Would You Date Microsoft?

teslatug writes "Channel9 has an interview with Bill Hilf of the Open Source Software Lab at Microsoft. Hilf argues that the majority of companies advocate open source solely so that they can drive customers to their core business, which is not open source. He calls this his 'donut theory.' Hilf also sees RedHat in this model, with support being their core. He compares this to dating, where you have to offer your date value in order to entice them. In his view, Microsoft offers developers a platform where they can make money selling their software. The virtues of 'free as in freedom' and the value of open source to the desktop users are skirted, but he makes an interesting point about big businesses like IBM and Oracle."

Comments

Re:My Linux Annoyances as a Hardended Windows user

[Elpacoloco]

Sorry your experience is so sucky so far. It's been a long time since I switched, my poor annoyed friend, so I'll try to help you as best I can.

1. No fecking media support! I get XMMS inform me on first attempt at playing an MP3 that it won't because of licensing conflict. Wtf? Codecs for avi's and DVDs were a simular story; all had to be downloaded via yum (bloody excellent tool!). Seriously; not good, but fixed in the end.

Law is the bane of most media in open source -- many codec makers won't tell you how their codec works unless you promise to only write closed-source drivers for it, which is unacceptable for technical and political reasons in the open source world. We're working on automating it more with package-handling tools like yum, but we're not at the windows "automatically get new licenses" level yet.

2. Why the hell do I have to install a new kernel? Why? I've never had to on Windows - why is Linux different? Is it so buggy? I installed with a factory version something ending 054. Now I have something ending 122 I believe. I did it ok, but that's not the point I'm making; were there really 68 cock-ups so great in the kernel build from release-time until that now they had to re-release 68 times? I'm guessing probablly not, but still.

You have to install new kernels for the same reasons that you have to buy new versions of windows. (You're not still running Windows 3.1, are you?) You get new drivers, methods, and all those fun things you expect from your operating system. I can write you scripts to mostly automate the process of building new kernels, which should take 94% of the pain out of the process, but it will involve answering stupid questions about new drivers. It doesn't know. Hotplugging is our weakness right now.

3. Point 2 also breaks my nvidia drivers. I don't want to re-compile new drivers everytime there's a new 'patch'. For the love of god, why?!

Driver has to go with the kernel for it to work. Nvidia won't provide binary drivers. I'll have to add that to your kernel compiling script.

4. X-Windows. What a mess. Why do I have to tell it my x & y refresh rates for my monitor? Windows just 'knows'. Many more things here I feel that X-Windows should just 'know' - the number of buttons on my USB mouse for-instance. If Windows can do it, there's no reason why Linux can't. Also, X-Windows 'feels' slower than Windows. I'm sure there's good reasons for this, but I don't care; Windows is snappier.

X-Windows *IS* a mess. We mostly inherited it from our UNIX-based predecessors and will break too many things if we replace it, since UNIX, (on which Linux's interfaces are based) was intended as a command-line operating system, and GUIs were mostly an afterthought. There are things I can do to make snappier your X-windows. Upgrading to a 2.6 kernel inexplicably made my X-windows much, much, snappier. Also, some distributions have gotten very good at auto-writing an X-windows configuration that is exactly perfect for you with a little probing , a little guesswork, and some minor information from you. ("My monitor is 17", and I use "blah" graphics card.") I also recommend the "xvidtune" application, which helps you find the best sync information, then gives you the line to paste into the configuration.

5. Lack of decent file-browser. The best I've come across is Nautilus in a mode that resembles Windows Explorer. It'll do for now, but as far as I'm aware, offers no context-sensitive menus for applications (like the Winamp "Play in Winamp" right-click menu on folders.

Most of us Linux users do our file maintenence in the command line, which is the main reason for the file-browsers being so bad. It's just too far out of our everyday experience. I'll keep your suggestions in mind for how to improve Nautilus and other file browsers.

My two cents...

[Antony-Kyre]

I don't know exactly what this is about since the article isn't loading, but here's my opinion.

Regardless of whatever the company does, it is very important they have a competent support staff.

Let us say you have a problem. You contact support. They answer but fail to resolve the issue. You Google the error, take a few minutes going to sites, and find the answer to your problem so easily. What does that say about the company?

(The above paragraph is more or less my experience with Microsoft's help staff after not being able to do Windows Update. A Google search found out that slow processors might not work with their latest Windows Update on the web.)

Kernel Drivers

[Elpacoloco]

If you really, truly believe this, try installing a Win 95 driver on an XP system. I give even odds on that actually working. I'll give better odds that the hardware came with specialized XP drivers.

Re:Kernel Drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, you can use a Win2k driver on XP on Win2k3.

Re:Kernel Drivers

[Macthorpe]

Bad example.

What we're talking about here is minor revisions, akin to the auto-updates that Miscrosoft provides. Every time they send one of those I don't have to reinstall any drivers at all.

Re:Kernel Drivers

[Al Dimond]

Yeah, lots of Linux kernel developers say the unstable kernel interface is a good thing, because they feel it's more productive and ultimately leads to a better kernel and drivers to change kernel interfaces when change is warranted and change the drivers along with, instead of writing a new kernel interface and having to maintain an old one. If you get your driver in the Linux kernel tree people will fix your driver for you if they break compatibility with it.

The downside is that if you have a driver, with source open or not, that isn't in the kernel tree it's hard to keep up with the changes. For a system as popular as Linux, you'll find that there will be many drivers that exist outside the kernel tree, for various reasons. Some people don't want to GPL their drivers, some drivers aren't mature enough, sometimes there are wierd political or "code style" issues (like with ReiserFS). The fact that it's difficult to maintain an out-of-kernel driver for Linux encourages people to make their drivers part of the kernel tree, and that's generally nice: a very wide variety of devices are supported in official kernel sources. I don't have to use any out-of-kernel drivers right now. My drivers are all part of the kernel, and not some assorted bunch of packages I have to chase down. From where I sit it serves me well.