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The War Is Over, and Linux Has Won
xtaski writes "Dana Blankenhorn bluntly states a reality that many have known: 'The war is over and Linux won'. With Oracle and Microsoft putting Linux in the spotlight and positioning themselves to grow with Linux. 'A new report shows that 83% of companies expect to support new workloads on Linux against 23% for Windows. ... Over two-thirds of the respondents said they will increase their use of Linux in the next year, and almost no one said the opposite.'"
The battle is over and Linux has won it. The desktop is the major war.
At best, Linux has won an opening skirmish. For most people, the internet is what runs on their desktop ( or laptop ). They have no more concern about the particulars of the server that their router connects to than they do about the particulars of the powerplant that their power cord connects to. They neither know nor care about server software
At worst, it is like the Japanese general ( admiral? ) who is alleged to have said after Pearl Harbor: "I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant." MS is obviously taking Linux seriously now, but most people still don't know what it is. Expect MS to engage in serious Linux FUD.
Anyway, congratulations to all the Linux coders.
At least, judging from the general response here to the Novell-MS deal, so people are more at war then ever before.
But than again, it's becoming an old song: 'Haven't they heard we've won the war, what do they keep on fighting for?'
Has this been confirmed by Netcraft?
Most people have no idea what the difference between free software and proprietary software is. However, out of the set of those who have been informed of the distinction, a vast majority prefer free software. Most people have no idea what an operating system is. However, out of those who do, most know that they use GNU/Linux all the time--whether on their home PC, or on their TiVo, or every time they do a google search.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Isn't that a bit like supermarkets saying we're going to sell more organic food? Not necessarily going to decrease the sale of regular food, but we're not going to decrease the amount of organic food.
I'm happy there are more linux servers. And once it becomes a viable desktop solution for a normal user, it'll be a boon for its security. As it is now, it's not a flexible, easy to manage, easy to use desktop OS. But keep trying!
Declare victory then get the hell out.
why do i keep on having recurring visions of a flight deck with a "mission accomplished banner" blowing in the background...
*ducks*
"A new IBM-sponsored study on Linux sent m..."
Hahahaha.... thank you IBM for fudding the Microsoft way. Down Microsoft DOWN! I have a boat load of nails for your new coffin.
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. He spent a significant amount of time in the US before the Japanese attacked. He felt that the pre-emptive strike was a mistake, and that it would only buy them about 6 months reprieve before the American war machine was fully geared up and ready. Thus his "I fear I have awakened a sleeping giant" comment.
He was right. Six months later, the U.S. turned the tide at the Battle of Miday. The Japanese Navy was nowhere near as resilient as the U.S. Navy, and their losses hurt them deeply. Combined with the incredible number of carriers the U.S. began to manufacture, the six month turning point was a deadly one for Japan.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
and there, Linux hasn't so much won, as it is simply accepted as a fait accompli. The networks run by government departments are enormous beasts, with tens/hundreds of thousands of desktop PCs running Windows XP and thousands of servers running Irix, Solaris, OpenBSD, Linux and Windows 2003 server. The interesting thing is that all new server installations are either Linux or Windows 2003, other versions of UNIX have pretty much fizzled out and Linux (specifically Red Hat and Novell) is used for critical servers, firewalls and data-diodes, while Windows is mainly used for Active Directory and Exchange, protected behind an army of penguins.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Don't take a page from the George W. Bush's play book and declare victory before the war even really begins. The OS war is just getting started and Linux still has a long way to go before it can be declared the outright winner.
First off, "war" is a stupid metaphor for OS marketshare.
Secondly, there are multiple market segments.
#1. The server segment. Linux looks to have this market locked up.
#2. The corporate/government desktop market. Pay attention to how Munich progresses. This is the next big market for Linux.
#3. The home (non-gamer) market. This isn't going to happen until you can buy Linux pre-loaded from the major OEM's. And that's not going to happen until Linux has the marketshare with the corporations/governments.
#4. Finally, the gamer market. This depends almost entirely upon the support of the hardware OEM's and game ISV's. If the newest video card doesn't come with Linux drivers, the gamers will buy the video card and run the OS that does have drivers. Look for this market to be the very, very last one that Linux will gain marketshare in.
Don't worry about whether Linux is taking over the gamer machines yet. Focus on getting Linux into corporation/government desktops. That will get the OEM's to start pre-loading it which will set the stage for the home user migration.
I believe this is the admiral you were thinking of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admiral_Yamamoto
The desktop has always been the war. Linus wanted a free desktop from the beginning... linux got popular on servers and so people jumped on that. Linux developers got Microsoft's attention and now its time to worry.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
If it'll stop the OS wars, I'll accept anything. Imagine if other products were debated as often as Operating Systems.
Architect: "Loser. My printer is so much better than yours, because it is a plotter and can print HUGE banners!"
Writer: "Loser. Well my printer was cheaper, and the ink is much cheaper!"
Graphic Designer: "Sellout! My printer can print on photo-quality paper and at a higher resolution!"
Although the jokes the wars create are quite funny.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
"Don't forget to pay your $699 licensing fee you cock-smoking teabaggers."
Man, you had me confused for a minute. I sat here for a minute wondering what the Playstation 3 had to do with this!
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Beware! Whom the gods would destroy, first they call "promising".
The cost of the software is only part of the equation when setting up servers for a business. If Windows was a lot better than Linux, businesses would use Windows. My ISP, a long time Linux user and all around thrifty guy, uses Windows on one of his machines because it actually works better for that particular application.
Linux is winning because it is better, not because it is free.
The truth is that Microsofts business model has failed and they know it. Users don't want DRM or proprietry solutions, they want data interchange to be easier. This is the network effect and resistance really is futile.
The war that the monopoly will lose is just starting and they have plenty of money to pound sand with. It's too early to be claiming victory because MSFT litigation may briefly scare developers away from FOSS. Expect Microsoft to remain "innovative" until the bitter end.
in a way the average fourteen year old slashbot can understand:
i luv open source
micro$oft is the suxxorz
|1nux 15 w4y |337
Linus has won nothing because there is nothing to win. Linux won't kill Windows in the next decade and vice versa. No one is winning but rather both sides are in a pissing contest they refuse to admit is worthless.
I like muppets.
The war has been won on the server side a long time ago. MS was allways a joke there.
On the desktop, the best Product is MAC OS X, with both Windows and Linux running distant second. For some reason desktop customers do not seem to care about usability too much. But what the hell, OS X is pretty close to Linux anyways, with regard to what software runns.
But if Linux is the server OS of the future, it means it will stay and grow. Desktop OSes can be changed pretty fast. Server OSes cannot. MS allways wanted to dominate the server market. Guess they just never managed to create a good enough product. Or have long enough product lifetimes.
My personal reason for running Linux and not OS X is that I wanted a workstation OS (read Unix-like OS) longe before OS X came along. Windows? Well, most games only run on Windows. Any other reason to use it? I don't see any. It is not even cheaper or easier to use if you know what you are doing...
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
"First they ignore you..."
1991-96
"...then they laugh at you..."
1997-2000
"...then they attack you..."
2001-06
"...then you win."
2007?
(all years are approximate)
But adding a single Linux box is an increase in Linux use.
Stacked Statistics Much?
Except this story *was* on digg too, and it *was* dugg onto the frontpage. The precise same headline too. Digg is literally burying itself through the extremely poor quality of posts on stories, the posters and the ceaseless blogspam. In that regard, slashdot is ahead
It's cool how Google, et. al., can raise your perceived Internet IQ by about 30 points....hmmm? Not hacking on you....just sayin' ;-)
$6.21 is the number of the beast before sales tax. Meh.
The truth is that while Linux has been playing catch up to Windows, at least in terms of usability, the web has evolved into the platform of the future. Firefox is an infinitely more important competitor to Microsoft than Linux could ever hope to be.
Meh, real men run UNIX anyway.
Seriously, I think some of the Linux distributions are putting themselves in jeopardy by aligning themselves with corporate interests and for accepting and distributing binary blobs from vendors. Corporations are simply using the Linux community as a way of off-loading their development costs.
#1. The server segment. Linux looks to have this market locked up.
I'm not sure what the hell people are looking at when they say things like this. Take a look at Microsoft quarterly results. Their revenue and profits in their server OS and SQL products has been skyrocketing every quarter.
Linux will have won the war when Microsoft comes out with its own distribution.
Why haven't they done that yet?
Linux may win a war versus Microsoft on the server, but that is not where Microsoft is most powerful. Microsoft is still the 800 pound king gorilla of the desktop, and Linux still has a way to go before it unseats Microsoft. Heck, OS X has been out for over five years. Many users who have used both OS X and Windows claim that OS X is superior, and many have switched. However, OS X has barely pinched Microsoft, and Microsoft still enjoys 93% or so marketshare on the desktop (5% goes to Mac, and the rest of that is Linux, BSD, and other OSes).
The reason why Windows still hasn't been unseated is that too many people have software that is Windows-only. Businesses still rely on in-house Windows programs that were created by some programmer many years ago who is long gone, and cannot afford porting it to another operating system. Sometimes you'll see a business run an old Windows 3.1 or even DOS application since there is no replacement, and since it is good enough for them to not worry about porting it or creating a clone of it. Engineers aren't dropping AutoCAD anytime soon, and AutoCAD is Windows only. Engineers, being well known for their pragmatism, stick to Windows. Graphics artists on both the PC and the Macintosh who rely on Photoshop, Quark Express, and Dreamweaver are not going to move to Ubuntu and use the GIMP, Scribus, and nvu (yes, those open source products are good, but their commercial competitors are very good and are worth the $$$ that you pay for them; they end up saving you $$$ with their features and ease of use). And developers who want some food on their table better know something about Win32, .NET, and other Windows technologies. In most non-CS fields, you cannot avoid Windows in the professional world, and Windows has became a fact of life in many careers.
So, what is the open source community going to do about this? A great operating system with all of the bells and whistles isn't enough for most people. Once again, OS X is considered the best operating system by many people, but some applications haven't been ported yet (or won't be ported), which doesn't leave OS X as an option for those people. The open source community needs to start polishing up their offerings and get started on some new stuff (an AutoCAD replacement will get engineers off of Windows, for example). GIMP can use some improvement. OpenOffice should be more modular and faster. Dia needs to start looking like OmniGraffle or Visio. There needs to be some sort of OSS equivalent to Visual Basic (what I mean by that is ease of developing GUI applications). I recommend the same with other Linux applications.
Remember, the key to operating system adoption is applications. Look at MS-DOS, for example (back in its heyday). It was hard to use (compared to the Apple Macintosh at the time), very rudimentary (compared to other OSes in the 80s like Unix, NeXTSTEP, and VMS), and can only run one application at a time. But it ran Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect, and it ran all of the other applications that business users wanted. Home users wanted the computers that business users had, so they got that too. Ditto for Windows 3.1. NeXTSTEP knocks the socks off of Windows 3.1. But who had the applications?
Your OS can be the easiest to use OS in the world. It can have microkernels with the best scheduling and load-balancing algorithms that exist. It can utilize all of the systems research published in the ACM and IEEE journals within the past two years. It can be so secure that it would be the envy of Homeland Security and would make Symantec and McAffe angry (they can't sell protection for it). It can even have a mass advertising campaign with beautiful angelic models praising the product. But if it cannot run the applications that they want, then it is just a waste of hard drive space and time as far as they are concerned.
Editors, please moderate yourselves!! It is not responsible journalism to justify use of a headline because it is a quote from someone, somewhere. Responsible editors weigh the real import of the news and brand it accordingly.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
Did you really just compare Gandhi's fight for freedom from British rule in India to the OS "wars"?
What is the "opposite"? "We expect to support new workloads on Microsoft" or "We expect to not support new workloads on Linux" FFT
A pox on web designers who feel that window.innerWidth == screen.availWidth
#2. The corporate/government desktop market. Pay attention to how Munich progresses. This is the next big market for Linux.
You would think that government would be the first to jump on open source. Very few things seem as ridiculous to me as closed-source voting machines.
But then again, since money elects politicians, politicians cozy up to big business.
It means percentage of -new- roles that will be put on each platform. If my 100% windows shop adds a new ms sql server, thats -new- windows workload as long as the server isnt a replacment. This considered, the numbers are far more damning for redmond.
It'll be over when Aunt Tilly uses Linux on the desktop.
/etc/sudoers is hopeless bullshit, but thanks for playing.
And why can't she use it today instead of Windows?
Because, just for one example, today the Smithsonian launched an online exhibition called Earth from Space which uses a version of Flash not available (yet) on Linux.
And because when she buys a wireless card she has to learn about something called "ndiswrapper".
And because asking a little old lady to get root so she can edit
No, Linux on the desktop won't have won until Aunt Tilly can use it as easily as Windows.
With Linux appearing on the corporate desktop, the gap is closing. But there's still a long long way to go.
Gotta watch those screenwriters:
m oto's_sleeping_giant_quote
http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Isoroku_Yama
rj
"Over two-thirds of the respondents said they will increase their use of Linux in the next year, and almost no one said the opposite."
Almost no one = one third of the respondents?
So when is the liquidation sale in Redmond?
Wasn't the whole idea from Microsoft funding Novell was to remove Linux?
I introduced a kid today to the world of Linux by giving him an Edubuntu CD.
I think you're right about Linux winning only the battle.
And companies would have to be crazy to not exploit Linux for its strengths, since it is free after all.
Oh You POS
I'll take it one step further. Linux needs to meet certain 'benchmarks' in order to succeed in the markets you mentioned. Specifically:
#1 Server segment - Linux needs to interoperate with Microsoft before it can fully tackle the enterprise administration server market. Active Directory and Outlook are the 2 major players for Microsoft here, Linux needs to be compatible or companies will not fully make the switch. As you said, the desktop comes after the server market, so in order for the server market to succeed, all of those corporate desktops need to work with linux servers.
#2 Corporate/government desktop market - It will be a huge help if Munich succeeds. Applications are the key here, specifically office applications. Open Office is great, but it still has a long way to go in some areas before I would feel comfortable doing away with MSOffice entirely. A working Powerpoint replacement is a must, as is a fully featured Excel replacement. Writer is relatively solid for most uses. Open formats will be a key contributer to advances in office applications.
#3 The home (non-gamer) market - The only reason this will not happen before the corporate/government market is because the OEMs have much to gain by ignoring linux and a lot to lose by embracing it as long as MS has enough market dominance to throw their weight around. A solid web-browser, a decent office application, and a usable movie/music player are all that is truly needed by this market - and they all already exist. The only thing stopping is the OEMs not pre-loading linux in favor of MS.
#4 the gamer market - You hit the nail on the head on this one. Drivers Drivers Drivers. If #3 succeeds, game makers will naturally focus more on their linux customers, but only if they have compatible hardware.
Unfortunately most of us slashdotters want to jump straight to #3-4. That simply isn't going to happen until microsoft's influence is already weakened from some other area such as corporate or government use of linux.
"Trickle Down" Geek-enomics.
The Geek sees himself as Libertarian. But his faith in top-down is Technocratic and authoritarian.
Geeks are always arguing about forks. But the one fork they never see is that of the home PC. It's an entirely different world now, with its own interests, needs and values.
On the day the wall came down They threw the locks onto the ground And with glasses high we raised a cry for freedom had arrived!
http://www.ronpaul2008.com/ Ron Paul for President 2008 http://www.infowars.com/
Take the hint that people are willing to put up with endless amounts of trouble, less glitter and eye candy, IN ORDER TO HAVE SECURE SOFTWARE, MICROSOFT. Question is, will they learn this major point?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Linux: The wars over: we won. Turns out your the big hero. I get to drive the float. And Red Hat is in charge of confetti!
Microsoft: I'm no stranger to sarcasm sir.
The desktop is dead. The new battleground is on the phones and other embedded devices.
evil is as evil does
You missed one. The embedded market...which I'm sorry, but Linux/*nix has had that for a few years now, and no one has noticed.
I'm not talkin cell phones and PDAs. I'm talkin things you use that you NEVER think about. What do you think runs all the slot machines in vegas? Keno machines at truck stops? Station pumps at EVERY BP gas station in the USA? Etc etc. That's a huge marketshare that's pretty much hidden from the public eye.
Linux has already gotten what it's gonna get. Don't expect it to gain any double-digit percentage of market-share in the next decade...it just won't...unless Microsoft takes Novell and incorporates it into their own stuff natively. Maybe we see Windows 2010 with a *nix kernel in it and it runs pretty much all apps.
This is due to the collapse of unix and novell on the server marketplace. It's a well documented phenomenon. As the market for unix and netware collapse people either move to linux or windows. Studies show that the vast majority of migrations move to linux but a certain percentage moves to windows. This is why linux on the server is growing faster then windows on the server and both are growing. Once all that migration is done they will have to fight over new customers.
Linux is winning this war, and will continue to win it.
evil is as evil does
I think that #3 will happen as a natural progression from MS's anti-piracy efforts and OEM deals. It used to be that when an new MS OS came out, you went out and bought a copy, and installed it on all the computers in your home. Maybe you even went in halfsies with a pal. Now, not only are you not able (without some real effort) install on multiple machines, but you don't even go out and buy a copy of the OS. You buy a computer with the OS already on it. Now what happens to your old machine. Yes, some people will toss them out. Many will keep running their old software. But, there will also be a significantly large group of people that will just install Linux. They won't care if it runs everything, as it is the second computer that they use for writing emails, or surfing the web with someone else in the family is on the gamer system. They may not do much on those systems, but their existence in their homes will show them that there are other choices. Some may even decide that they like Linux better, or that it suits their needs all by itself. That is how I see #3 coming about.
I was positive it was going to be the Shiites.
You mention what's happening now.
In a few more years, the GPL will be circumvented in ways that Novell hasn't even thought of yet.
It will be the corporation driving those circumventions.
Capitalism is at least as infectious as chicken pox in the average second grade classroom.
I'm glad Debian is staying focused.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Jack Palance is dead and you post this as news?
They say keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Maybe this is Microsoft's grand scheme of ultimately taking charge of OS marketing. Everyone has a price right?
"Okay, who put a "stop payment" on my reality check?"
Just to relieve the hyperbola, a War is a condition that results in mass destruction of life, culture and property for some arbritrary greater good. Brains and meat sprayed over the road, orphans, legless combatants. That is War. It is important to recognize the difference. Linux vs Microsoft is not War. Pick another word. Try not to be such a twit.
...how about, because MS would much rather sell you Windows Server 2003? Honestly, does the market really need another commercial Linux? As far as I can tell, Red Hat seems to be doing a pretty good job in that area. Do you really think MS could build a better distro that Red Hat, or even Novell? Microsoft isn't going to compete against their own flagship product line. It's true that MS has enough mindshare that many companies might buy into an MS Linux distro. However, once they're using MS Linux, it would be much easier for them to switch to some non-MS version. That's exactly why Microsoft is never going to encourage Linux use. It's much safer to keep customers locked the Windows platform.
The best GPU money can buy this week, the NVidia GeForce 8800 had Linux drivers the very same day it was launched.
However I see no game companies going to develop Linux game after Linux game. After all games are a market where money makes the decisions, and Linux users are used to have software but not pay for it.
(Having said that ugly generalization, I believe I'm just going to install Heavy Gear 2 for Linux as I really like that game and the Windows version doesn't work in my XP)
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
Not really off topic. If Linux = Japan and MS = America then expect MS to ramp up it's competition against Linux. Look at what ie is starting to do against Firefox. Like America in WW1 ie defeated Netscape (germany) then rested on the laurels and stopped innovating. (When WW2 started America's army was nowhere near ready) Then when attacked by Japan (firefox) America (ie) immediately began working to defeat their enemy. Nearly everyone who has used firefox prefers it over ie. However that doesn't matter. As long as ie is good enough the general public will not adopt it. Same with Linux. Unless Linux can become as easy to install and use PLUS come up with some superior features most users will never switch. Being free is not good enough as for most users as for them Windows is essentially free being that it comes on their computers. And don't start in on me about how linux is ready for the desktop. I tried to switch an still desperately want to. But I can't get SUSE nor Ubuntu to recognize my Linksys wireless card that windows picks up and installs automatically, Without the need to spend four days fighting with ndiswrappers.
