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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."
what exactly is Microsoft(TM) the microsoft of?
What exactly does "the Microsoft of ..." mean? Does it mean you own IP rights to all of your major product lines? Does it mean you are the driving force behind the look and feel of your products? Does it mean you are the only one who decides what features go into your product? Or does it simply mean you have the biggest share of your particular product?
It depends on what part of Microsoft you are comparing it to. If you are talking about their monopoly, probably not. However, if you are talking about their operating system loaded with a bunch of crap, ultra-slow, difficult to use, full of bugs, prone to viruses, then yes, there can definitely be a Microsoft of Linux. I think there already are a couple, but I'll leave the naming of names to others.
I use Ubuntu Linux on a casual basis. It's nice; 90% the apps I could want, works with 100% of my hardware; no real complaints there.
However, I believe I could sum up my feeling on this subject by outlining a common issue I run into...
A classic conversation could be something like (not reproduced exactly):
Me: "How do I get my back/forward mouse buttons to work in Firefox (like it does in Windows)?"
Friend: "Er, what distro are you running again?"
Me: "Ubuntu...whatever the latest is"
Friend: "Ah. I don't know that one too well...try editing the X-config files"
Me: "Ah, that big scary file that if you screw up renders the pretty GUI bit useless?"
Friend: "yep."
Me: "Well, never mind. I'll pass."
I mean, just give me the one control-panel for crying out loud?! As much as I appreciate the freedom that comes with linux, sometimes it's just not just not worth the hassle! Maybe I'm not l337 enough when it comes to Linux, but I happen to also like standardisation when it comes to some things; system configuration being one of them.
So there you go. Rantings of a Windows boy. Maybe one day I'll "make the switch", but not until I get my god-forsaken 5 mouse-buttons working without manually having to edit random config-files.
Apart from that, it's all dandy! Thanks for listening.
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Okay, let me be crystal clear here, because I'm not trying to start some "My Favorite OS Has The Biggest Dick" flame-war.
I'm not saying that Linux desktop solutions are not good. Some of them are darn good. For certain users, it's a terrific choice.
I'm saying that there isn't the rising tide of interest in it that their once was.
Let's look at some of the forces behind people wanting a Linux desktop back around 1998 or so, and what has happened since then:
1. An affordable alternative to Microsoft.
Since Steve Jobs returned to Apple, the Mac has become more affordable while improving is several other important ways. Microsoft haters can pick up a $600 mini from their local store that does pretty much everything they want to do.
2. Better security
Okay, Microsoft still kind of sucks at security, but if you run an external firewall and keep your patches up to date, you're not nearly as vulnerable on a networked Windows box as you were eight years ago.
3. "Free as in Speech"
The fact that Darwin, the BSD Layer of OS X, is open source is enough for most people. It means that Apple is wisely subjecting the underpinnings of their OS to peer review and gaining most of the wins of using open source. A few hard-core Stallmansits probably feel very differently about it, but Free Software bigotry is not really enough to drive a popular movement.
4. *nix at home
OS X and various flavors of BSD provide plenty of opportunity for that, and even Windows has emulation tools. A would-be BOFH in training could learn an awful lot of what they need to know about *nix simply by monkeying on a Windows PC.
5. New life to old hardware.
"Old" hardware these days is pretty darn beefy stuff. When you can buy an XP-capable used PC or an OS X-capable used Mac for under $100, there really isn't a compelling reason to squeeze a little more life out of that old 386 in the garage.
The value of the box that can't run one a modern commercial OS at this point is pretty much measured in the price and quantity of the metals used to build it, minus the cost of disposing of any hazzardous materials. (A number which is not always higher than zero.) Plus, when parts burn out, it's almost never worth the time and trouble to repair them.
So my point is, while Linux has made some great strides to become more user-friendly than it was back in the day, the emergence of OS X and the improvements of Windows have taken away most of the reasons for people to switch.
There is one home use for Linux which doesn't seem to be going away soon: Media Room computers!
Every Windows solution I've seen costs a fortune and works like ass.
I have a Mac driving my HDTV, and love it, but it's still a more expensive solution than a MythTV set-up would have been.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Perhaps not... but once upon a time, Microsoft did sell its own variant of Unix.
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And then old Bill will stand up. He'll look at all the Linux distributions spread out before him, he'll take out his wallet, and he'll say "Say, who would like be an exclusive parter with Microsoft?". And Linspire's hand will shoot up, waving back and forth wildly.
Linspire will still be a separate company -- well, a wholly owned subsidiary of MS. That will be the case just to keep that nasty GPL and FOSS legal stuff sandboxed away from all the proprietary code MS will still develop. MS will release the Linspire AD connector, and you won't see any code for that, I tell you what. Next we'll see Linspire Server. Then we'll see MS Office for Linspire (not Linux, just Linspire). And there'll be DRM and Trusted Computing added to Linspire in just the right places and just the right ways to make it illegal to reverse engineer (or even look at).
Windows is dead. Long live Windows!
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.