document [usually by using ASN.1] my data types so that others can interoperate. Sure that gives competitors and "in" but it also gives my customers something to work with, specially if I move on and decide to not support the software anymore.

That, my friends, is called responsibility.

Tom