Linux is free and free and Windows is neither. It is hard for software to be free without being free.
h ip
Anyway, my point was that businesses will select a more costly product if it produces greater profits. The important point is that Linux is better and that's why businesses use it. It is, as Microsoft has often pointed out, a question of TCO.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_cost_of_owners
Why is there such a competition anyway? Why do retards have to complain when other people use some other operating system? What does it matter if Linux isn't on every computer in the world? Some (read: most normal) people prefer Windows because you can use it without some inordinate amount of knowledge. Yeah, Linux is great if you know more about computers than most people (and if you don't have any particularly special programs you need to run), but what does it really matter? One reason I personally don't use Linux is because a lot of people who do are very condescending about it.
You left out cash registers (er, "point of sale" terminals) at major store chains, telco infrastructure (especially in Europe), and others.
In fact, every x86-based server shipped by a certain major vendor, even those destined to run Windows, also comes with Linux: the bootable CD that includes standalone hardware diagnostics and configuration programs, etc, is based on Debian.
As far as double-digit market shares -- Linux already has that of the computer/OS market as a whole. Desktop/laptop PCs are a small fraction of that market, they just happen to be the most visible.
-- Alastair
Which is now MS apparently...
I'm going to go get a me a clippy t-shirt!
Screw you Linu$!
The war comparison is stupid indeed. As for markets, it is funny that I run Suse Linux without problems for years at home whilst being in employment.
Soon after starting my own business I found myself buying PC's and office licenses for compatibility reasons and because I had no time fiddling with operating systems anyway. That was 3 years ago. Last weekend for fun I downloaded Ubuntu for AMD64 to install on my Compaq desktop - no luck with 64 bits Nvidia and Sitecom wireless. From forums it appears possible to fix, but again, very time consuming. 32 bits was better in term of graphics but no wireless and OOo is still as sluggish as all those years ago. And that on an Athlon 3200 with 1Gb ram. mwah. Graphics on an old Medion laptop were also broken.
I really want to use Linux and I would buy a pre-installed box if I could find it (in Holland). I would continue with Ms office in Crossover though, that worked fine already years ago. Maybe I should buy a Mac and drop Linux for another 3 years?
There isn't really a point to this rant. If there was I would have made it clearer.
Dennis.
You're right, war is a stupid metaphor. Make code, not war. Okay, sorry.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
Linux won't kill Windows in the next decade and vice versa. No one is winning but rather both sides are in a pissing contest they refuse to admit is worthless.
That sounds even handed but it's whack. The pissing is vastly one sided. No one in the Free Software world has done anything to "fight" other than state the obvious shortcomings of non free software. Microsoft, on the other hand, has spent billions calling free software a "communist" "cancer", and extended all of the tools they used to destroy their non free competitors: non-standard "extensible standards", secret file formats, and threats for vendors who would carry anything else. The real problem M$ has is competing. They had a difficult enough time matching non free competitor's offerings. It's impossible for them to match free software. Just look at the monster that Vista is - it's the end of the line for the non free way. Only M$ really cares about market share. Free software vendors know there's more than enough work in the world for everyone to be a winner. Projecting M$ like attitudes onto free software developers and users is deeply offensive.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I would like Linux to win the war. The reason is NOT so that Microsoft can go bankrupt (although that would be nice), or so that people can diss Windows (although that would be nice). It's not so that we can have a bigger market share than Redmond (although that would be nice).
To my mind, the war will be won when computer equipment manufacturers make their hardware available for Linux as much as they do for the market leader. I want to be able to buy the latest and greatest LCD projector mouse with built-in Wifi webcam, and not have to worry about whether some poor hacker in some corner of the world has worked all the bugs out of his loadable module. I want the manufacturer to provide the driver, and list requirements like: "Windows Vista, OS X v23.6, or Linux kernel 2.6.72" and have a CD that lets me use the thing.
All those people on either side of the debate, who say, "Why should we dumb down our geek OS for the average Joe?" or "Let's crush Microsoft under our heel!" --well, this is my goal for Linux winning. I don't care if Linux has 0.1% marketshare --if I can use it, and anyone else who wants to can use it, that's all I need.
As Linus says, we're not out to crush Microsoft. That's just a side effect.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhahahahahahahahahahhahahahahhaahahahahahah ahahaha
...
aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhahahahahahahahhahaha
Oh mercey. That was a good one.
Wait... this isn't theonion.com?
I really don't think so.
Aunt Tilly is an interesting statistic, nothing more. Look at what she does -- she browses the web, uses wireless. Apparently she needs to edit sudoers for some bullshit reason -- but I think it's bullshit for you to even bring it up; an ordinary Linux user does NOT have to do anything with sudoers, and in fact, I've touched the file maybe once, and I do far more with my box than Aunt Tilly ever will.
But regardless, look at what she doesn't do.
She doesn't spend between $50 and $500 a month on new games.
She doesn't make decisions about what new software a multi-million-dollar company is buying and deploying on hundreds of desktops.
She doesn't develop software... period, not to mention software that is so intricately bound to some quirk in the Windows API that she causes headaches for Microsoft itself when they try to fix their OS.
She, as so many people have made so perfectly clear, doesn't care what OS she runs, so long as it works. Thus, if Linux were taking over in a big way, she might buy an Ubuntu machine and not even know it. She certainly wouldn't be having these "Aunt Tilly" issues you so colourfully describe if Linux came preloaded on her computer and already set for her wireless card.
If "Earth from Space" doesn't work on her computer, and Linux has sufficient marketshare, she'll complain to the Smithsonian, not to her OS. The Smithsonian would be forced to use actual web standards, not made-up proprietary ones.
She doesn't impact, in any real way, the success or failure of Linux, other than perhaps word-of-mouth, and whether she tolerates websites going down or her credit card information being stolen.
The people who would need to use Linux are: gamers, business executives, IT people, and software developers, not necessarily in that order. These people are the only people who will actually make a conscious decision one way or the other, and they're certainly in a way to make other key people sweat.
For instance, let's say a large company suddenly decides to go pure-Linux, but they've been buying from Dell. They switch to someone else. As one company after another does this, Dell will either be forced to start selling computers without an OS (and at an actual, legitimate discount from the Windows ones), or even start preloading Linux, or they'll lose business and someone else will fill the gap. With enough companies doing this, it becomes viable for an OEM to decide it's cheaper to support their few home users by preloading Linux and supporting that than to deal with Microsoft. Home users will be faced with a choice -- actually spend $250+ on an OS, or switch. My feeling is, Aunt Tilly, given the choice, won't want to spend $250 on something she doesn't care about anyway. Many of them may even notice how nicely their work computers run, and will take Linux home with them.
Another scenario: Gamers, who have long built their own systems or ordered ludicrously expensive ones from the likes of Alienware, discover Linux -- cheaper for the custom-built, and available in a shiny case from a game-specific OEM, already pre-configured and tuned (so none of your "ndiswrapper" complaints). They start running so many games under Cedega that game developers decide it's cheaper to support Linux directly, with cross-platform games, than to keep dealing with the nightmare that is Cedega and actual Windows support. Eventually, games no longer run under Windows, and gamers either dual-boot or switch completely. Anyone who cares about that demographic starts developing Linux versions at least, if not exclusively, for all their major apps, so eventually, non-gamers start to switch, going to their gamer friends for technical help.
Finally: Software developers discover Linux. Be it some killer language or some killer tool, or simply the fact that Linux provides none of the hassle of Windows, and really isn't lacking anything -- even today -- that a software developer would want for his job, they start to switch. They start
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I like Linux, Windows and Mac but thats just me. Linux fits the server market very well but we have to remember that its controlled and operated by technically competent people. On the desktop its a different matter we are now dealing with a market where the bulk are quite computer illiterate but are generally comfortable using Windows even with all its flaws. With Vista just about to be released the battle for the desktop market share will be Vista vs XP and in a around 2 years Vista will win just like XP did against 98 & 2K. People will like the visual eye candy that comes with Vista as this stuff sells, and they wont care that Apple had it years ago just like when Apple introduced it on the Mac years ago no one in the Windows market was interested. Linux cant even pass Apple for desktop market share and it been trying so hard for years to get market share with Gnome and KDE but it just isnt working, there is a long way for Linux to catch up here and unfortunately Windows is a moving target also. Mac OS X is having a moment in the sun but its kind of mid afternoon and with Vista around the corner a lot of people will still prefer to stay with the Windows product family. Mac will hang around but I don't expect the market share to change much over the next 5 years. Microsoft's alliance with Novell may have something to do with Novells control over Mono (.NET Framework) as this is a very large part of Microsoft's future and Microsoft will like to control the direction it takes. With control of media content via DRM locking out open source solutions in the end control will swing back to the commercial solutions. Its possible for people to still run 98 and 2K or even pirated versions of XP but most just dont and instead pay for a new computer with the operating system on it. People were concerned about Media Player and IE in windows forcing out competition and microsoft was forced to release a version of windows without them (in Europe) and no one bought it (and it was very cheap). Just because there is a functional alternative does not mean people will choose it just look at VHS vs BETA. BETA was a better format but VHS won. Linux has its merit and that is definately in the server market as for the desktop I dont think it really stands a chance.
After reading that, I'm going to feel eerily disturbed during tomorrow morning's coffee and cigarette.
Thanks arsehole.
Any Linux FUD from MS will be free advertising for Linux. Will end up making Linux a household name.
Linux Users create their own FUD as well. I just recently posted about Mono 1.2 helping me use Visual BASIC in Linux. I get hit with Linux Sociopaths telling me that Visual BASIC sucks and that I should use a real language like Java, Python, or C++ instead. That is FUD from the Linux side for you, Linux Sociopaths writing their own FUD now.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
You forgot Linux is also fine for firewalls, routers, embedded devices, cluster computing, scientific apps, robotics and more. Your view is from a consumer desktop user as if that is all that mattered in the world.
'The war is over and Linux won'
Right. What ever you say. I guess this is why I can go in to any retail big-box store like Circuit City or Best Buy or Fry's and buy a name-brand machine off the shelf with Linux preloaded, and why I don't see any Windows boxes in the same stores, eh?
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Yay Oracle and Microsoft aren't ignoring you any more! You won! Oh wait... now they're comming for you.
Hope you use SUSe, or have great lawyers.
There cannot be any required memorization of command line syntax. Period.
Don't blah at me about its power, yeah I know.. We are talking about the mass in-home consumer market.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Sorry to burst your bubble, but ease of install is a major non-issue.
First of all, most Linux distros are already easier to install than Windows, and after a recent eXPerience with a laptop with a SATA drive, which Win XP SP1 can't even see, and the laptop, of course, doesn't have a floppy drive - which is, as we all know, the only way one can load external drivers during a Windows install - well, even Gentoo is easier to install than Windows. At least it sees the disk.
Furthermore, common users do not install their OS anyway. It comes pre-installed or they get one of us geeks to do it for them.
Although, it may be so that Microsoft Quality(TM) accustomed users to a regular OS reinstall... can't say, really...
Superior features are also a non-issue; people just want to use the same programs in the same manner, for they do not want to learn new stuff.
This wasn't meant as a critique; it is not their area of interest, and they mostly just want to use the computer, not program it or learn anything beyond the few basic functions they need and which they have already mastered to the level they need.
Think speed-reading vs. normal reading and how many people bother learning that.
Ignore this signature. By order.
Really? Mind if I ask what you typed that on?
You must be young, or you would remember what actually happened. When micro$ started its run,
it basically stole IBM's work, ok, work that it had done with IBM on OS/2, the father of windows. Micro$$ took its marbles and split from IBM in the early nineties, coming out with win95 a shockingly short time later. Really the micro$$ monopoly started with a huge act of deception and treachery, and IBM knows it. Micro$$ HAD to be secretly working like mad to double cross IBM all the time. It pretended to work with IBM in developing its joint venture OS/2 project while all along skimming the best of OS/2 into its windows95 product and not telling IBM, its partner, about the other breakthroughs it had made that would have made OS/2 a success. OS/2 had a big problem in dealing with sound. Sound routines were clumsy and exceedingly time consuming in OS/2. On the other hand, win95 was very good with sound. That sound capability made all the difference. Micro$$ abandoned the flat memory model of OS/2 in favor of backward capability to run DOS and all the DOS games. This was how microsoft got its foothold with win95. Had it released to IBM its knowledge of how to process sound in a multitasking system without tying up system resources for too long a time, OS/2 would have been the success that micro$$ win95 was and we would now be fighting an IBM monopoly and not a micro$$ one. The whole success run started with games. You are putting the cart before the horse. In the early nineties, there was a plethora of good DOS software that ran wery well on DOS thank you very much. The same software, server, database, spreadsheet, wordprocessor would also run very well on OS/2, as OS/2 had an ability to run windows in an OS/2 window. OS/2 could also run DOS software in a window as well. It could run all these things in its own memory space. It was cumbersome to set up, and sometimes did not boot well; but it could always shut down cleanly, something that windows95 had trouble with, often. To put it in a nutshell, windows succeeded because it could run games. Businessmen liked games whether they admitted it or not. Ask any network weenie that was around in the nineties about how much network drag on just about any business network was because of covert games of 'doom' being played all over just about any company network. Many games came configured for the use of a 'boss' key that would display a fake spreadsheet at the touch of a certain key or key combination. All the success of windows was because of the following facts:
setup of windows was straightforward most of the time
windows could play all the old games and was built on the existing DOS systems
microsoft had made secret deals with hardware manufacturers to provide them with exclusive drivers to the exclusion of others
microsoft sold the original windows for fifty dollars
windows' original footprint was light....less than forty megabytes
microsoft made sure its sound and game graphics were good.
microsoft made sure that other systems did not have legal access to the latest drivers
The denial of sound and video abilities to its competitors and its treachery in the market were vintage microsoft. They are doing it to this day. Just try to change a laptop to run anything else than a windows product. They will run linux. They will even process sound if you can find the drivers most of the time. They will NOT, however, run good graphics. Microsoft has found a way to conspir
I am on the desktop... Its not dead..
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
I'm an end user and a web designer.
I use Open Source and buy good Shareware.
My main client runs Apache on SunOS.
My new iMac sits opposite my Windows box.
Should I give a flying FUD?
The current state of the Desktop-war is this:
Windows: 97.88%
MacOS: 1.49%
Unknown: 0.32%
Linux: 0.32%
(Statistics taken from www.elfpack.com which is basically people that want cool stuff on web, so I think that microsoft.com has a lower rate of Windows-users...)
But here's the thing: Microsoft can't win. Sure, it can theoretically maintain its dominance, but Linux will never run out of money, will never fail totally because some boss thinks that it should be developed differently and Microsoft can never offer a product to a lower price.
So in the end, Microsoft will be the high-price alternative for a few and there will be a Linux that just works that all "normal" users use. Millions of small developers sooner or later are better than one big one, because the big one will make a fatal mistake some day, but the small ones are making mistakes all the time, but that's only fatal to them, not to Linux.
Don't forget about the toasters!
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Did Vista Final/RTM just get "released"?
= quicknav&item=viewnfo&id=108022
http://www.nforce.nl/index.php?switchto=nfos&menu
That would be hilarious...
I have hardware that doesn't work in Windows but works in other OSes, so what ?
Most users never install Windows either.
I challenge you to get a novice to install Windows and have the network working, a non US keyboard set, a non US input locale, and VGA running at 1600x1200 without help.
If they manage that, give them a nForce motherboarded PC and no driver CD.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Q: How many light bulbs does it take to change a light bulb?
A: One, if it knows its own Goedel number.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Linux isn't ready for my grandma yet.
Dead? Desktop?
Frankly, I don't mind MS thinking that, although I doubt that they really do.
No mobile phone or embedded device can replace the good old keyboard, which enables me to write much faster than by hand. Ten fingers or one pencil - you do the math.
And I don't like the SMS.
Then there are games, which look much better on a 17" monitor than on a 2" display.
And where would you like to program? draw? model? edit music?
Maybe I lack vision, but I don't see all of those switching to mobile phones or whatever.
Not until the VRD at least becomes a reality, i.e. a common accessory. And AFAIK it's not even high-end yet.
Desktop isn't dead yet... it's very much alive and it will remain so for at least ten more years.
Ignore this signature. By order.
The dad of one of my ex girlfriends runs a company that recently decided to move from Linux to Windows -- and he says that a good part of the reason why is that MS is reall hot to kill off Linux.
This doesn't mean the war is over, but it's definitely a good bit of momentum on an important front. I'd say that the next place where we're most likely to get some motion is the business desktop market. In that arena, I'd say that things like OpenOffice (and it's various alternatives) are rather important pieces to support.The war is far from over, but there's nothing wrong with celebrating a major victory.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
You can find it at realsoftware.
Used to be free as in beer on Linux, but doesn't seem to be any more.
Not victory Zonk. The shroud of the darkside has fallen. Begun the OS war has.
I will bend like a reed in the wind.
Last year Windows 2003 outpaced new sales of unix for the first time ever, while new linux market share was single digits. Windows 2003 is on pace to do it again this year too.
MS is now just starting to dabble in Linux's foothold, affordable HPC computing. Lets be honest here, the lack of MS support is what gave linux the biggest door into the server market in the first place. Do you guys honestly think that Longhorn server is going to loose MS market share? Since Windows NT 3.51 MS has consistently put out server software that was significantly superior to the previous version, and MANY people are pretty happy with 2003.
Or do any of you think they are going to start losing server share to Apple? I mean I won't even talk about how apple xserve share is hardly measureable in the server world...
All that aside, here is my real question; Why is this an acceptable post? Regardless of your side, nobody really believes the "war" is over and "linux has won". Isn't this the definition of "trolling"? Why is ok to troll when its anti-ms? Its bad enough people troll in the a thread, but to start a new thread by trolling? What the he**?
http://www.computadorusado.com.br/plone/news/junho /PCPpopular/
write that link into http://babelfish.altavista.com/tr (choose Portuguese to English) and you get a bad translation.
General ideas in the newsstory:
- poorer people (Class C) can now buy PCs
- in Brazilian Wal-Mart, in the 2006 1st 4 months, PCs sold 200% more than in the same period in 2005
- Brazilian Carrefour reports a 40% PC-related sales increase
- Basic PCs can be bought in 24 payments of about US$ 30
- Reasons: Exchange rate makes imports like PC parts cheaper, special tax exemption laws for popular basic machines and government bank financing "basic PC" acquisitions
- Gray PC market (usually evading taxes) shrink as tax-paying ones increase
- Basic PCs sold with Linux + free software; MS answers with Windows Starter version
- Over 30 different makers and more entering the niche
- Significant sales growth is believed to be possible
- Bill Gates declares a project will be expanded to sell PCs like pre-paid cell phones: US $360 paid in cash for the computer and the rest is paid with cards which buy usage time until the buyer pays the full US$720 price
Mind you, these are not servers. These are Linux desktops, which many claim it's not ready.
War, what is it good for?
VxWorks runs a lot of it, QNX is also popular. There's tons more as well, heck some devices even use DOS (really). Linux is certainly growing but if you think Linux is the embedded OS that runs the world, think again. As some high profile examples of the two I listed the Mars rovers run on VxWorks and Cisco's new IOS-XR is built on top of QNX.
