There Is No 'Microsoft of Linux'?

SDenmark writes "Linux Format has an interview with Greg Mancusi-Ungaro, the director of Linux and OSS marketing at Novell. Asked if any company can become the 'Microsoft of Linux', Greg responds "Well, if we ever woke up one day and said 'Wow, Novell is the Microsoft of Linux' or 'Red Hat is the Microsoft of Linux', then the Linux movement would be over." Is he right -- is the open source world free from such possibilities? Greg also discusses the internal Novell migration to Linux."

Comments

Re:on a related note...

[jellomizer]

DOS.
Back in the day there were multible companies that made DOS and for the most part they were compatible with each other. Microsoft always had dominace but there were alternitives. PC DOS, DR DOS... Then when Windows Was released it was designed to run on MS DOS only (And had code that blocked other DOS varents causing some lawsuites in that case). So after time more and more programs used Microsoft Windows extentions to their application where there was more Windows then DOS. So the Microsoft of Linux would be like say Novel or Red Hat who has such a dominance on the Linux market that they feel free to add their own custom kernel and developers develop on it and Apps only work on Their Version. With no chance that it will work for other Distros with a more "pure" kernel. Of course this probably wont happen with Linux because of the open nature. But that is the Microsoft of Linux means. Getting so much control in the process and influence in developers that other products are forced to become toys.

Re:What movement?

[panthro]

Or is it just a kernel that was inserted into an OS that already existed for years prior?

Re:It Depends

[WhiteWolf666]

I'm sorry, but X11 is slower than GDI/USER. That's just a fact.
No, its not. X11 is wicked fast. The problem isn't that X11 isn't fast; it's that your system isn't, by default, double buffered. X11 is a lean, mean, pixel pushing machine; it carries little overhead, and is very very extensible. Make no mistake, X11 is super-duper fast; that's one of the reason it's ran on a variety of systems far, far before Windows was a gleam in Bill Gate's eye.
The developers themselves have admitted that the X protocol is inefficient (especially as used by the toolkits),
Huh?
that Xlib is not suitable for modern applications (and it's now finally being replaced)
Huh? Partially true; but it works, and in enterprise, too.
and that the acceleration architecture is simply not suitable for desktop usage.
Double huh? XAA, maybe. EXA? No way.
Note that EXA is supported on a number of X servers, and that both the Nvidia and ATI proprietary servers provide high performance X render acceleration.

Not to mention the new AIGLX and XGL hacks/intermediate steps towards a new X architecture. These two are ridiculously slick, and I use both on a regular basis. Every system in my household, my parents household, and my office run Linux (except for the OS X boxes). Every one of these runs either XGL or some kind of composite window manager, and they "feel" faster in Linux than on XP.

Furthermore, exactly what GUI server do you think they use for video editing, or any of the other high-end workstation uses that Linux has?

Please take a look here; Xorg's performance is something that has undergone careful consideration.
I have used Windows and Linux side by side on the same machine and the Windows GUI is always faster. On my T43, for example, dragging windows on Linux will sometimes leave trails, no matter what WM/DE I'm using.
Only if you aren't using a composite manager.

I quote:

Most X drivers do not synchronize their drawing to the vertical retrace signal from the monitor. (To be fair, very few windowing systems do this consistently, even MacOS X.) This leads to a tearing appearance on some drawing operations, which looks slow. If the vertical retrace signal could be exposed through the SYNC extension, applications could defer their rendering slightly and reduce or eliminate tearing. This requires extending each driver to support this, as well as adding a little support code to the server itself.
The un-Composited model of X operation requires many round trip operations to redraw areas when they are exposed (window move, etc.). It is important that X be able to make Composited operation fast in the future.