While you could claim *NIX has a lot of the embedded market since QNX is POSIX complaint and VxWorks is at least in some ways it's not Linux by a long shot.
The embedded market is rather varied and you see all sorts of OSes in there you don't normally see. You even see Windows. In addition to Windows CE/Mobile there's a special embedded version of Windows XP (called XP embedded). Windows is getting fairly popular in new ATMs these days, though the OS/2 (yes really) ATMs are still a sizable force.
#1. The server segment. Linux looks to have this market locked up.
Oh, how I wish this were true.... But it's not.
Every day, dozens of servers are deployed running Microsoft Exchange. These servers spread through data centers like a plague, leaving behind Active Directories and MS SQL Server databases. Users start using the non-interoperable features of the windows server and it causes DHCP, DNS, and eventually FTP and Web servers to go to windows 'because it's easier'. Somewhere in there a CIO, who only knows about software with a multi-million dollar marketing budget, figures out that it is cheaper to buy a bulk license than to buy individual Microsoft licenses. His trade magazine said he would get audited if he didn't anyway. Then the administrators are forced to use the products for every task to maximize ROI, while the CIO walks around the office spouting inaccuracies about Linux, like it's "famous inability to handle timezones" and other such trash, in order to seem smart. Before you know, while there may be a couple of Linux boxes in the company, for the first time ever Windows Server is dominating every rack in these companies datacenters where there user to be commercial UNIX. Linux's main role? Providing a stable kernel for the virtual machines that allow Microsoft multiple license fees for a single piece of hardware.
You just can't compete with that marketing budget. Not when people with no technical knowledge make the purchasing decisions. Not only is Microsoft encouraging you to buy their own products, but the thousands of other tech companies that bring in billions of dollars of revenue each year by selling products that make Microsoft's broken bloated trash usable are encouraging you to buy Microsoft so that you'll need their software to fix them. In 5 years, Microsoft will have the same stranglehold on the server market that they have on the desktop today. Ironically, they may blow the desktop market with Vista.
Do you think Linux games would be pirated more than Windows games?
Or, more precisely,do you think a Linux counterpart of a game would be more pirated than the Windows version?
I'm afraid that you're very much mistaken if you think that, and this is why I find this statement of yours misleading.
Yes, Linux users like the fact that their OS is free. But to many (not the most; I don't have such illusions) even more important is the fact that it's open.
Linux users - at least in my experience - aren't cheapskates; if they find a product worth their money, they'll buy it, hardware or software, no matter.
No-one at least bordering on normal won't refuse to buy a game although they'd really want to play it just because they believe in free software.
But whatever... I only know one thing about Linux and games:
Even some of my friends who don't like Linux and don't believe in it ever succeeding in anything but the tiny share it appears to have right now have Linux installed on their machines.
Old games work much better under Linux than under Windows XP. DOS games, Win9x games... you name it. There are many games which won't even run under WinXP, even in compatibility mode, but will run just fine under Wine or Cedega.
I know that not many people play ancient[1] games all that often, but it is a factor which could get people running Linux as their secondary OS - if only they knew about it.
[1] In game terms, anything older than "previous version" is ancient.
Ignore this signature. By order.
Huh? You may have a point about WGA etc. (although users have been known to deal with a LOT of crap), but how does price discounts for Dell hurt Microsoft (besides lower profit margins)? Widespread OEM support is one thing that allows Windows to dominate.
That has not been my experience. My (well my family's) first computer was a Tandy Sensation running Windows 3.1 (although, at the time, I was not sure exactly what Windows was besides a logo that appeared every time my computer booted). We mostly change Windows versions when we bought new computers; my mother's computer is running Windows 98SE, my grandfather's computer is running Windows ME, and my grandmother's laptop is running Windows XP. I will soon give my laptop, which is running Windows XP, to my mother.
Most people buy a fully setup computer for convenience reasons; they do not want to know how to setup Windows, so the PC manufacturers need to set-up the computer beforehand. I think that Vista will still come in boxed editions.
Hardware components (especially harddrives) do not last forever, and when a major piece dies, some people, in my experience, decide to buy a new computer.
A lot of people have never heard of Linux, and even fewer care enough to burn a CD and repartition their harddrive. If Linux is to become the dominant platform, it REQUIRES the support of major OEM manufacturers.
---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
Mission Accomplished!
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
Is it April 1rst already?
He was consulted before the attack, (by the emperor iirc?) asked for his opinion on making an opening strike. He said "I will give you six months of continuous victories", and that was the only promise he would make.
So they knew what they were getting into. The attack on pearl harbor was a critical first step, and due to bad intel or bad luck, they did not catch even 60% of the boats at pearl harbor as they expected to, many of which were on manuever or patrol at the moment of the attack. If they had attacked any other day of that week the US losses would be close to double what they were and japan would have had a much stronger and longer hold on the pacific. Correct me if my memory's off... weren't most or all of the US carriers at sea during the attack? For the first 6 months Japan had naval superiority but did not command the skies as they needed to.
Taking these two things into account, Yamamoto was probably being pessemistic (even tho accurate) in his 6 month estimate, because it could have easily gone longer than that if luck had been with them.
When you consider that the US started out fighting a very separate two front war, they handled it well.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
This is a very important point for people to finally grasp.
Linux and Open Source in general aren't fighting Microsoft, though they appear to.
This is in part because of Linux zealots and advocates in general, who follow the basic principle of satisfied users and evangelists everywhere - they market the product to everyone and argue with non-believers, and in part because Microsoft et al. do feel threatened by Open Source and therefore they do fight Linux.
It appears now that Microsoft is joining in the Linux game, although I'm not buying it yet by far, but it does seem that Gandhi was right...
Ignore this signature. By order.
I installed Ubuntu Linux on my IBM T40. I can assure you it was non-trivial.
There is NO COMPARISON between ANY Linux distro and Windows or Mac OSX. Linux is still very hands-on. It's a tinkerer's OS, not a user's OS. And I don't see anything that makes me think this is going to change.
The server campaign has been a long and hard fought campaign. MS was far from blindsided. This is a fair and honorable victory. For a long time, it seemed like they were winning, now it finally looks clear that the tide has turned. This 'win' will provide an important bridgehead for the next stage in the war, but the war is definitely still on.
This is not going to be a short war. "I'll Be Home For Christmas" and "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" are two songs that were sung in the European and Pacific theatres for many a year before the soldiers finally made it home.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Google will bring Microsoft down before Linux does. All computing and storage will be handled server-side. All applications will be run server-side. People will merely use terminals to connect to the internet to access all of their programs and data remotely. Client-side technology and programming will be a thing of the past. It just makes sense. A company like Google has more than enough storage space, more than enough cycles, more than enough band-width, and it will only continue to get better. Look at all of the new things they bring out every year. They are going to make Microsoft's business model obsolete. And what about Linux? Well, Google has to have something to run on their servers. :)
I have to agree with you on those two points. But there is another issue for a small sub-section of the general populous, people like me. I have spent countless hours tuning and playing with my system just to get it the way I like. I know windows 'cause that's what I learned on, and so switching to Linux would just be a waste of time. The things I could do on Linux I can now do on windows, with little or no problems at all. Anything that Linux is offering windows can already do, with Linux's added benefit of being free. Now with Vista looming over the horizon, the people like me are stuck in a bind. Linux is great and all, but is it really necessary to learn from the beginning? Unfortunately, that issue combined with the zero ability to play games (and wine in no-way counts) makes the decision easy for me. The only computer I own that has the slightest possibility of becoming a Linux box is my media server, which doesn't need windows. My laptop is a tablet and support/features for tablets running Linux isn't what I would want it to be right now. Oh well, I guess the media server is a start...
Har?
Linux has not won. No one has. That's the beauty of the checks and balances known as competition. However, it has definitely improved.
Microsoft can see the writing on the wall but evidently no one else can. Virtulalization, i.e. running more than one operating system at once has made war obsolete. Microsoft doesn't need to compete with linux. The day and age of running only one operating system is near over. You buy a windows licence and microsoft will give you virtualzation software and setup and install linux for you. The only time anyone needs to worry about patent litigation I think is when they get between MS and it's tax. Linux compatability is now a windows feature. Getting linux to work well with windows is desirable. Think about it, if they give you linux they can tell the EU regulators to go stick it. Let me repeat myself, so long as MS gets our money they are happy. MS is currently taking the advice of keeping it's enimies closer to heart. If you don't believe me your going to cry when you see the ads of MS including linux for free.
Hm, I wonder the market share of NetBSD over toasters and washing machines.
You guys forget the massive small business segment. This will be one of the last adopters. There's very little usable small-business software that works on Linux (basic accounting package, anyone? how about point of sale?). And small business don't have whole departments for IT like big companies, so most small businesses don't have the money, time, and/or expertise to get a Linux box working.
Can anyone tell me why anyone uses Linux instead of OSX? I personally understand that not everyone can afford a Mac, but those who can, and hate wiindows, often go the linux route. Why? OSX is based on BSD, so it has a terminal, can runn free software etc. It also has a great GUI and supports apps I need for school, such as MS Office. (While writer is great the rest of Open office is a bit lacking) I think if Jobs quit jacking up the prices of macs to make their owners feel superior and started actually competing, OSX would be the consumer desktop, and unix/linux variants would own the server world.
wow 110%!
Make sure it has a raid array and no floppy drive for even more fun.
You get the point.
Actually, it's still a major issue. For most people, installing Windows consists of starting up their new PC for the first time and clicking on a couple of security options and license agreements. Of course, that's not actually installing it, but that's what most users see.
It's still rare to get Linux pre-installed on a desktop machine. If you want it, you pretty much have to install it yourself. Kind of like Firefox vs. IE; IE can still claim overwhelming market share because you have to install Firefox yourself (for the most part).
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
Linux is great on servers because it's designed to be an extremely powerful tool, but in the hands of trained professionals. Windows is great on desktops because it's designed to be reasonably powerful in the hands of just about anybody. There's a reason why no one uses linux at home (for the moment) and Microsoft is losing ground in the server market.
Point 3:
No one would use Linux just because it came preinstalled. This is because Linux on the desktop is a pain in the ass. It's less of an issue when you have an IS department at work that manages it professionally, of course, but at home guess what, that's your job. Simply put, Windows, for all it's limitations, is pretty idiot proof when it comes to the legwork. Installing software is almost totally painless, as is upgrading hardware and many other things that people only do because is gets them to the real task at hand. Anyone who says only an idiot would want an idiot proof OS places no value on their time. Unless I'm writing something, I don't give a shit what version of libwhatthefuckeever.so I have, all I want is for it to work.
I work with nothing but Unix/Linux snobs (including me) and no one I know has a Linux workstation as their only home computer. No one. The people who just want one (Unix) box buy Macs. If you're willing to jump through enough hoops, yes you can do many things you couldn't have done before without windows. Too bad no one wants to, because it still doesn't offer the same hassle free experience. OTOH, if I want to do run crucial Linux applications on a windows box, 98% of the time it has a nearly flawless compatibility layer. It's called ssh.
Not that a linux desktop isn't still nice, it's just nice for a different reason, although it's a very non-mainstream one. Any system I choose to use I use because it makes my life easier than the alternative. That's why I have both and am completely comfortable with neither- and I'm a Linux programmer.
Point 4:
A gaming computer is just a workstation with a graphics card. There are basically two brands and two sets of drivers. Both are available. The reason no one makes games is because almost no one who plays games owns just a Linux box (because of point 3 above). People who like doing things they're not supposed for the sheer challenge of it might enjoy playing games with wine, but no one who just wants to unwind after a long day ever would.
The only chance Linux has on a mass-market desktop anytime soon in the corporate market where no one cares if people can't do i, j and k, as long as they can do x,y and z in an economical fashion.
I've tried going 100% Linux many times, but the first afternoon I spend googling and pouring through forums just to figure out why some seemingly simple thing doesn't work is all it takes.
Huh. The annual 'Linux is poised to take over the desktop' post has come early this year.
Yep. They were all off on maneuvers, about a day out of port. IIRC, the Japanese knew this, but they were mostly concerned with the battleships. The idea that a carrier could be a major force to be reckoned with was only realized because the U.S. was forced to fight the beginning of the war with only carriers. The results were so spectacular, that the carrier force became the backbone of the WWII fleets. Of course, the CVE idea might have been a bit ambitious.
My memory is a bit hazy on this point, but I believe that the problem was their ability to project force over long distances. Their planes didn't have the same range as ours, and they continued to have their code systems broken. There was a major effort to put airstrips out on the occupied islands (that was how Yamamoto got killed), but they simply weren't able to effectively implement that plan.
Also, our carriers left their carriers up in flames after Midway. That significantly reduced their airpower. The Japanese weren't concerned about it at the time, because their Wargames had told them that Battleships were superior. (Actually, one of the Japanese admirals changed the results because he didn't believe that one of his battleships could have been sunken by aircraft.)
Possibly. But Japan was screwed no matter which way you cut it. They'd invested most of their naval resources into the Yamoto class battleships in an attempt to outclass anything that the U.S. could safely fit through the Panama Canal. (Nearly all our warships were built, and are still built, in Newport News/Norfolk.) They were then forced to watch as their Top of the Line Battleships were almost completely ineffective against the U.S. carriers. Once the Essex came online (barely six months later!) it was all over. She had a shakedown while the Enterprise held down the fort, then went on to be the harbinger of an incredible number of Essex class carriers.
The best the Japanese could have hoped for was a protracted land battle on the pacific islands and our west coast. They simply didn't have the resources to actually win a war against the U.S., nor was that their intention. They had hoped to render the U.S. impotent, then make peace after the Axis objectives were completed. Had they never attacked Pearl Harbor, they probably would have done far more damage to the U.S. war effort.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Free is a very motivating factor. Applications for Linux are maturing at a rapid pace. People will switch when they realize they can do everything they want without paying a dime for additional software. They'll also get a kick out of having a simple, clean interface that isn't cluttered with applets, ads, and inconsistent applications. They'll come in droves when the average user has mature and full featured applications that fulfill their needs. This isn't far off. In my opinion OpenOffice, Inkscape, and the GIMP don't have far to go to become 1st class citizens in their respective software categories. Firefox and Evolution already are 1st class citizens. As for your Linksys wireless card, they have broadcom chipsets which are supported for the most part. You'll need the firmware for the card though. Here's a doc for how to install it on Ubuntu. Whatever distribution you use you'll need to use the fwcutter utility and the firmware to get a broadcom card working.
Time makes more converts than reason
The desktop is dead.
Dude, people have been saying that for over a DECADE now, and it's no truer now than when this nonsense first started being said.
The new battleground is on the phones and other embedded devices.
Yes, this is a NEW battleground because it has only been in the last few years that small mobile devices have packed the processing power and memory resources to perform extremly complex tasks like running a full blown OS and apps. But this market, or battleground as we're all calling it today, will run parallel to the desktop market and NOT in replacement of the desktop market. The bottom line is most people still have at least one desktop some where, even if they have a notebook, pda, crackberry, or smartphone. Notice that is why all of these devices have some kind of cradle and desktop syncing software? There is a good reason for that, as most of the users of these devices need to sync up with their desktop machine!
So no, the desktop is not dead. But you are correct to point out the importance of the cell phone and embedded devices markets.
Not quite. Many embedded devices still use Windows. It generally isn't possible to know what operating system a device is running on, unless you specifically take the time to research it, or you happen to see it crash.
I fail to see how Microsoft could extinguish Linux. This is more of an admission on their part that they can't extinguish Linux.
I am particularly pissed at Microsoft for the antitrust violations and their treatment of Netscape. That said, the late '90s was a different time for software entirely. Since then, Linux adoption has increased on all fronts, especially in the data center. In my opinion, the data center is squarely Linux turf. Anyone running Microsoft in the data center is either a total amateur or stuck with some really crappy proprietary software.
Even if Microsoft does take a bite out of Red Hat with deal, who cares? I like Red Hat, and want them to succeed but competition is a good thing. Let people decide what is best for their needs. Red Hat should worry about a loss in revenues from the recent turn of events, but not the end of their reign as the leaders in Linux for the enterprise. This is where I see the Oracle adoption help verify the strength of Red Hat and show everyone how Linux is the correct platform for most server deployments.
To flip this around, the only real way for Linux to take a major bite out of Microsoft would be to have competition on the desktop and pre-installed server markets. With Novell partnering up with Microsoft it is clear that they are not going to advance on the desktop market with that strategy. So, we're stuck with Windows on 90%+ of the desktop market with no change in site. The desktop is where we need more competition, not the server. Linux won the server market, that much should be obvious to all of you.
Seriously, take a look at the history of Solaris nad IRIX.
Please don't use the word FUD if you don't know what it means. Because you obviously don't. And who gives a shit about the Linux sociopaths? Seriously. I am a Linux sysadmin, and I can't stand the them either. They're the ones who abbreviate Microsoft as M$, call Windows "Windoze", and generally do other things that give Linux a bad name. Stay off of the IRC channels, avoid the trolls on Linux forums, and use Mono and whatever else you damn well please and you'll be a happy user :-)
(By the way, if anyone reading this is interested in using Linux... try the distribution specific mailing lists. They are much more helpful than forums or IRC, have more competent people on them, and you will learn a *lot* from them).
#include ".signature"
Tell that to the 50 or so Windows servers I manage, many that will be around for years. :)
All Wintel except one AIX box that will be going away within a year and my BSD box that wont be going anywhere.
If you count the appliances and ESX servers that run some sort of imbedded Linux then sure we run Linux.
"Of course" is the answer to both statements.
No, I think it's right on the money, given the linux users I know and the behaviors most exhibit. People who know how to use linux tend to be more intelligent and learned, which is why they continue to use it and get paid well for it. This means they can afford to pay for things. Before that they were pirating at home, while they were unemployed. Where do you think the OSX on PC projects come from? Clever Windows script kiddies? What about those *nix emulators and proprietary ROMs? What about those hacked together 3rd party WON servers? which certainly aren't running on Windows boxes, but are the workaround for people who wanted to avoid STEAM.
I'm sorry, but I haven't been provided an argument or reasoning to support an opposing stance.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
None of these reports is faultless, and they measure different things from what the parent article measures. But there seems to be no crisis for Microsoft for the time being.
Welcome to 2006, where package managers are graphical. Also welcome to computing's past, present, and future, where the average user can never figure out where they put they files they download.
Rattler Race, for example.
Funny, I just built a dual core (Core 2) for myself and will be upgrading to quad core in January or February. The desktop is not dead by a long shot.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
That is partially our fault. I don't see any "techie" lobbies on Capitol Hill. The only place they can turn is big business. Maybe I'm somewhat of a hypocrite but if you want to change the rules, you have to play the game.
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
My university used *nix servers for their mail services when I started. We didn't get a spiffy web based interface, but it worked and was reliable. A couple years ago they switched the mail to a Exchange server. It's nice to get a web interface, but it sucks that our mail system is slow and unreliable now. I'm not sure if the blame lies with our IT dept or with MS, or somewhere in the middle, but I would rather give up a couple mediocre features to have assurance that my account was accessible at all times.
gnucash
openoffice
http://sourceforge.net/search/?forum_id=0&group_i
You didn't look very hard did you?
Does it go on forever?
Dana Blankenhorn is delusional if he thinks Linux has already won.
The problem is that point-of-sale means credit-card, and that means fees to the CC companies. If *someone* is willing to front the costs to set up an account with the CC vendors for testing, I would be willing to bet (I'd win, because I'll write it meself!) that the software will be forthcoming.. Tell ya what, message me (or reply) and we'll work something out.
Why is it that many people who claim to support standards have such atrocious spelling and grammar?
A carrier pigeon. I stapled it to his forehead.
Sorry, but their are plenty on non-linux POS terminals out there.
Given the "tin hat" "history" you spin, I suspect that you weren't around in those days either, but just cobbled together all the anti-MS myths in to a single story. The fact that you linked OS/2 with Windows 95 rather than Windows NT, makes it pretty clear that you don't know what you're talking about.
No, Linux is a piece of shit and no matter how much of a shill you are, it won't make it better.
Your assessment is farily realistic. Being an ex-Windows user who moved to Linux in 97, I have to say the only reasons I moved were the things that I could do in Linux that you can't do in Windows. There are a ton of things like that. But, it's pretty much an even split. For all those things, I'm sure you can find things that Windows can do that Linux can't. The only thing is the reason Linux can't do them is typically artifical restrictions and not really technical limitations of Linux. Which is an important point to clear up and keep at the forefront. Many people who complain about Linux "sucking" tend to do so because if they tried it, they typically ran into a restriction that was imposed artifically by a hardware vendor or some sort of copy protection mechanism. The "problems" in Linux are not due to design issues of technical failures at all. The fact that I can't join Vongo, for example, has nothing to do with Linux distros not being capable of handling streaming video over broadband. It has to do with the fact that Vongo decided to base their service around Windows Media Player with DRM. A completely artifical restrction made in the name of business.
:)
The fact that I can't play games like Max Payne unless I want to shell out for Cedega (which does work quite well for the games it supports officially) has nothing to do with Linux "not being up to par with Windows" where games are concerned. It has to do with the copy protection that the publisher chose which it is a crime to reverse engineer. Once again, an artificial restriction made for business reasons. I had a laptop from work at one point that I had to install Windows drivers in an NDIS Wrapper to get WiFi support for Linux with. Again, not a limitation of Linux at all, and quite a clevelr solution, I might add... The problem was that for business reasons, Broadcom had decided that they didn't want to release any specs for their WiFi chip. Seeing a theme here?
In my case, Linux won enough for me to ditch EVERY Windows box I owned and run only Linux. If I need access to something in Windows (which is typically due to DRM issues), then I use virtualization. It's also been a lot cheaper for me since I can now have EVERY piece of software I want and I don't have to worry about licensing it for each machine I've got. The NLE video suite Cinelerra, is a perfect example. I *could* buy multiple copies of Premiere for the six machines I have here at home to do video editing. Or... I could just install as many copies of Cinelerra as I want on all 18 of my systems and use it's clustering features to have a nice little free renderfarm. But, my needs are a bit more advanced than most Windows users which is why I still think that having Windows around for the normal user is just fine. And, no that's not an elitist statement. I'm just saying that there aren't many people who have 18 systems at home, like to do video work and need/want a render farm.
I won't really go into what Linux offers over Windows unless pressed, because most of us here know the truth about what Linux can do that Windows can't.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Yeah... the Linux crowd is only interested in the stuff that matters. You know... like home media centers that aren't limited or restricted artifically. Or, cool stuff like dark nets between family and friends that no one can control or snoop on. Business apps are pretty boring, which is why you don't see many of them. Especially for small business. I'm not saying they're not needed. I'm just supporting what you said. There will be small business apps eventually *if* the need arises. So far it hasn't, so there aren't. And that's largely due to the fact that there aren't many small business owners who are also programmers working on Linux distros. It just ain't that glamorous or interesting.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
83% + 23% = 106%? I call BS.
I've read that multiple times and it does appear to be talking about the same question.
In regards to #2, our (fortune 500) company has just migrated around 8,000 users off exchange and onto imap+ a home rolled web calendar system. Word on the street is that even including the cost of developing the calendar we saved millions of dollars. Yes, people complained a little, but outlook is still available. The fact is that nobody really needs active directory and exchange. I think that people are a little attached to it, but people will migrate off it means millions of dollars saved.
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
I've never seen anyone in the "MS world" ever talk about being at war with linux or making grand statements about Linux killers or such.
This entire "OS War" is for 17 year olds who think they kick ass for getting some Linux install to work.
If it wasn't for the Linux fundamentalist it would be laughable but now we got to keep hearing their fag mouths ramble on about anything Linux anytime anyone tries to discuss any aspect of any OS regardless if it involves Linux or not.
Fuck Linux. It's a fag's OS. Not as bad as the fucking Mac lemmings but pretty damn close.
Methinks you need a hot date, my friend. Get out into the sunlight a bit.
As you are posting anonymously, I invite you to actually read the rest of my comment. If that doesn't help, read some of my other rebuttals.
I wholeheartedly agree, but this is not the place or the time for this discussion. Read the fucking subject line, at least!
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
There's no need for voting machines to use "open" source, just as long as the source is available to the government (and public, if desired). That is, there's no need to allow the source to be altered and redistributed by others for free.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Approach one of the CC companies. They'll do it. I have, long ago, to add CC processing to a DOS application.
Nobody cares about the embedded market (except the companies that are directly involved) because those are closed systems. I can't install programs on those systems or write my own programs for those systems. They could be running DOS for all I care, it makes no difference to me. They are literally "black box" systems. I mean, really, who gives a damn what kind of embedded software a washing machine might be running?
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Gnucash? yeah right, well my son is in accounting right now in college and my daughter is in graphics and guess what? Not one course in the catalog mentions gnucash or gimp. So either the colleges are not preparing their students for the Linux takeover or it's all just smoke. Don't get me wrong I'm typing this on a Linux machine, but won the War? Hell Linux aint even in the fight IMHO. One of the things I think that kept Apple going back in the day was when it gave all those computers to schools and the students learned to play on them. Until Linux becomes the standard in education it will remain a nice OS for the man who likes to tinker. How can it possibly become the business standard when it is not being taught to the business people of the future?
Mission Accomplished
Oh, please do! We use Linux at the university I attend, but I don't really see any tangible part of Linux that Windows can't preform adequately well.
Most of the limitations that you list here are based on the fact that companies don't see a profitable model out of Linux. If Linux becomes more popular and more and more people start using it, then companies will start investing in software designed for Linux. I'm sure that you already figured this out though. I also think that there is this business stigma against anything to do with 'open source', equating it to 'non profit'. But there are quite a few successful Linux business models out there, so really this bias is a bit misplaced.
Now, I'm probably going to upset a few friends of Linus when I say that this new Microsoft SuSE thing might help the 'image' of Linux a bit with the mainstream public, although it is already hurting it with the hardcore fans out there right now. Really, the major thing that Linux needs is support of the 'BIG' software companies. Heck, the only thing I see that is stopping me from switching is, for the most part, the lack of game support and this looming hardware conundrum. I say that 'cause getting my stuff to work in Windows is bad enough, I'm a bit weak in the knees when I think of getting it to work in Linux (although this is founded on what I heard on the internet, so it's probably not that).
Har?
With Windows, I pop in the CD from the NIC's (or PC's) box; click OK a couple of times; and, I'm done. The whole process takes a perhaps 2-3 minutes and very little effort beyond noticing the "INSERT THIS CD" in 144 point type.
Finding another PC with a working network connection, downloading fwcutter, printing the how-to, burning the drivers and fwcutter to CD (after finding a blank CD in the closet), going back to the Linux box, following the how-to...
It seems utterly silly to me that anyone would propose this a comparable to Windows. I'm willing to do this sort of thing because I like to. I'm building a weather station out of Dallas 1Wire sensors and an serial interface box with a customized version of thermd. For fun.
But, my friend, who wrote code for the original digital telecom switches in Fortran on punch cards, is hesitant to install Ubuntu because he is comfortable with Windows, MS Office, etc. and is focusing his energy on remodeling his house, not learning a new OS and apps. If he is not willing to give it a go; what "normal user" is?
And, why do some feel compelled to suggest that because a task is possible in the FOSS world, that it is automatically comparable to the M$ world. Sorry for the rant; I'm up too late.
WARNING: Smoking this sig may cause lowered IQ, insanity or short term memory loss. It is also really bad for your monit
I think the FOSS community puts too much emphasis on it, even above usability in some cases.
That's because many people in the FOSS community have been burned multiple times by commercial software: forced ugprades, bad upgrades, abandoned products, changes in product direction that benefit the vendor but not the user, etc.
FOSS is a way to reduce costs and risks. And, yes, reducing costs and risks is more important than usability in many cases.
Unfortunately, many people don't know about long-term costs and risks, so they continue to choose proprietary platforms that expose them unnecessarily.
And on the subject of admirals... "It's a trap!"
Isn't that what this article is saying? I didn't RTFA, but I looked in the summary, and doesn't it say that is what is happening?
That's not a mistake right, the article doesn't really say something other than companies does it?
Looks to me like the little snowball just started rolling down the big snowy hill.......maybe down to washington
If there was ever a use for the off-topic label, the parent should be used as a model.
Yay.
Now all the Slashdot editors will have to find jobs.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Wow. A, what? Two year old installation disk doesn't recognize the latest and greatest drive? And because of that Linux installation problems are a "non-issue"?
Actually, your installation comments are correct in one regard, most people use what's already installed on the computer as it comes from the store. And that, very shortly, is going to be Vista.
And that, my friend, is where the balance lies. Any success Linux will have at the desktop level will have to come at the expense of Windows Vista. Or in other words, MS is going to have to blow it big time to give it an opening. And if Vista suceeds in fixing a good portion of the security issues and other problems currently associated with XP... then Linux simply isn't going to get that opening.
Because the majority of people aren't going to want to give up all of their old software and games and repurchase them just so they can move to a "better" platform. Especially when that "better" platform doesn't even support the majority of those products. Again, you're right, they just want to use the same programs in the same manner.
And if Linux expects to exploit that opening, should it come, then it had better be ready to support all of that hardware: computers and printers and cameras and everything else. And they're better have a common face: 50-plus all slightly different and incompatible distributions and desktops and installers and drivers are not going to cut it.
Take a page from Apple's book. Every Mac desktop and notebook shipped comes with OS X. No "lite" or "media" or "pro" versions. No choice between 50 different-named different-looking different-acting versions. Just OS X.
Personally, I don't think you guys can get past your differences and make it happen.
(BTW, just for the record, I know about OS X Server, but we're talking about the desktop here. Try to stay focused.)
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
If not required by Management to install a specific Machine/OS.. but "just get the job done".. I always choose linux. And this aren't replacements, this are for new machines doing new things. We could also say that if I dont have too, I wount spend a dime at SUN/HP for software, but I gladly buy thiere hardware. Linux has everything I need for my ServerRoom.
Hey, you're unlucky you are alive during the Microsoft conflict. Hell, we'll be beating each other with our own severed limbs.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Being an ex-Windows user who moved to Linux in 97, I have to say the only reasons I moved were the things that I could do in Linux that you can't do in Windows. There are a ton of things like that. But, it's pretty much an even split. For all those things, I'm sure you can find things that Windows can do that Linux can't.
:)
I do hope that you have at least worked with Windows since 97 or use it from time to time. Windows from 1997 Win95/Win98 is quite different from the NT based model of XP and Vista.
There are very few things you can do on Linux that you cannot do on a Windows system based on the NT architecture of today. From running in a GUI off mode to even not utilizing the Win32 subsystem and just using the BSD subsystem to write, compile and work with *nix based applications.
Your statement about capabilities is VERY true when comparing a *nix OS to the DOS model Windows of the 90s, but it fails when trying to make the same assertion about the NT and modern based Windows versions.
I don't want to pick on your post, but your comments would be like me saying I stopped using Mac at System 8.x and then defining my statements based on the limitations of the System 8 OS. And as most people know, the difference between a Mac running System 8 or 9 and a Mac running OSX is quite different, as OSX has very few architectural limitations. The same is true of modern Windows, there are very few architectural limitations.
I won't really go into what Linux offers over Windows unless pressed, because most of us here know the truth about what Linux can do that Windows can't.
In 1997 you could make a very long list of applicaitons and concepts in use on Linux that just were NOT possible on Win95/98, yet today there are almost no applications or concepts in use on Linux that are either available or in use on Windows.
So I will ask, give us even one example of something that Linux is capable of that Windows is not capable of doing.
I will even be kind enough to go first with a very basic example of something Windows can do that Linux cannot do at the core architectural level. Windows is based on the NT architecture, which is a hybrid kernel concept that allows it to host OS subsystems. This is also why the NT architecture has been called a client/server kernel concept. What this gives NT that Linux cannot do is the ability to natively run multiple OS subsystems concurrently that also can communicate with each other at the kernel level.
Win32 is an example of one subsystem in use on Windows and runs independantly of other subsystems like the *nix subsystem, OS/2, Win16, and Win64 subsystems to name a few examples. The subsystem OS architecture concept is not virtualization nor emulation, as each subsystem are true OSes acting independently with their own subsystem level kernels that sit on top of the NT architecture.
It is even rumored that MS has worked on a non BSD based *nix subsystem for Windows that is Linux based and would be able to run anything Linux could run with no virtualization or emulation and it would also have the ability to talk to the other subsystems, like the Win32 subsystem.
Ok, your turn...
WAR IS OVER!
(if you want it)
Love and Peace from John & Yoko
"They'll also get a kick out of having a simple, clean interface that isn't cluttered with applets, ads, and inconsistent applications."
Inconsistent applications? Oh PLEASE. Linux is the HOME of the my-way-is-better let's-skin-everything interface-who-needs-an-interface application.
Cluttered? How about the typical desktop I see with a dozen terminal windows all open all at the same time?
Consistent? Heck, you guys can't even decide on a single desktop.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
name one thing that linux can do that windows can't? browse the web for 15 minutes without picking up spyware or crashing. kthxbai
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Well might as well awaken that sleeping giant in Redmond and everywhere else, because commercial software producer's answer should not be ok, we toss our support behind the competition, but coming up with something better that gives the customer what they want instead of just squatting more of the customer's freedoms and money away without giving them anything in exchange, and then wonder why the customers are disgruntled. If they lower expectations of profit margin to a commodity level, and listen to customer's needs instead of internal needs to gain yet even more dominance and control over the customers, then there should be a very big chunk of the market that will steadily opt for commercial software that could coexist in fine balance with noncommercial. Unfortunately it's hard for monopolies to self regulate when they are used to going around and getting their way anywhere, as opposed to a true free market competition world, where the customer voting with his dollar is the boss instead of the bitch who ain't got no choice but bend over and grab the ankles.
2/3 of what companies say they will buy into Linux? Companies already using Linux. Did you expect them to dump Linux or something?
It's funny in the summary it doesn't bother to point at that these statistics are only for certain types of businesses. Explicitly the ones that might actually require Linux's specialties. Beyond that, lets face it most businesses are in fact not investing or have any plans of investing into Linux.
It's harder to manage, it costs more to manage, it doesn't run half or more of their software, and it's really not any faster for the majority of uses.
If you run a businesses providing say webspace to people then Linux is a good platform, but in all reality so is windows. If fact if you were going to start such a businesses you would likely find windows to be the more profitable platform since for the example of website providers the market is saturated with Linux options more so than Windows. When you consider only a tiny fraction of websites actually use any considerable bandwidth (most corporate websites are rarely used and/or are useless in the first place). So unless your pulling a lot of bandwidth your not going to notice any benefit from Linux. Few businesses are interested in saving money so much as they are interested in maximum flexibility. This is because for the most part, as tools, computers still suck, so people are still trying to figure out how to get the productivity that we all know is trapped in the PC out. So most businesses will spend any amount of money so long as they get their monies worth of increased productivity. Therefore the price advantage for Linux is mostly moot. Though perhaps its a great option for developing countries where a couple hundred dollars really is a lot of money and software needs are still up in the air.
So once again the argument for or against Linux is no different than ever. Linux is going to move toward being a network appliance not a do everything OS like Windows. Linux wouldn't want to compete with windows versatility because with being the most installed and compatible OS in the world also comes the most problems. If Linux had to do what windows does, be the do everything os... it would suck too. In fact I'd bet that if Linux was installed on 90% of the worlds computers right now it would be considered less secure than windows is now. Why, because Linux isn't ready to be that popular. It isn't ready to be flooded with exploits and it's not ready for a world filled with viruses and spyware. Linux lives in it's own world where people really aren't trying to constantly exploit it and it doesn't have to be useable and ultra secure right out of the box.
Everyone likes to talk about Windows lack of security, but its mostly BS because no OS has good security without a good admin and most people compare Windows out of the box to Linux being run by a seasoned security guru. Oh yea wow thats impressive a security experts OS is more secure than Joe HomeUser, glad somebody paid for that study cuz I would have never guessed. If Linux had to suffer through people installing Super Smilies or any of the endless amount of malware made for Win32 it would lose it's claim to security in a second especially consider it has no automated defense system built in for malicious code prevention, while windows has layers of prevention along with easy to use updaters and warnings. All that shit takes time and money and tons of testing. Linux has none of it and the only reason it doesn't is because its not popular enough to draw programmers trying to exploit it's users and the vastly overlooked fact that most linux users are at the least power users if not programmers or network administrators who are much less likely to install Gator or Porn dialer 2000. If Linux had the computer illiterate idiots that Windows has installing everything they see on the net... what would happen then. Of course thats always been a good argument to force your workers into Linux simply because you know the weakest point of any network is it's users.. and that
What type of university teaches the use of specific programs for courses instead of teaching the basic principles necessary to use any program?
This is why proper CS departments teach languages which usually aren't widely used. It isn't because they expect the students to use the languages in their future, it is because they believe that those languages are most suitable for teaching the principles that the students can then use to learn any language.
MS and Linux be damned. I'm just trying to figure out if somewhere in the middle of all that you managed to invoke Godwin's Law.
- Mahatma Gandhi
That wasn't really the critical error. By not lauching the planned second strike, Yamamoto failed to take out the tank farms with the island's oil and gasoline reserves. Had the Japanese achieved that objective, whatever battleships or carriers they might have missed in the initial attack would still have been out of action for months, just as effectively as if they'd been damaged or sunk.
Unfortuantely (for him), Yamamoto couldn't believe he'd completely gained the element of surprise, so he held back the second strike against the carrier "ambush" attack he was afraid he'd see at any minute.
In fact, a later analysis admits that, had Yamamoto destroyed Hawaii's gas and oil reserves, we'd have been locked out of the Pacific for a year or more. For that result, and in hindsight, even losing a carrier or two in a counter-attack would have been well worth the price.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
The main reason Linux can't succeed on the desktop is because it can't run the majority of apps and drivers that people want to use. No amount of ease of use improvements will change that fact. And if anyone feels like rehashing the false premise of OS/2 failing - please just think about whether people would buy an OS that was cheaper, more reliable and still ran all the stuff want like to run on Windows. You seriously think it wouldn't sell?
"Studies show that the vast majority of migrations move to linux but a certain percentage moves to windows."
Care to point to those sources and expand on the "vast majority" wishful thinking you're presenting here? Becaue the "vast majority" of shops whose businesses I'm aquainted with and who run MS on the desktop also tend to run Windows fileservers, Exchange servers, SQL Server, IIS, and so on.
They "may" run a Linux DNS or web server in an appliance mode, but tend to resist doing that as well, simply because they don't want to get to the point where they need two different--and expensive--support staffs.
As neat as I can tell, Linux is making headway is two main areas: completely web-based organizations like Google or hosting services, and small mom-and-pop type places who can't afford MS's license fees and have no other choice.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
All Linux users know why the OS is better than Windows. If you haven't figure that out, hopefully one day you will.
To give you an example, few years back I had a PC dual boot Linux and Windows. I used a dial-up modem to access the internet. On Linux I could get 4K a second, but on Windows, 2K a second or close to zero. That was tested by switching between different OS using the same phone line and ISP. Both OS wasn't running anything other than a web browser.
Bear in mind, most if not all Linux programs are free, their authors take pride in what they do. Unlike Windows, started out as a product to make money. What's the explanation for a paid OS and modem driver is slower than a free OS and modem driver?
Rather than wasting time and energy preaching, intelligent people devote their time to learning and trying out new tools to increase what they have in their toolkit.
Juat accept that Windows is better for some things and Linux is better for others - then use the strengths of both to your advantage.
There is no war.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Do all of that AND make it substantially better and I agree: it might sell.
Then again, perhaps you're familiar with the traditional first line of any rabbit stew recipe?
Step 1. Catch a rabbit.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I don't think the reason Linux users are being ignored is because they're used to stuff being free - it's simply that most game vendors don't want to support multiple platforms, which is sad. It's the same reason most games aren't ported to MacOS X - not enough potential customers. Until Linux and/or MacOS X can achieve significant (say, 15%+) market share on the personal (gamer) desktop, most game vendors are likely to ignore them...and I'll continue to ignore those vendors, as I have no interest in running MSWin on any of my machines just to get games (I use consoles for games, and machines running OS X, FreeBSD and Linux for everything else), but sadly I'm part of a tiny minority.
I think the grandparent is incorrect in asserting that Linux can do things that Windows cannot handle. With enough time and effort, you can get Windows to do the same things Linux can, or at least a mediocre approximation thereof. I use Linux at home, and Windows XP at my workplace, and often things that I could do easily in Linux, are hard and unwieldy in Windows. For example, getting a decent command line involves installing Cygwin; virtual desktops involve a third-party hack which doesn't work too well; installing software requires me to follow installation instructions instead of apt-getting packages - the list goes on.
And don't get me started on the limitations of IIS and SQL Server compared to their open source brethren. You really have to admire Microsoft for making so much money from mediocre products.
I'm seeing so much more hardware and software appearing that works with Linux now. From what I'm observing, for dedicated devices and things like handhelds, Linux will be the dominant platform in a few years.
Desktop will go last. The issues with things like codecs are a headache.
We are talking about enterprises who run novell or unix here not your mom and pop for whom SQL server or exchange is good enough. These people were never MS customers on the server space in the first place. They chose systems based on scalibity and stability which both unix and novell are well known for.
The vast majority of those customers are switching to linux. Again I am not talking about your mom and pop businesses here, I am talking about banks and people who run oracle or DB/2 and who are not willing to step down to the level of SQL server.
evil is as evil does
I typed it on my laptop which is sitting right next to my treo and ipod. There are more mobiles in the world then there are desktops. The big market is on cell phones.
evil is as evil does
That's more like a feature that Windows can do but Linux can't!
If u send you kids to University to learn something, instead of learning how to learn; or if the university teaches you one tool, and expect you to use it for the rest of your life...
"We are talking about enterprises who run novell or unix..."
Oh. Sorry, Wow. You're right, that major market segment [snicker] who's also in the process of transistioning off those particular systems may in fact be going to Linux. That's, what? A tenth of one percent of all of the desktop and server boxes out there?
Nothing like redefining your market segment so narrowly that you can say you're the big cheese in it...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
It's not a million miles from what happened over mainframe manufacturers selling PCs. Large corps bought the PCs from their mainframe supplier at OTT prices. Why? stability, some FUD and a lack of self-interest. Those guys in the large corps didn't care if the PCs cost double the price of what Gateway were selling for - it wasn't their money, and if they went Gateway, they wouldn't get taken to the football by the mainframe supplier.
It's the small companies where it happens, though. I know some small companies that are running windows desktop/linux server. The reason is simple. If they buy Windows server licenses, they personally pay out for it. The £6K for Windows and SQL Server means that they get a Ford instead of a BMW, or when bidding for a web project, can't be as competitive.
I'm seeing little evidence that Microsoft are making gains in the server market.
Consulting for several large companies, I'd always done my work on
Windows. Recently however, a top online investment firm asked us to do
some work using Linux. The concept of having access to source code was
very appealing to us, as we'd be able to modify the kernel to meet our
exacting standards which we're unable to do with Microsoft's products.
Although we met several technical challenges along the way
(specifically, Linux's lack of Token Ring support and the fact that we
were unable to defrag its ext2 file system), all in all the process
went smoothly. Everyone was very pleased with Linux, and we were
considering using it for a great deal of future internal projects.
So you can imagine our suprise when we were informed by a lawyer that
we would be required to publish our source code for others to use. It
was brought to our attention that Linux is copyrighted under something
called the GPL, or the Gnu Protective License. Part of this license
states that any changes to the kernel are to be made freely available.
Unfortunately for us, this meant that the great deal of time and money
we spent "touching up" Linux to work for this investment firm would
now be available at no cost to our competitors.
Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any
products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to
its source code released. This was simply unacceptable.
Although we had planned for no one outside of this company to ever
use, let alone see the source code, we were now put in a difficult
position. We could either give away our hard work, or come up with
another solution. Although it was tought to do, there really was no
option: We had to rewrite the code, from scratch, for Windows Server 2003.
I think the biggest thing keeping Linux from being truly competitive
with Microsoft is this GPL. Its draconian requirements virtually
guarentee that no business will ever be able to use it. After my
experience with Linux, I won't be recommending it to any of my
associates. I may reconsider if Linux switches its license to
something a little more fair, such as Microsoft's "Shared Source".
Until then its attempts to socialize the software market will insure
it remains only a bit player.
Death and taxes are both inevitable, however, death doesn't get worse year after year.
In monetary value (which is what matters to MS) it way outclasses the desktop world. I don't know where you get your 'tenth of one percent' thing.
There's still a hell of a lot of the old Unixes out there and they make up the vast majority of that market.
Solaris seems to be the king at the moment, btw. probably because of history. MS? Nowhere. You don't run 24/7 servers on intel hardware.
So the OSS crowd pirated the graphics card? The entire PC?!?!
Or did they BUY those?
So please tell me why you believe that OSS will pay for those but not for software?
To paraphrase your response to another poster, I hear this argument a lot but nobody seems to be able to provide any reason for it.
I suppose you mean at a desktop computer, because otherwise one could go endlessly about all the embedded uses of Linux. Considering applications, I would say both systems are pretty much equivalent these days, I can't think of any application in either Linux or Windows that doesn't have an equivalent in the other system. Wait, I mean other than viruses, of course, that seems to be a category of "applications" where Linux is still very much behind...
The biggest advantage of Linux over Windows for me is ease of use, and that seems to be an intrinsic advantage, because Windows, as its name implies, is predominantly GUI oriented. A graphic interface is better for some jobs, a text interface is better for others, just like a spoon is better for eating soup and a fork is better for steak.
Try to automate any task in Windows, it's a real PITA. Programmers often end doing things through kludges like Excel macros for the lack of a good text-based interface. For instance, let's say you were sent a project that has dozens of directories with thousands of files in it. Let's say you want to rename all *.jpeg files to *.jpg. How would you do that in Windows? In VMS that would be a piece of cake, in a Unix system it's more complicated, for i in *.jpeg; do mv $i `echo $i | sed s/jpeg$/jpg/ - ` ; done or something like that would do it, but the easiest way to do it in Windows that I can think of would be a VB program.
Ironically, ease of installation, which is often cited by XP users as an advantage of Windows over Linux, seems to be one of the areas where Linux shines. I have created a standard system configuration script with twenty or so functions, one for each type of application. There are functions for DVD playing, scientific applications, office applications, graphics, development, electronic circuits design, etc. When I install a Linux system, I install the basic system and run my script, after uncommenting the function calls for the types of applications I want in that computer. Then it's just a matter of waiting until apt-get does its job. No need to insert CDs, no need to click anywhere, no need to run setup.exe, no need to mix and match all the *.DLL files each application expects.
I think both Linux and Windows have made progress in the last ten years, and one should always consider that. It's stupid to compare Kubuntu with Windows95, or XP with Yggdrasil Linux. But IMHO Linux has evolved much more, both because Windows was more mature ten years ago and because Linux has some intrinsic advantages. I think being an open and free system is an advantage in that people make it evolve towards what the users prefer, rather than what marketing decides. Another advantage is that Unix has an excellent basic conception. Windows evolved over DOS, a system whose basic conception was to make it run in the available hardware of 1981. The emphasis on GUI solutions, the lack of a good scripting system language, and the need to maintain compatibility with the DOS roots are limitations that make Windows inferior to Linux.
In our case we learnt ADA because the lecturer was on the committee and had written several books on the subject (which were required reading, of course).
Never touched it since... probably couldn't write the simplest program in it now.
Still, there was no Windows there.. no Intel machines at all (or macs) - it was all VMS terminals and (for some bizarre reason) a lab of Sinclair QL's for teaching machine language.
I worry when I hear of universities requiring windows - you want to learn basic OS principles and basic programming principles now how to play Quake all day...
To a non-geek a PC is a closed system. No difference really.
What matters to MS is money. The desktop market is saturated (hence the dead comment above, which I agree with. Yes, you may be running a desktop but when was the last time you gave money to MS for the privilege?).. the only way MS can sell more software now is forced hardware upgrades (and to a certain extent they can force corporates to upgrade their software with restrictive support contracts, but that has a habit of backfiring if they push it too far). So they're going after the server market. Longhorn is late... the novell thing is an attempt to get MS in the real servers not just the wintel toys - and that might work, it might not.
I don't think linux is the issue to MS, it's all about market share. They'd do the same with any OS they could do a deal with to get more money.
There needs to be a godwin-like rule for this.
Every time windows vs. linux is mentioned people quote this thing like it was a rule of battle or something. It isn't. Sometimes they fight you and you lose.
assuming that majority is using windows:
... Over two-thirds of the respondents said they will increase their use of Linux in the next year, and almost no one said the opposite.'"
"'A new report shows that 83% of companies expect to support new workloads on Linux against 23% for Windows.
if you start from 0 and want to use apps on another platform (linux in this case), then definitely porting your existing apps and new apps will have a drastic effect on the numbers.
if you are a shop using mostly windows, how will you be able to increase your use of windows when you are already at maximum? i wonder if there is a 100% linux shop and thinking of using windows.
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
Well said. If you ask me the biggest problem with deploying Linux in the work place is the "No one ever got fired for buying M$" line. Now that Linux is becoming more venerable, that thinking will and has become less popular. In fact these days, the mention of using Open Source in your IT infrastructure is sort of catch phrase. I was always certain Linux would do well in the server market, it just makes so much sense, as for the desktops... I think corporations really don't want their users doing anything more (gaming etc) than they can do with Linux for free, so once the emotional attachment to the windows GUI is recognized more, I suspect we will see a lot more linux desktops too, especially in the corporate world.
Eric C Williams E-Builders, LLC
Also, /. has far better comments.
linux has owned the server market forever. its the desktop market there lacking in. look at linspire and ubuntu there both distros trying to get in the desktop world linspire has gotten somewhere with walmart but its true untill majer builders like dell hp compaq etc all start offering linux powerd pc where not gonna get very far very fast. couse that in turn would force game companys and hardware companys to support linux. nivida is the only video card company suporting linux and well its no wonder why they outsell ati yes ati has linux drivers but they suck that might change with the amd buyut but for now ati has lost custmers couse of there bad support. its also true linux takes the opensource stand way to heavly in some cases and lose some things they need like mp3 support out of the box decent video drivers etc. i can see the stand on things whanting money and tell them where to go but when it comes to video drivers ati or nivida there provided for free closed source or not and thers no reasion to bitch abought it at least you got support.
Your spelling and grammar are both correct. If you want a greater challenge, try to string together an argument.
http://www.essaytoday.com/defining_argument.shtml
A quick check of my threads puts one IE7 instance at 4 days, 6 hours and 18 minutes.
Firefox generally needs to be closed after a couple of days.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
I only use Linux at home, on my main system, a satellite system, and my portables. My wife uses it too, mainly Firefox, Kmail and OpenOffice.
There is no software that runs purely on Windows that I need.
Where I work, the platforms we use are a mix of Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows 2003.
I run a cluster of build servers on Windows 2003, and these things have to run 24 by 7.
I am pissed off by the monthly patch, for me this is a first sign of unprofessionalism. These things should not even be capable of being on the Internet, but of course IE is mandatory, because it is part of the OS.
You can't run these things reliable, and by reliable I mean, a) keep running and running, and b) if something happens, that you can find out what the cause is. I have had several strange things, and they always come at critical moments. A system runs reliably for some time, and then out of the blue it does something which screws up its task and everyone is baffled, including IT (a service which ran for more than a year, suddenly refused to execute deltree or del, while all other ways to execute the same job still succeeded. This happened last Tuesday, and is for me only the umpteenth nail in the MS coffin)/
Of which speaking, Windows propagates bad IT practices and makes it possible for people who don't really know anything about electronics, computers, programming or operating systems, to hold other people as hostages.
When I entered work sixteen years ago, it did not take me long to find out that Microsoft was not a professional software company. Apple and Compaq where the professionals then. I still do not think that Microsoft is a professional software company. They are only a professional marketing company, which excels in persuading people to think that they are too dumb to know about computers and that 'father Microsoft' will help them with all their problems.
The bottomline is this : if you need something that only must be up for a couple of hours a day, then Microsoft may be good enough. But if you need reliability, even while using only a simple PC, Microsoft software should not even enter the picture.
We'd better start making babies.
I will even be kind enough to go first with a very basic example of something Windows can do that Linux cannot do at the core architectural level. Windows is based on the NT architecture, which is a hybrid kernel concept that allows it to host OS subsystems. This is also why the NT architecture has been called a client/server kernel concept. What this gives NT that Linux cannot do is the ability to natively run multiple OS subsystems concurrently that also can communicate with each other at the kernel level.
I wasn't the original poster but.... Windows NT 4.0 was 1996 and it included the kernel features you are talking about (I don't believe 1995s 3.51 did because it didn't support alpha but I may be wrong). So I don't know what the 1997 has to do with your point.
Now as far as a capability of Linux that isn't part of Windows: directly manipulate hardware from the GUI/CLI. I all the time have problems with getting windows to actual perform OS functions:
* rescan the SCSI bus,
* pass a packet to the ethernet card exactly as specified (i.e. have the ethernet card emit a specific stream of bytes)
* allow me to pass a message to a piece of hardware the OS isn't seeing
* allow me to access a drive by cylinder
And yes, given how buggy PC hardware is, how buggy PC hardware is these issues have come up and on each of them I was able to diagnose and repair problems in Linux that I was not able to do in Windows. The core purpose of an OS is to be the interface between hardware and programs and Windows does not interface well between cmd.exe and hardware.
In addition the standard complaint about the lack of a powerful command line interface holds. The ability to script apps and stream between them is huge. There is nothing stopping the NT architecture from supporting this ability but the apps don't support it and the OSes (with the exception of Unix services for Windows) don't. And then you can build on this one more level up with termcap. There is no way that I know of to have cmd.exe (or for that matter most other terminal emulator) allow you to handle weirdness on the other side.
But in any case I don't disagree with you that the NT kernel has a better design than the Linux kernel. However the Linux kernel actually has more features. For example the number of filesystems actually supported, the number of network protocols actually supported.... There is no reason people couldn't reverse this, but they haven't.
In short the problem that windows has today is the same problem it had in 1995. Windows apps (with some exceptions like Office) do not offer "power user" features as part of the paradigm.
It was in seriously poor taste, WWII and especially incidents like the rape of Nanking was in no part funny. Slashdot should allow editing so I can delete shit that I shouldn't have posted.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
This post just doesn't look at reality. On the server market Windows is going to stay exactly where it's now and will probably win some new battles.
Why?
Because I don't see IT departments moving away from Windows server/Active Directory. Just too costly and completely unworkable. Companies rely more and more on distributed AD architectures, that have come a long way towards centralizing workstation configuration options. So now you can have really fine-grained AD-driven security policy that beats what linux ditros can offer.
I think Linux is good, but it didn't innovate enough to compete with the Microsoft steamroller.
----
The Linux crowd never ceases to amaze and humour me.
I would hate to think "Linux has won" in the sense that it has become the only (Hobson's) choice of OS. If that were the case then anti-trust 2.0 should be against the evil penguin. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see Linux become a universally accepted alternative to Windoze but I don't think it is healthy for ANY OS to become "all powerful", after all:
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Lord Acton, Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 1887
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/27321.html
And on the subject of idiots..."It's a troll!"
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Or editors who realise it's a market, not a war. And as long as Windows users ask me to get something done more often than I have to ask them for a favour, I personally don't care much about the market either. Linux as a niche provides me with jobs and productivity.. going mainstream is just not relevant.
So I guess Sun won this one.
How many phones DON'T have java capabilities these days?
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
You're right. I just used the wrong words. I should have said that the source code should be open for inspection so that we can be sure that it's safe. We probably should know how the system delivers the votes to the central tabulator too. Just watched Hacking Democracy ( http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/hackingdemocracy/ ) last night and it scared the crap out of me.
I have experienced the same thing. My roommate ran Bittorrent on windows XP and frequently got slow(er) download rates (50-100 KBps), yet when I hooked up to the same torrent, on my linux box, going through the same router and connection, I got around 300 KBps. It happened with many torrents, and most of the time I was downloading everything, because it would take 1/4 of the time.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
If open source server software, such as Linux, cannot compete with Microsoft's marketing budget, why does Apache continue to hold its substantial majority in the webserver market? Whilst server operating system statistics are somewhat hard to find, webserver market share is well documented. If your theory is correct, then one would expect IIS to be making similar gains against Apache, yet Microsoft have failed to put any significant dent in Apache's market share in the decade or so they've been around.
Either a) web servers are managed by more tech-savvy staff than most other servers, b) Microsoft has been uninterested in expanding its webserver market share, or c) Microsoft's marketing doesn't matter as much as you think it does.
Neither a) nor b) seem very likely to me. Web servers are not significantly more difficult to configure than your average database system or mail server, so it's unlikely that the companies managing these systems are considerably more tech-savvy than those managing other server-based systems. Likewise, it seems somewhat unlikely that Microsoft is uninterested in the web-server market, considering its size and relative visibility. Thus, the only conclusion I can draw is that you've overestimated the effectiveness of Microsoft's marketing department.
I find it hard to believe Microsoft could overturn the substantial Linux server market share in 5 years, when it hasn't been able to effectively challenge Apache in 10.
Yep. They were all off on maneuvers, about a day out of port. IIRC, the Japanese knew this, but they were mostly concerned with the battleships. The idea that a carrier could be a major force to be reckoned with was only realized because the U.S. was forced to fight the beginning of the war with only carriers. The results were so spectacular, that the carrier force became the backbone of the WWII fleets. Of course, the CVE idea might have been a bit ambitious. ;)
I am pretty sure Nagumo was very disappointed that the carriers were not in port. He at least contemplated to look for them and possibly attack them with a 3rd strike.
My memory is a bit hazy on this point, but I believe that the problem was their ability to project force over long distances. Their planes didn't have the same range as ours,
Yes your memory is very hazy. The A6M had a very good range, turning ability and generally good performance at low speed. This is what made them very competitive over the skies of pacific circa 1941 to 1942. The tide was turned by 1943 with the arrival of more powerful planes (Engine-wise) such as the Grumman Hellcat and new tactics bascially told our pilots to avoid low speed dog fights with the zeros. This what made the zeros lost their competitive advantage i.e. turning at low speed.
The fact that you couldn't figure out Windows does not make Linux superior.
lol - was it time for the Linux has won stuff? I wasn't watching the calendar. This crops up periodically. You know, Microsft is dead, blah blah blah. This sounds a lot more like assimilation than winning - whatever 'winning' means. Linux STILL has little hope of any real desktop penetration - you still can't just install it and boom it works. You still have way to much manual setup. I see no one is pointing out all the infighting going on between the various Liunx distros either.
Don't get me wrong - I think windows sucks. But self delusion is just stupid. Linux hasn't won anything - they are simple replacing Novell & Unix. I suppose if 'Linux Wins' means 'The only alternative for Novel & Unix is Linux' then, yes, I suppose it won.
Get your heads out of the sand - you got a lot of work yet to do for anything close to a win.
In Midway US had three carriers and IJN had four. US won only due to better position, intelligence information and luck. Japanese carriers lost top air cover when CAP fighters had to deal with attacks of torpedo bombers. US lost all torpedo bombers and dive bombers could attack highly vulnerable carriers.
That's way too difficult! You still have to surf to 100 different sites to find all the different software you want.
On ubuntu, you open the package manager, mark the programs you want installed with tickmarks, and then click on the big friendly "install" button.
Not quite. The desktop may seem like the major war, but the power of the desktop is tied to the servers and network devices. The monopoly that MS has tried to build and maintain hinges on proprietary interfaces and client licensing schemes. Ironically it is those same things that has made it attractive to stay clear of the "closed systems" that they refer to as "open systems". If the licensing scheme for IIS or even Windows File Services were not so painful (i.e. a Windows license = a client license instead of client licensing on the server side which is more expensive than the desktop software itself), linux systems running apache and samba would be nothing more than a novelty. Personally, I prefer them from a flexibility and maintainability standpoint; but many businesses wouldn't have an incentive to break free if it weren't for that big sticker shock they get when they start buying client access licenses for File Sharing, Exchange, MS SQL, etc. In many organizations, the total costs of CAL's exceeds the total cost of desktop software and server software combined. Not to mention the fact that the whole idea of CAL's has a psychological affect on the buyer--it just feels like a nick-and-dime strategy. Most buyers would prefer to pay $500 for the desktop software than to pay $200 for the desktop software and find out that to actually use that desktop they need to buy $300 of client access licenses. The former seems like the sales strategy of an organization that you want to continue doing business with; the latter makes you want to take a shower after dealing with the sales rep.
I would also question why he considers application installers that train users to mindlesly click a button until the wizard goes away are good things.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Besides I install quite a few Linux machines as Gnome desktops in replacement of Windows machines in various workplace settings and an overwhelming majority of users like them better. And they're definitely not technical. They basically need email, a file server, a web client and office applications (plus a little image editing and basic DTP for a few of them).
I don't know where you got your ideas but you seem to be stuck in 1995.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Yeah ? Well my desktop is in a wheelbarrow, so there !
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
For instance, let's say you were sent a project that has dozens of directories with thousands of files in it. Let's say you want to rename all *.jpeg files to *.jpg. How would you do that in Windows? In VMS that would be a piece of cake, in a Unix system it's more complicated, for i in *.jpeg; do mv $i `echo $i | sed s/jpeg$/jpg/ - ` ; done or something like that would do it
I would use mmv! I'm always surprised how little known this gem is among Unix veterans:
mmv '*.jpeg' '#1.jpg'
I always make sure to install this tool with my Linux installs. For whatever reason it's not part of most Linux 'standard' installs, but it is available as part of the package selection in every Linux I've seen.
It's essentially a complete replacement for mv, with the addition of globbing and replacement rules. And, in contrast to mv, it's safe; IOW if you screw up your glob or replacement expression it will stop and warn you before overwriting any files.
-chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
For most users, a package manager is illogical. You need to know pretty much exactly what you're looking for, especially on something like Debian where there are thousands of packages.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
There is some evidence that two secret agents (code names "zenith" and "fort") were paid by the British to corrupt Japanese intelligence about the US response to Perl Harbor. There is even a bit of evidence to indicate the British had advanced warning of the attack by breaking Japanese codes, but delayed passing on this warning to the US. Without the US in the war, there was a very real chance that Germany and the Axis powers would win the war in Europe. After WW1, the US declared they would never participate in a European struggle. It took Perl Harbor to jolt them out of that opinion and possibly the British to ensure Perl Harbour happend as it did.
BTW, While Yamamoto was of course justified in his fears, it's well to remember that his contemporaries had good reason to be confident: the US has never won a significant military engagement with another country without superior numbers or equipment, and has notably lost several even with that (Vietnam, Iraq...). At the time of Perl Harbor, Japan had completely trashed the Russians (a much larger force) in 1905, and later came close to defeating US troops in the Pacific War despite having far less armaments then they did. By that measure at least, it could be argued that the US is not the most successful military nation in history, but quite the reverse.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
I think his point is not that they are good, but that they are essentially required to get the mindless zombies to follow suit.
Too bad BIOMET wasnt polled for this survey. They are actually one company who is going the opposite direction. According to the VP of IT, Linux is bad and Windows is good. VMWare Virtual Servers are bad, but Windows Virtual Servers are good. Remove all services and programs running on Windows even if you have had uptimes for years, and move them to Windows because it is more reliable. Windows has wizards and guis. What innovative people, outside the box thinking people they have out there in Indiana. Glad to no longer be a part of that. I would have been stupid within a few months like the monkeys working out there. Just part of the reason the company is going down the toilet.
I'm always amazed when I see comments like this. On my home computer, Firefox has been running since mid October and is fine (about 120M resident, 200M virtual).
I use NoScript with only a few sites white-listed. Is that why I don't see memory issues?
I'm running on Linux. Is that why I don't see memory issues?
I do use Flash and Java, often heavily, so that can't be it.
*sigh* back to work...
Linux already has a greater market share than Mazda, Mitsubishi,
and Subaru combined. As far as I'm concerned, Linux is already
mainstream.
*sigh* back to work...
"Companies rely more and more on distributed AD architectures, that have come a long way towards centralizing workstation configuration options. So now you can have really fine-grained AD-driven security policy that beats what linux ditros can offer"
A multi-national I once worked for never actually used AD. They had Win2k servers in a number of locations using Exchange server and mapped shared drives to the desktop. A twelve man It department did nothing all day but reinstall email accounts that had borked for no reason. Two cat5 sockets on every workplace, one for the Internet and one permanently connected to a ghost server for the never ending reinstalls.
"I think Linux is good, but it didn't innovate enough to compete with the Microsoft steamroller"
If Linux didn't innovate then why does MS see the need to blackmail people into not using it. What if anything did MS ever innovate. Active Directory an implementation of LDAP directory services, does nothing that Novell eDirectory can't do. And security and Windows don't belong in the same sentence. Who really innovated the Zune/iPod, Aero/Mac OS Aqua, Vista/OSX 10.4, dot.net/Java.
innovate: a new idea, method or device. (Merriam-Webster Online)
was Re:No MS has won again.
davecb5620@gmail.com
That is all because of Microsoft's Licensing structure! It's so restrictive that it doesn't allow you to grow.
I ran into a licensing wall to instate a DRP solution. Our brilliant VAR decided to install everything on SMB Server 2003. And let me tell you that there is no way to have a real backup server.
You can't run 2 SMB server so miroring is out.
Add a 2nd server std and try virtualization restore, i have to shutdown the production server to test it.
MYGOD! Oh well moving slowly our apps on another platform.
By "mindless zombies" you mean the average computer user who has neither the time, nor background knowledge to care how computers work. The computer is an appliance to most people, they want it to work.
I don't know how to play most of the instruments in a large orchestra, but I still want to listen to it.
-dave
/., where "Apple and Google provide Iran with nukes" will be refuted with "But Microsoft is a convicted monopolist"
What type of university teaches the use of specific programs for courses instead of teaching the basic principles necessary to use any program?
Who said they aren't teaching the basic principles? All he mentioned was that the actual practice was being done on other Windows software. What this means is that people also learn the shortcuts and special features of that piece of software in addition to the basic principles.
Sure, the graduates should be able to use any piece of accounting (or graphics) software, but their experience will be on a specific one, one which they might decide they really like and would like to continue to use. Look up Apple during the 80's for more on this trend (well, it wasn't really a success if you ask me, but they did try hard at it).
That being said, my school had windows labs, Mac labs, unix (many different flavors of Unix and Linux, Solaris, SGI, etc.) labs. And even though I was not a CS student, but took a few CS classes, I had spent some time on all of the systems. But I definitely had preferences.
-dave
/., where "Apple and Google provide Iran with nukes" will be refuted with "But Microsoft is a convicted monopolist"
"I'm stuck hacking away at a bash prompt for a very large chunk of my day five days a week trying to deploy servers while maintaining other servers"
Why not create a image server and config the client to install at boot if it finds the server. At the switch plug the clients cable into the image server. When the client boots it automatically installs then switch it back to the network. Put all updates in automated scripts set them to run at 2.00am and barring hardware failures you can spend the day playing CS or trolling slashdot.
"I do not prefer Linux for home use as it doesn't offer me anything more than Windows or Mac OSX (except maybe security in the case of Windows)"
Then you're not a real Linux geek
davecb5620@gmail.com
Sorry, but GNUCash is useless for any both the most basic accounting needs. It doesn't even do payroll! And, none of those POS systems are even remotely as good as any of the proprietary versions. True, there may technically be "accounting" and "point of sale" software, but what's available is embarassingly bad.
Good points, but I will refine a bit further:
#1 Server segment - Linux, but this does not really matter that much, as servers run very few apps. There is not a great advantage to having a large market share, a new OS could come around tomorrow and dominate within 5 years if it was good enough.
#2 Corporate/government - the only thing that could hurt windows in corporate life is continued security issues, but all non-US governments will go open source eventually due to the US owning windows.
#3 home non-gamer. Gradually switching to laptops entirely, and the Mac is dominating here - 12% market share in the US and growing much faster than any competitor.
#4 gamer market. This will go away, replaced by consoles.
Are the programmers actually smarter at Apple? Why can/could programmers at Apple (or was it NEXT) take FreeBSD and glue an interface on it to make it USABLE as a desktop OS? And why can't programmers involved with Ubuntu or any flavour of Linux put out USABLE interface?
Geez. Make a USABLE FeeBSD or Linux knock off and sell it for $19.99. Let's see sell 10,000,000 copies - that's $199899999.99999970.
Oh I have since my job puts me there sometimes. However, I think we're talking about two different things. You're speaking of lower level kernel architecture differences. That's nice and all, but it doesn't address the userspace issues. My one example is Linux's network block device support (NBD) that allows you to export an actual block device (hard drive, cdrom, dvd, etc...) over the network to another device so the other device thinks the remote device is local. This is NOT file sharing. It's more like device sharing and it's been in the kernel since sometime in the 2.4 series as far as I can tell. I recently ran into a situation here at home where I moved my Linux based media center down to the basement and only routed a DVI cable and a USB cable to a USB hub up through the wall behind my LCD wide screen monitor. I knew that this move would put the DVD drive in the basement, so that would have been a little inconvenient. I originally planned to just get a USB DVD drive and put it on a shelf under the monitor and plug it int the hub. However, I can't afford to buy one right now.
At the same time I happened to be investigating NBD for my home server virtualization project to provide SAN-like services for the entire house. I was going to centralize storage in my one big box and then export logical volume slices from the large pool of disks. Then it occurred to me that this might solve my DVD dilemma as I keep a laptop next to the couch in th e living room all the time with a largely disused DVD drive. I tried it, and it worked. Over WiFi no less. No jerkiness, no problems. You can't do this in Windows unless you're a coder and have a really good understanding of the OS itself. ie, you work for MS. I was able to do it with a simple kernel recompile and some Bash scripting.
Windows has it's place, but it's not for people like me.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
1. Windows can't show me the source code so that I can decide for myself, or choose who will decide for me, if the OS is secure and respective of my privacy.
2. Windows can't allow me to use the system without having to agree to rediculous EULAs that can be changed at a whim by another party.
3. Windows can't promise me that if a particular version or interface I rely on becomes unsupported, that I can maintain it myself, or hire someone to maintain it for me.
4. Generaly speaking, windows apps do not store their data in open formats that allow me to easily migrate between similar applications, or expand my use of that data to new applications not envisioned by the original author. It's almost unfair to call this a limitation of Windows, but it really is part of the culture Microsoft has built around it.
5. Windows does not have a decent interface for user-space virtual file systems. There are some really useful tricks you can do with virtual filesystems. (This may have changed with Vista. Don't know / Don't care.)
6. Windows has poor support for hardlinks, and only (kind of) supports softlinks for directories. I have several braindead applications that choose to store data in "c:\Program Files". I store most of my data on my linux file server that is backed up nightly, and would love to move this data over and softlink it back to make the application happy, but I can't. Instead I have to backup several workstations that I would otherwise be able to ignore. (Again, this may have changed in Vista)
I use firefox heavily on both Windows and Linux, and for some reason I have significantly more problems under windows, even with significantly more memory on the Windows box. I don't know if this is something that can be blamed on Windows, or if its just the result of bad decisions made by the firefox developers.
XML is the best data format; unless your data needs to be read or written by a human or a computer.
So on Linux you can install MySql or Oracle, and install Apache, right? Guess what. On Windows you can install MySql or Oracle, and install Apache. Its not hard.
Besides, much as you (and I for that matter) may not like it, SQL server runs some pretty massive installations very well. And IIS works better than Apache does for serving up small amounts of random data - I can wander over to our hosted Windows server, pull up the IIS console, and set up a bandwidth limited virtual server on a specific domain in about 3 minutes. I can do the same on Apache as well, but only by copy-and-pasting an existing configuration so it takes me a while to do the first one (and for features like bandwidth limits which I'm sure it supports but I don't have config-file samples for, it would take a lot longer).
For 95% of the tasks out there, almost any software works these days.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
In #1, you obviously assume that the companies still run Windows clients. While this will be an argument for some,
-Outlook/Exchange can be replaced by systems like Novell Groupwise, available on Linux and Windows
-Active Directory is a form of LDAP Directory services. There are other implementations of LDAP Directory services, some of them Open Source. While I'm not an expert on using those, I guess it is possible to manage a Linux environment with them. Of course, Windows is known to work well only with Active Directory.
So if a company is willing to do #2 as well, the obstacles from #1 will be irrelevant. I agree that the success or failure of the Munich project will have quite an impact on the reputation of Linux as viable solution.
On #3, I fully agree.
#4, drivers are important but some more market share from a Linux success in #3 will also be necessary. Unless WINE makes great enough progress that Linux + drivers + WINE will do the job.
C - the footgun of programming languages
What version of firefox are you using? I used to have problems with firefox memory leaks, but with recent updates, all the way up to firefox 2, I have not had those issues.
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
I thought I'd throw in my two cents, even though it's probably too late for people to read them.
This "war" people keep talking about is about Desktops. Even when Linux completely dominates the desktop computer market, that will be pointless. The next "big thing" is the smaller stuff: cell phones, PDA's, portable media players, etc. To ensure dominance, Linux would need to focus it's energy on the portable device market. It currently possesses a greater percent of that market than it does in the desktop market, but as soon as cell phones become powerful enough to run Microsoft Vista Compact Edition (or whatever), that could change. We need to start thinking about how we can make the best use of the new tinier technology, because that is where it will be at. Mainframes are practically dead; PC's took their place. In another 30 years, PC's could be dead too, and our 30 inch LCD screens replaced by virtual reality glasses.
Prediction: Linux should come to dominate the desktop market eventually, because we're reaching the limit of what desktops can do. Compared to the diversity of portable digital devices like cell phones and PDA's, desktops all look alike. That's because they have reached a stage where there are only incremental improvements. Given time, Linux will be able to catch up to Window's in the desktop market because the desktop race is slowing down. The "Linux vs. Microsoft war" will simply move on to a new medium.
Less clicking is good for mindless zombies, potentialy clueful users and those who know what they are doing. "Next-next-next" lumps the second in with the first and anoys the third.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Wow. A, what? Two year old installation disk doesn't recognize the latest and greatest drive?
First off, SATA is about 2 years old so it's about as late and great as the OS he's talking about. Second, it's not just that, it's also the difficulty providing it with the driver. A FLOPPY drive only? Come on!
I haven't used my floppy drive in YEARS, I don't even know if it still works. Virtually everything is on CD, DVD or USB mass storage device. Requiring a floppy is a lazy carryover.
And that, my friend, is where the balance lies. Any success Linux will have blah, blah, blah
Linux is ALREADY growing in users. It's been a steady, slow process but it shows no signs of stopping. You believe something that's already happening isn't going to happen because Microsoft is going to do something they have a long track record of not being able to do?
Because the majority of people aren't going to want to give up all of their old software and games and repurchase them just so they can move to a "better" platform.
You're generalizing yourself as everyone. MOST people never upgrade the OS on their PC. When it comes time to upgrade, they buy a new one, preloaded. Besides, using this silly logic every new video game console would have failed.
And if Linux expects to exploit that opening, should it come, then it had better be ready to support all of that hardware: computers and printers and cameras and everything else.
Linux already has better hardware support than windows. Neither OS supports everything the other does, of course, but this is a non-issue.
And they're better have a common face: 50-plus all slightly different and incompatible distributions and desktops and installers and drivers are not going to cut it.
Personally, I don't think you guys can get past your differences and make it happen.
It will never happen... and that's a good thing. Not all users are alike. It doesn't have to happen for linux to succeed. The goal is not to replace an old monopoly with a new one. The goal is to restore a free market.
Life is too short to proofread.
you can browse the internet, read your email and use messenger. you can use write letters and spreadsheets. casual users dont care about specific apps.
of course, you cant play games, so you've lost the more mainstream early adopter/experimenter types, which i think is a massive Achilles heel.
Imagine if mac os x was free and ran on any hardware. that's the kind of baseline penetration you should expect from linux once the polish is a bit shinier.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
What part of "home computer" did you have a problem with?
I'm a Linux snob at work too, and I certainly use a Linux workstation to Do Work. However, at home, the desktop is a Mac. I spent years fucking around with Linux at home, and the effort is just Not Worth It anymore.
I honestly consider home desktop Linux deader now than in 1999. At least then, there was hope that things would get better.
Wow. A, what? Two year old installation disk doesn't recognize the latest and greatest drive? And because of that Linux installation problems are a "non-issue"?
I know how convenient apt-get is, but for anything you don't install in Linux via apt-get, I think clicking "next" would be easier than trying to follow a complicated howto.
Another fallacy. As with most linux users I have multiple boxes. 1 primary high-end box and 4 "low-end boxes" (600 MHZ Celeron, 200 mhz AMD, IPX, 486). No drivers for the cheap (old) stuff? Flat wrong.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Running MythTv .
I also miss my unix tools like sed, awk, grep, diff...etc. These don't come with windows installs.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I've spent a good deal of time advocating for linux among family and friends with mixed results. "Aunt Tilly" or "Grandma" have no problems with Linux - they even prefer it because I can remove a great deal of clutter that makes it hard to "use the internet". All Tilly and Grandma need is painless technical support for little things like: "How do I find this picture of my ." Heck, the local coffehouses and bookstores have linux computers running and nobody seems to have noticed that it's "not windows". I've had little trouble with extremely computer saavy people either, many of whom already run *nix or BSD. The few who still run windows have valid reasons for doing so (primarily for windows software development). It's the middle range that I've had the most problems with. Engineering students exposed to an ancient version of redhat on university computers are rapidly turned off. Relatives who run businesses invariably ask "does it run X or is there an equivalent?". Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes no. Among the college crowd - "does it run Y new game?" Linux is making progress, but it hasn't won. Yes the OS is important, but applications are important too. Openoffice is getting there - slowly but surely. The GIMP and Krita will hopefully keep bouncing off each other until they come up with a viable photoshop alternative (I've tried to convert several professional photographers who just couldn't do what they needed with the *nix apps.) Other MANDATORY equivalent programs include: AutoCAD, ArcGIS (yes, I know about GRASS), email clients that seamlessly support exchange accounts, AD interfacing, and Visual Studio. These are applications that I have had to admit are lacking in Linux - even after demonstrating the closest equivalent - time and time again. If we are serious about making linux a viable windows alternative, we have to give the users what they want - not what we think they should have. And before I get flamed with "they just want IM or MySpace", read the rest of this comment and recognize that we have the opportunity to make better, more capable software for BUSINESS users who will then go home and become frustrated with the inadequacies of windows. If linux is built by the "community" then let's expand the community to INCLUDE non-geeks and the technologically ignorant who (believe it or not) can have some great ideas and who make up the target market anyway.
He who would be a man, must be a nonconformist. -- Emerson
I'm sorry, but what does a handful of domain controllers to handle the AAA for the workstations have to do with what you're running your server apps on? That's like saying you can't use Windows because you need to run TACACS+ for your firewall and modem pool.
I disagree that Linux has the server segment locked up.
Linux is an attractive solution for database servers, and web servers -
But Linux can't server Windows apps (Citrix) - admittedly, that's a small segment.
But Linux is not as convenient for hosting LDAP (or Authentication Services) as is a Windows Domain Controller running ActiveDirectory. If the majority of Desktops on a LAN are Windows, the only real cost-effective choice for authentication is Active Directory - which triggers a whole series of other choices like Windows for File Servers, Windows for their integrated Application Servers (.NET, MS SQL, IIS, etc.)
Expertise at setting up Linux to do authentication is vanishingly rare, and the solutions are very costly, and aren't as well integrated and pre-packaged as Active Directory. (as much as I'd like to see Active Directory get trounced in the market, and become utterly irrelevant).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Yeah, they'll keep a windows client as "just a web browser" -
You're forgetting the MS Office draw. No "doctor, lawyer, and other guys" is going to standardize on Linux desktops, because there are no apps that run on Linux that help these guys do their business. The Open alternatives simply lack the integration and features of MS Office/Outlook.
At home - I don't need those applications - so I use a Unix based desktop.
I think this is probably an adequate solution for most "developer-types" (as long as they aren't trying to develop dotNet or other win-specific apps).
At work, I need to coordinate my calendar with my co-workers for meetings, etc. I need to be able to authenticate to a Windows Domain, in order to get that data. And, we have a couple of special Windows-only apps, but I see the market trending away from that, and towards browser-based application services that are platform agnostic on the client-side. But Windows still has the Office apps all sewn up. And none of the open vendors has anything that comes close. I admit, they were making a lot of progress a couple of years ago in catching up, but my view is that they've pretty much sat still in the past two years or so.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Dear Sparky,
Find me an Open Source replacement for Exchange. Until then, shut the fuck up.
It has to 100% replicate the features of Exchange, and make it seamless for the users. In fact, I require that Outlook be fully compatible with it.
Until then, Exchange is the king within corporate email systems, because it does things that sendmail, qmail, etc., CAN'T. The only close competitor is Lotus Notes/Domino. While Domino is a good platform, the Notes UI *sucks* terribly.
Please. Please. Show me a good Exchange competitor that's open source, and I'll advocate it to my Mom & Pop shops. Until then, though, SBS2003 is great for the under-50 seat clients, and Exchange Server 2003 w/ Windows Server 2003 serves my Enterprise needs nicely.
Thanks!
"So I will ask, give us even one example of something that Linux is capable of that Windows is not capable of doing."
... and where is any of this in practice? Other than running 16-bit explorer because they were too lazy to port it, of course. What you're saying is that Windows apparently has endless compatibility capabilities, and yet it isn't even POSIX compliant yet? Sweet. Let's all dive right into that one, right there. Pretty much you make the case that Windows has the capability to make progress technologically by way of compatibility, but the sheer fact that there isn't even native support for a foreign filesystem like EXT2 says that compatibility will never actually happen unless Microsoft can make lots of money off it.
You forgot your question mark. Anyway, here's an example: configure the Apple remote on an Intel Mac Mini. You could say this isn't a technical limitation - as a company has just to write drivers and it'll work, but it's still a limitation. Nobody WILL. It's not in Apple's interest to see their hardware work as well in Windows as it works in OSX, and it's not in Microsoft's interest to encourage the use of Mac hardware. Either scenario just encourages the competitor's sales. I got my Mac Mini remote working with 30 lines of ruby in Linux, and I have yet to find a way to get Windows to even recognize the presence of the device. This may not be a technical limitation, but it certainly is a practical one. The fact that "random dude x" (me) can get things working in Linux and nobody that I know of can get it working in Windows says something.
" I will even be kind enough to go first with a very basic example of something Windows can do that Linux cannot do at the core architectural level. Windows is based on the NT architecture, which is a hybrid kernel concept that allows it to host OS subsystems. This is also why the NT architecture has been called a client/server kernel concept. What this gives NT that Linux cannot do is the ability to natively run multiple OS subsystems concurrently that also can communicate with each other at the kernel level.
*cut for brevity, but read the parent, it's interesting stuff*
It is even rumored that MS has worked on a non BSD based *nix subsystem for Windows that is Linux based and would be able to run anything Linux could run with no virtualization or emulation and it would also have the ability to talk to the other subsystems, like the Win32 subsystem.
Ok, your turn..."
What we can draw from this is simply this: put progress in the hands of someone greedy, and it won't matter how capable they are of fueling technological advance: nothing will budge until it greases their palms. The technological limit on Windows is greed. It will never be absent of Windows, and it will always be absent in free software.
There is no battle, and Linux need not win anything.
Sorry, Linux is about far more than a few dorky anti-MS fanboys.
The interesting thing is that all new server installations are either Linux or Windows 2003
That may be the case for the government departments you know of, but it isn't the case generally. Sun's market share grew in the last year, and they now sell more servers than Dell. Their growth and high market share was substantially on the basis of servers running Solaris. In contrast to other commercial Unixes, there is little sign of Solaris dying out; quite the reverse. Linux is certainly doing very well, but it hasn't 'won' anything yet. Personally, I hope no system wins. Choice is best.
Every day, dozens of servers are deployed running Microsoft Exchange.
Sing it. Right now I'm managing an infrastructure entirely Linux based on the server side, but Noises are Afoot. Noises saying things like "We want Exchange!".
Now with Exchange, you need Active Directory. And if you're going to do that, you really ought to set it up as an AD domain and put your desktops on the domain or you lose one of the main benefits - the seamless integration with the desktop.
And because you'd be a fool to do otherwise, this implies at least two Windows servers to provide some redundancy for AD.
So this nice little idea for Exchange is suddenly a major project which involves huge upheaval for all the staff desktops (and will go down like a lead balloon with the people who want to use a mail client other than Outlook. Sure, you can use any mail client you like if you enable IMAP, but it will soon suck mightily as you are bombarded with things like emails with voting buttons, meeting requests and such.
There's no need for voting machines period. Everything should be done with pen and paper, and counted by hand. Simple. Efficient, and Accurate, and a whole lot less ways to screw with the results. When the only real record of your vote is going from a touch screen to a memory card, how do you know it was counted right.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
You don't run 24/7 servers on intel hardware.
Really? My previous employer produced software for the mobile telco industry, and when I left were in the process of porting it to x86/Linux with IBM as a business partner. The reason for the porting was because apparently customers were clamouring for it.
Of course, it's rather easier to run a 24/7 server when the database that does all the real hard work can natively handle multi-master replication.
...the increase in the use of Linux is at 500% on servers in the last 12 months:
"Unfortunately, that issue combined with the zero ability to play games (and wine in no-way counts) makes the decision easy for me."
I don't know where you've got the zero ability to play games from, Linux is a great gaming platform and technically more than up to the challenge. I've got a shelf of native Linux games and they all run without problems. My most purchase recent being Cold War.
There is a scarcity of games compared to Windows, but that's not because Linux is incapable of running games. I don't buy Windows games at all now, even ones that work under emulation, if I buy a PC game it'll be because it has native linux binaries. If it's Windows only they no longer get my money. So my gaming time now is split between native Linux games and the PS2.
"of course, you cant play games, so you've lost the more mainstream early adopter/experimenter types, which i think is a massive Achilles heel."
You can't play games? On what planet. Unless my native Linux copy of Cold War is completely imaginary then you can play games.
Last week I attended to the last VMworld 2006 conference in LA, where one of the big themes was Virtual Appliances, or basically customized, highly specialized virtual machines where the focus is in the application and no longer the OS. Linux wins hands down in this new approach for software development and distribution. The main reasons are the licensing flexibility and the easy adaptability of the code to a virtualized environment. The keynote by VMware's Chief Scientist and co-founder, Stanford Professor Mendel Rosemblum, showed a future with highly customized OSs, designed to support a single application running on top of a virtualized environment. In fact, I attended a lecture from a researcher from BEA for their jRocket project where they are running a JVM directly on top of a hypervisor with their own custom OS called Bare Metal. Really interesting concept.
There were multiple new vendors showing their stuff in their booths, and you can clearly see Linux dominating this new market, with large players like Oracle already distributing 10g as a vmdk file, or companies like rPath, that creates a tiny micro-Linux distribution tailored to a specific application. New players like Zimbra are already moving to this model.
Linux is appearing as the distribution of choice for this new model, with Microsoft way behind due to their ridiculous restrictions in the re-distribution of Windows, cutting themselves out of this new market.
"... and they make up the vast majority of that [sic] market."
No doubt.
"You don't run 24/7 servers on intel hardware."
Really. I think you need to talk to Google and quite a few other people who're doing the 24/7 thing not only on Intel hardware, but on commodity Intel hardware. Perhaps the word cluster is new to you?
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
And I'm still confused. What has all that got to do with all this ?
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
Uh, yes, you can install alternatives to Microsoft products. I'm not sure how that invalidates my assertion that Microsoft's products tend to be somewhat mediocre offerings.
Funny you should mention that. SQL Server's scaling capabilities are currently the major bottleneck that my company is having trouble with.
Sure, and I didn't say that IIS was useless, just that it was mediocre, especially considering the price Microsoft puts on it. It's not designed to be particularly feature-packed or flexible, and it seems that if Microsoft want to make gains in the server space, they need something a little better.
Unfortunately I seem to handle the remaining 5% :(
So now I have to hate linux and love windows?
Typical Linux double-talk about how all of the problems are really benefits, and as such can be ignored. I like the last part though, "The goal is to restore a free market."
News flash. We're IN a free market. And by and large, in many ways, the market has choosen. You see, the vast majority of people tend to think that having a single major platform upon which there's a huge supply and choice of hardware and software is a good thing.
Walk into a CompUSA or a BestBuy or Circuit City or Target. People know that they can buy any one of those games or programs off the shelf and their computer will run it. (usually)
Hell, Apple had to spend millions of dollars writing (and aquiring) some best-of-class applications just to get people to even LOOK at their computers. Not to mention the fact that you can at least get the major commercial applications like Word and Photoshop for 'em
Where are the world-class desktop applications for Linux? OpenOffice and GIMP? Right. Firefox? Okay, but even those applications are available on Windows, which means that Windows users who got Windows "free" on their new computers have even MORE choice. Even applications written for the "competition" support them.
So what are those advantages again? I must have missed something...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Because until that statement, the discussion was about Windows vs Linux. You seemed to be arguing against Windows on the basis that IIS-on-Windows is crappy compared to Apache-on-Linux. I was trying to point out that Apache-on-Windows was a better comparison.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
So I will ask, give us even one example of something that Linux is capable of that Windows is not capable of doing.
If you can manage 1000 server nodes that are headless without having to click anything, on Windows, I'd be interested to know. For an additional exercise: choose a portion of those servers, in a non-contigous grouping, for an action that you want to perform on them that you do not want to perform on the others. Without manually selecting each.
I admit that I am not familiar with Windows to know if this is possible; if it is, I'd be interested to know.
And, oh, btw: I manage that many nodes (and more!) on a daily basis. So this is a real world example.
--
$tar -xvf
I'll be happy to debate every one of your points with you, but not with Anonymous Coward. Someone want to take credit for this mess? (Dvorak, is that you?)
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Linux=N. Vietnam
Microsoft=the US
S. Vietnam=SCO
IBM and Oracle can play the roles of the PRC and USSR
Novell=Cambodia after Prince Sihanook was overthrown by a US backed junta?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Desktop apps will come faster when there are more Linux users, not more Linux developers. These days, lack of apps is not the greatest barrier for many who could be happy using Linux for email/surfing/recipes, or basic office work.
(But ok, the lack of particular applications is the sole barrier for some who otherwise would choose Linux. Gamers might be in that group.)
There are more paid Linux developers every day, going by the job listings requiring Linux skills. Today they're mostly for corporate back-end stuff and embedded device software (and they pay very well BTW). When demand is there for Linux apps, there will be Linux coders to meet it.
Corporate desktop users will probably be the first viable market for commercial desktop apps. They may have administration and support taken care of by IT departments, but they are still a lot like "Aunt Tilly" when it comes to needing ease-of-use and a well-integrated desktop, right?
I just don't see "Mission Accomplished" until every barrier that keeps Aunt Tilly from using Linux is gone, and right now it's not so much lack of apps that's in the way IMHO.
I admit was deviating back to the original topic a little, which concerns Linux dominating the server side market. It's my opinion that if Microsoft want to increase their market share, they'd have to make a better argument than, "It runs all your favourite server software, just like Linux, and it's more expensive."
For the language itself, the documentation pages of Free Pascal have lots of information:
n tation. Unfortunately, it is currently limited to a bunch of examples. An online reference on the individual components has been started but is not very useful yet. That is something I'm missing myself, the (exellent) Deplhi online help has spoiled me there ;-)
http://www.freepascal.org/docs.html
Of course, those don't cover the Lazarus IDE and the LCL (Lazarus Component Library), the Lazarus counterpart to Delphi's VCL.
I guess you'd best start at http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Lazarus_Docume
C - the footgun of programming languages
Win32 is an example of one subsystem in use on Windows and runs independantly of other subsystems like the *nix subsystem, OS/2, Win16, and Win64 subsystems to name a few examples. The subsystem OS architecture concept is not virtualization nor emulation, as each subsystem are true OSes acting independently with their own subsystem level kernels that sit on top of the NT architecture.
...
... Also, as a nice side effect, easy to back up and restore critical system data since it is all on disk and usually text files -- no registry to screw things up.
.
Are you sure about that? Assuming Windows XP still runs on i386/i486, those "subsystems" must be essentially the same as emulation. Not emulation of a chip, but emulation of an API ala Wine -- which as you know runs both Win16 and Win32 successfully under the same Linux kernel that runs both 32-bit and 64-bit Linux binaries.
So I will ask, give us even one example of something that Linux is capable of that Windows is not capable of doing.
It isn't very easy to pick a capability that Linux can do that Windows can't because frankly an OS is just an OS and so long as both support Turing-complete languages in theory both can do exactly the same things. However, Linux DOES make it much easier to do all of the following "out of the box" on any modern distro. With Windows, many of these capabilities are possible but certainly not out of the box and in many cases require expensive third-party closed-source
software:
0. In a GUI, NOT get interrupted by some random popup dialog box while typing and have my next space/enter key cause who-knows-what to happen. This by itself is almost enough for me not to consider Windows ready for the desktop. Yes, there are registry settings that ALMOST fix the problem, but they still don't work 100% of the time.
1. Write programs in languages at all levels of abstraction that will run on any other Unix-like operating systems. Also, automate all routine aspects of the system via init scripts and cron.
2. Easily handle ALL of the standard network protocols as both client and server: SSH, SCP, FTP, SMTP, HTTP(S), IRC, IM, NFS, NTP,
3. Easily show the user the status of the system in a transparent manner. CPU usage, processes list, mounted disks, available memory, logged in users, login history, disk quota,
4. Easily handle multiple users in multiple security contexts. Need a root window? K -> System -> Root console. Need root access for specific tasks only? su or sudo
5. Allows full debugging of rare corner cases so the system can still run. Example 1: Linux can run safely on a system with a bad RAM chip with a kernel boot parameter telling it to avoid using the affected memory area. Example 2: A bad library that kills X11 on startup CAN be identified and worked around. Example 3: A kernel module that borks the system can be easily fixed not to load at startup. These are pretty serious conditions that usually have no solution when encountered in the Windows world.
6. Allows MUCH easier mixing-and-matching of major components than Windows. Example: Most software runs the same in 2.4.x kernels and 2.6.x kernels on the SAME system; in Windows, this would be equivalent to being able to dual-boot Win2k and WinXP and have them use the same registry and have the exact same programs in the start menu.
I prioritized this list in the order that matters to me as a Linux desktop user. I need the computer to obey my commands, not interrupt a command halfway through. I need programming languages that work well and can also work on the supercomputing clusters I do research on. I need things to be automated easily, so that for instance my home computer can automatically update an external web page after its IP address changes so that I can always find home no matter where I am. I need full network connectivity including SSH and SCP to reach those supercomputers and also transfer files to friends anywh
1. The server segment. Linux looks to have this market locked up.
Wrong. I just checked IDC and almost 3/4 of the current servers installed run Windows.
And I say "Nay" I'm seeing the majority to continue to use their computers as they do now (with Windows XP Home) until they become so sluggish that they are not able to be productive. Virtually nobody will install Linux because: 1) All of their software that they purchased for Windows is not compatible (not that they would realize this until after they install Linux and go "WTF?") 2) The average computer is not a techie. They treat their computers like cars; how many people do you know actually rotate their own tires or change their own oil? Some do, like my family, but the vast majority of people I know bring their cars to dealerships and shops to have it done.
would you trust those systems to anything else?
Now we just need all those XP systems replaced with Linux systems - Windows clients are the biggest security holes a Linux server ever experiences.
MS is definitely the sleeping giant. It always wins in the end, so it seems. First they beat all the other command line OS's with MS DOS. Then they trashed Netscape. IE is gaining on Firefox at an alarming rate. I'm think Linux will suffer the same fate in the future.
So far, the only thing that looks like it has a future in defying Microsoft is Google, and I have to admit the Windows Live search results, while not as useful for techy users, are much more Grandma-friendly.
The government can't save you.
...don't use Dell's standard web form that home users use to purchase a computer. If you're talking about hundreds or thousands of computers, I'd wager my left nut that they'd be talking to somebody instead of using a web form. If they're talking to somebody, I'd also be willing to bet that they can demand that Windows not be installed and have either FreeDOS or RedHat pre-installed (since it seems Dell only sells RedHat for Linux, and I'd imagine that Dell signed a contract with RedHat saying that they would only install RedHat versions of Linux and not Novell Linux.)
So, basically, it won't come down to things like switching from companies like Dell because they don't offer Linux on all of their product, just from an increase of people demanding Linux, so Dell makes it easier to order Linux instead of jumping through as many hoops, thus resulting in more sales because Dell makes it easier to get a large number of computers with Linux installed than HP
The main thing Windows can't do is have nice integration with open source software (the most common kind).
To get ANY work done on Windows I have to first, spend $1000 or more upgrading the box (Visual Studio, MS Office, Antivirus, etc). Now, since most everything on the planet is written for a autoconf toolchain, I need cygwin... but at that point I'm being about as silly as installing a linux box just to run MS Office under wine... I should have installed Linux in the first place, so let's forgo that step.
OK, so what do we not have... SSH. Sucks to be me. Sure, I can TS... assuming of course I bought the upgraded licensed version of windows that can actually do that. I can run a webserver... assuming I bought the upgrades. I can run a SQL server... assuming I bought the upgraded OS capable of doing such. I can run apache/mysql, true... but the integration of those apps on the windows platform is abysmal... they were written for Linux and if I'm going to go to the trouble of installing and using them, well, same argument as cygwin.
Sure. on both platforms I can install out of the box and check email. I can do that on a palm pilot.. that's not an honest comparison. Windows *can* do anything Linux can do... by emulating Linux and doing a piss poor job of it. The reverse is rarely the case except with video games or the occasional specialty application which dwarfs the cost of the OS anyway and you are best off running a dedicated workstation running windows for said app.
Home computers don't have to be playstations. If all you do with your machine at home is play Battlefield2, its as good a use as any, it doesn't change the fact that all Unix users I know have home computers that run Linux or some sort of free Unix. Why someone Unix savvy would run Windows is beyond me (apart from games if you're into that).
There is no hassle to installing Linux on the desktop and hasn't been for some time. The *only* thing I've had to do in years is install MTP libs and apps to talk to a Creative media player. One of the main reasons why I'm selling it and replacing it by a mass storage based one (by Cowon).
Now granted, non Unix people may not want to learn new things just to free their data and typically will just use what they are used to and came with their machine. It's understandable.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Another thing windows can do that linux can't:
Arbitrarily decide that it *might* not be licenced properly and shut itself off asking you to call a 1-800 number to get it back on again. I migrated an entire production server farm over to Linux after my high availability system went down this way. Any OS that will voluntarily sabotage itself when it is not running into technical problems has no business being in a production environment.
Ok then. Apache is poorly integrated into the "windows way of doing things". It's designed for Linux.
Apache on windows is poorly integrated in comparison to apache on linux. It can do all the same things, but....
On linux there is a common area for configs. There is no such common area on Windows. Config files for apache are in an arbitray location... I don't remember where.
Apache runs as a daemon. On windows there are services, but they aren't quite the same thing. So you either run apache in a console window, or wrap it artificially.
It's simply not an app designed for windows. Sure, you can get it to run with kludges, but *WHY WOULD YOU??* If you need a dedicated web server that runs apache, just install linux in the first place. I wouldn't try to run IIS under wine even if it is possible because it's STUPID to do so.
Again, facts on /. that contradict groupthink, get modded flamebait without any reasoning. Good system.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Well, I see a few of your points, but really what you are describing doesn't apply to me or the majority of people out there. This includes pretty much anyone that uses their computer only at home. Plus the cost of 1000$ is a bit steep and over-estimated. There are quite a few free alternatives for Visual Studio, for instance, including ones that were made for Linux and ported over (there is even a free 'lite' version of VS from MS). And I don't even know nor care what SSH stands for, because it doesn't really affect me at all. I don't want to me mean, but you *are* being the stereotypical Linux user here.
Har?
Your opponent is smarter than you.Throwing insults at someone else wiser only makes idiots more laughable.
P.S. your website does not show up on my firefox. It must have been configured with MS-exclusive support. Windows 2003 Server, how pathetic.
People who dislike China tend to mention Tiananmen Square a lot, but they always forget the Tank Man is also a Chinese.
Hey! Don't forget the loss of Manchuria, Japan's largest source for war materials.
Can I ask how you managed to 'transport' your devices to another computer? NBD looks interesting, I'm just wondering how you implemented it (any websites that have good descriptions?) If you read all the posts above you will see that I plan on having a Linux media server, and something like this would be perfect. Thanks!
Har?
Last I heard, a 10% market share was not considered a "win". Ok, ok. I see that the reference was not just to home PCs. But where is most of the money spent by consumers of computer products going to? Windows-based home PCs and software. I don't call that a "win" in any sense of the word.
Microsofts grip remains as firm as it has ever been in those markets.
So? Doesn't negate the fact that there are plenty of Linux-based point of sale terminals, and the number is growing. (The others may well be POS ;-), certainly the ones that still have SCO on them).
Point is that most people don't think in terms of those things having an OS.
-- Alastair
taskmgr can no longer run in the system tray to show CPU usage in WinXP as it did in Win2k.
Yes it does, not sure why you haven't noticed it if you've ever used it. Just that it takes up some processor time so people don't use it to see CPU usage...
Har?
doesn't it? Then in that case the fact that some people can't figure out Linux doesn't make Windows superior either.
Advanced users are users too!
The right x86 platform can and has been used for 24/7 work for many years. In fact, I know of a certian brand of predictive phone dialer that runs on an 8086 processor, and they were in 24/7 service for decades.
Desktop systems, x86 or not, are definitely not a 24/7 platform.
These days you can purchase a system that will stand up to typical server use for very cheap.
See my JE on doing it that I wrote when I first did it. I'm hoping to have a bit better of a write up at some point in time. The only problem I ran into that I was able to resolve in a crude way for now was DVD encryption. Even though I was exporting the DVD device and it gets treated as a local device on the importing system, the decryption needs to be performed once on the system doing the exporting. For now, I have xine open the DVD locally for about 10-15 seconds. This has worked for nearly every movie I;m trying to play. I plan to change this later to see if I can just have something that performs the decryption, but doesn't actually need to play the disc as I have now. Still, it's quite a geeky rush to show your friends that the movie they're watching on the monitor is coming from the unplugged wireless laptop your holding in your hands. ;P Enjoy...
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
2.0. I think it's a problem with the Win32 subsystem because FF on Linux doesn't chew so much memory.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
No, the needs aren't typical, they are dev needs. The typical user's needs are email+web browser+picture viewing+cd recording... things that can be done on windows or linux with the same ease (or, save for the cd recording, a palm pilot or alot of cell phones). The only people who care about what OS they are using either have a pet app they can't do without (photoshop or maya, or autocad for instance) and it doesn't matter if that app is BeOS only.. they'd use it. The other group is computer professionals, and the situation there is tilted highly in Linux favor.
;) I agree with a sentiment in another thread... Windows: It can do anything Linux can do, except it's expensive! I would throw in slow, difficult to repair when something goes wrong, hardware hungry (ram and CPU requirements are rediculous).
$1000 is not an exaggeration... in fact it's probably low. While I can get Open Source or 3rd party dev tools, I'm still going to need visual studio for compiling/debugging if I am doing any serious MS-centric coding. I need the header files, I need the linked libraries, all that stuff. I could conceivably set it up with msys.. but that's a big hack. The VS lite version, like most "lite" versions of anything, is not going to cut it for productivity. I believe the going price for a decent VS package is close to a grand by itself, but I haven't personally purchased one recently. The next thing is office, although open office is pretty compelling here and integrates just fine. The big issue with open office, is although it can read most anything MS office spits out, the reverse is not true, so other users who shelled out hundred of dollars cannot read my stuff unless I cross save to MS formats, and then I lose formatting and such as the support for that is pretty fuzzy. So add in a couple other apps I might want and $1000 bucks or so is pretty conservative for a computer professional's standard workstation. A system admin's workstation can probably do it for half that, as they don't do the dev-tools thing.
So then.. having shelled out the dough, we step back and look what we have. SSH is the primary deficiency I see. The reason you don't know what it is is windows has no equivelent, but trust me, for administration purposes, it is *the* killer app and probably the most commonly used application used by a unix professional outside of the command line. What it is: "Secure Shell". It's simply an app that is #1 strongly encrypted and #2 gives you a command prompt on a foreign machine. Most any unix box will have it turned on, and most headless routers, switches, etc also have a port. The MS equivelent is Terminal Services, which gives you a full view of the desktop on the remote system. It's handy for some things, but most of the time I don't WANT the desktop of the other sytem... I just want a command line. I want to reboot the machine or look at a file or set a reg key and loading that full desktop is WAY overkill not to mention slow... prohibitively on low bandwidth lines. It's also ram hungry and takes alot of proc power. Many times I have not been able to reboot a misbehaving windows server through TS because transferring that whole desktop over TCP is just too big of a job for a machine caught in a tight loop or OOM... but a machine has to be *REALLY* hosed for SSH not to get through.
But that's enough about SSH
Now, don't get me wrong... I'm not anti-ms. I have in the past and will likely again worked FOR microsoft. I have been developing software for the MS platform for going on 15 years. There are niches that Windows fills well. To spout off that Linux has no advantages over Windows though is blatently false. Windows really falls short in the areas of price, speed, development resources, and most server uses. Linux falls short in laptop usage and *WAY* short on ease of configuration and set up.
So I will ask, give us even one example of something that Linux is capable of that Windows is not capable of doing.
Deleting a file which is currently being used by another process, without having to painstakingly hunt down that process and killing it first.
Inconsistent applications? Oh PLEASE. Linux is the HOME of the my-way-is-better let's-skin-everything interface-who-needs-an-interface application.
Are you sure you aren't talking about Windows? Windows applications have different themes for every other application out there. With GNOME you have GTK, with KDE you have QT. Choose one theme for all of your applications. That's consistency. Sure there are some oddball FLTK or Motif applications out there but they are fewer and more far between applications on windows. Just look at the Office theme compared to Luna, compared to Media Player, compared to the command prompt. They're all different and they're all made by Microsoft. All Gnome apps are consistent and even have an HIG. All KDE apps are at least more consistent than Windows.
Cluttered? How about the typical desktop I see with a dozen terminal windows all open all at the same time?
What? You don't need a ton of terminal windows in Linux to do anything. I'm talking about application clutter anyway but while you're on the topic at least X has real virtual desktops.
Consistent? Heck, you guys can't even decide on a single desktop.
Microsoft can't even decide on a single theming standard amongst their own apps.
Time makes more converts than reason
Sure, but it's the same with downloading. You need to find what you want to download. It might be nice if package managers had a little more info though.
With Windows, I pop in the CD from the NIC's (or PC's) box; click OK a couple of times; and, I'm done. The whole process takes a perhaps 2-3 minutes and very little effort beyond noticing the "INSERT THIS CD" in 144 point type.
Oh the horror. On Linux you pop in the Windows driver cd and run a utility that extracts the firmware for you. Damn that's difficult.
Finding another PC with a working network connection, downloading fwcutter, printing the how-to, burning the drivers and fwcutter to CD (after finding a blank CD in the closet), going back to the Linux box, following the how-to... It seems utterly silly to me that anyone would propose this a comparable to Windows.
You're exaggerating the process. There is no need to burn the driver to a cd or print a manual or even download fwcutter if it comes with your distribution.
my friend, who wrote code for the original digital telecom switches in Fortran on punch cards, is hesitant to install Ubuntu because he is comfortable with Windows, MS Office, etc. and is focusing his energy on remodeling his house, not learning a new OS and apps. If he is not willing to give it a go; what "normal user" is?
Like I said, we're almost to the breaking point. People are fed up with Windows. No one enjoys using it. They just have to. I see so many people who would be willing to buy a Mac but don't because of the lack of software, or even just a lack of specific software. Soon Linux will be sporting 1st class applications that will bring users over in droves. Personally I'm already happy with the state of Linux applications but the trick is to make those applications 1st class amongst average users. I think we'll get to that point soon. I have been using Linux exclusively for long time now and following its development for even longer. I have witnessed the maturation of the desktop. Now major corporate backers are pulling all of the pieces together and polishing the end result. Remember that it wasn't until Novell came along that a major software company actually tried to market Linux on the desktop. They've come a long way in a short time, and with other project being worked on simultaneously outside of Novell, the pace has really picked up.
And, why do some feel compelled to suggest that because a task is possible in the FOSS world, that it is automatically comparable to the M$ world. Sorry for the rant; I'm up too late.
Microsoft has its own share of problems. Drivers that don't install. Drivers that have to be force installed (what average user does that?). Drivers that don't work with the current version of windows (damn scanners!). Drivers that can't be found anywhere (isn't it nice when they all come in the kernel). Don't even let me get started on anything else like the totally-devoid-of-information blue screens, black screens, and white screens or the single, and very fragile, point of failure the registry.
Time makes more converts than reason
Servers yeah linux or its ilk, say BSD, is the natural choice. Which is what this article seems to be about.
But for desktops?
The whole "World Domination" thing was originally, and deep down always, just a joke. Linux will always be niche. That's OK. A 5% share of desktops would be lovely, 10% better (but unlikely). For power users probably much much more. The thing is Linux comes with so many wonderful and powerful free tools, and it is so easy to use (for the cli aware) that it, or similar OS, is the perfect environment. Windows less so. I'm not talking word processing or spreadsheets or photo manip, though there are of course decent apps for those.
Bitter and proud of it.
I stand corrected. It does seem to work now, but I'm not sure why it didn't work before.
Score +1 for Windows retaining a useful feature, -1 for it not working all the time.
I do hope that you have at least worked with Windows since 97 or use it from time to time. Windows from 1997 Win95/Win98 is quite different from the NT based model of XP and Vista.
Obviously, I'm not the OP. However, this is what convinced me to switch sometime around 1998:
dd if=/dev/somedevice of=somefile.iso
I haven't seen anything work quite so eloquently in Windows since 95/98 et al. I am posting from an XP box, version 5.1.2600 (2600? is that some sort of inside joke?) It tells me 'dd' is not recognized...
Windows is OK for a few things. I only really use it anymore for my logbook and recipe catalog, oh yeah, and Excel.
Back when Microsoft was busy stealing the GUI design from Appple, they joined the CUA crowd on the basis that the CUA guidlines made the user feell more comfortable. The menu bar that would have a File/Exit and File/SaveAs made the user feel like he would be able to get around ok in a new software package. In the latest version of Internet Explorer, the menu bar has dissapeared. The same is true of the new Office suite. The user is made to feel very uncomfortable and must learn the new applications entirely from scratch. When I tried to use the new Office suite, I was completely lost and functions as simple as saving a file became a mystery. As far as I can tell, Microsoft's new position is that they don't need CUA any more because they know what is easiest for the users, and inherent familiarity with the application is no longer important. Several days ago I made the decision to discontinue use of my Windows machines and focus on my Apple and Linux/Unix boxes. So far I have been very happy and while I will keep a Windows box around in case a client insists I do something on Windows, I would really rather never see Windows again. I read yesterday that Mi9crosoft is declaring that with Vista, you will no longer need anti-virus software. All this time we have had to buy anti-virus software because of problems in the Windows code. I have resented it from the start. Over the long term, I have paid more for Anti-virus software than I have for Windows. I hope Symantec/Norton have enjoyed my money all these years, but as each of my systems running Windows starts complaining about needing Norton renewals, I will reload the operating system with Linux (probably ubuntu) and keep my credit card in my pocket.
That all true - but the crux of my argument is that the big price Windows Server license is going away because ISV's (office solution packages, patient records, billing, etc...) are moving towards Linux web-based applications. I don't see Linux on the desktop, same as you.
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Several things spring to mind:
Yes, I know we could argue back and forth over the number, relative merits, and relative ease of use of the various things you can do with Windows vs Linux vs Mac OSX. I would just like to point out that we should all realize our favorite OSes, apps, and needs are not necessarily the number ones for someone else. For some people, Windows is the answer, for others, Macs, for some of us, Linux is the one. There is no one OS for everyone, and honestly, I hope there never is.
--- Just another Code-Monkey
* Running for 48 consecutive hours without have some kind of major fault.
I believe the only way you can get a windows box to do this is to leave a default install, unconnected to a network, and don't press any 'buttons'.
* Installing drivers without the need for reboot.
Usually you can get linux to load and remove driver modules with need of rebooting. Good luck installing a mouse driver (or often even a simple application) on windows without rebooting.
* Decent shells, and support utilities.
Windows shells and utilities tend to be crap. Sure you could install Cygwin on windows, but overall it's just not as nice as using doing things under a real unix box. I find windows to be crashy, slow, clunky, and lack a decent window manager.
Well I could go on, but anyway... My opinion is that SuS/POSIX based operating systems, ie Linux/BSD and their likenesses tend to be designed as versatile professional tools. Windows on the other hand is basically a toy, targeted at the largest portion of the PC owning market who are happy to use it as just that.
This is not to say you can't write a document, compile a program, render 3D, or run an SQL server + virtual hosting on a Windows box, it is merely to say that the operating system is vastly inferior.
(If you really wanted to you could do all these things on DOS)
Thanks
No, it's not a troll, It's someone speaking reality.
Yamamoto knew that the production capabilities of the US far outweighed the production capabilities of Japan, in machines, technology and men, the comment is correctly modded as funny, it is also true.
In the end, It's all bovine dung you know
Can windows do process migration (aka mosix)? I'm sure it is technically feasible but are there tools to do it available now? Can you run Word, Excel etc. on a machine and display to another machine (a single application, not the entire display)?
90% of the wealth is in 2% of the pockets. Bummer to be in the majority.
You can search for which process has a particular file/object/registry key/etc. open, then forcibly close the handle, without having to kill the process.
Can windows do process migration (aka mosix)?
Ok, process migration and then you mention mosix? You do realize that even LINUX doesn't do this, as Mosix is a OS virtualization system and in theory could use any OS. There are products out there, even from Microsoft that allow processes to be split. MS also uses this technology in their Cluster Version of Windows 2003 Server.
Can you run Word, Excel etc. on a machine and display to another machine (a single application, not the entire display)?
There are several ways to do this. The reason this is easy on *nix is because of the standard input/output concepts and also the XWindows foundation which is a network GUI protocol. However, with Windows there are also ways to easily do this, and vendors like Citrix have been using these techniques for over 10 years using their and the standard MS RDP features.
This is also not an amazing feat, as programs like Netmeeting have been re-routing applicaitons using very crude bitmap based techniques.
Vista and Longhorn server also inherently support concepts like this using the built in RDP and will even push 3D applications remotely, something a 'bit' harder for a *nix to do as XWindows is not that robust with 3D.
Most things mentioned by people in this entire thread DO exist in the Windows world and are technically feasible with modern versions of Windows running on the NT Architecture. I think too many people in here truly still get stuck with a mindset of the Win9x versions of Windows where things like you and others have brought up up were not technically possible or would have been hard to implement on the DOS/Win9X OS core. Windows has moved a long way from that old OS model.
The NT architecture that is the foundation under Win32 and what people see as Windows is truly not something that is called poorly designed by true OS engineers and theorists. If you want to poke fun at Windows, it is much easier to pick on the Win32 subsystem than NT itself.
News flash. We're IN a free market.
You say this like it's true but the findings of fact in several federal court cases disagree with you. I can pretty much stop reading at this line as you obviously live in an alternate reality.
Life is too short to proofread.
Uh, yes, you can install alternatives to Microsoft products. I'm not sure how that invalidates my assertion that Microsoft's products tend to be somewhat mediocre offerings.
This is opinion, not a fact. Some of the highest traffic and bandwidth sites on the Internet are using standard IIS and SQL installations. And they not only work, but work well at what they do. If what you believe was true, these sites could not possibly do what they do using MS's products.
I don't think anyone would argue that IIS or MSSQL are the best for everything, but in a lot of areas they do pull better performance than a lot of other solutions.
MS is also vastly easier to deploy than most solutions. MS has done a good job of making easy to use administration tools and easing the lives of server administrators. This is also an area that a lot of competive products, especially in the Open Source world, need to pay more attention to. Not everyone has the *nix skills and even people like myself that do, would rather make a few clicks than edit several configuration files.
Linux absolutely blows for a desktop. It's great for servers, there's no denying that. I have my linux server humming along 24/7. My only beef is when I have to actually work on linux for one reason or another. It's horribly painful to get anything done. Very little is as automatic as it should be, and my Logitech G5 mouse won't work with either SuSE or Red Hat(e) Enterprise for some unknown reason. As for development, HA! Developing software on linux involves grabbing your fingernails with pliars and pulling them out very slowly. Sure there are environments to use, but they really REALLY blow compared to MS/Apple offerings. Love the 80's? Maybe linux development is for you. Command line and vi baby! Woo! Nothing like having to remember the obscure flags for 80,000 options! I guess it really comes down to: If you love command line usage for everything, then linux is good for you...but you're much like someone who takes delight in speaking Klingon in my opinion in that you love it because very few other people will ever understand it.
As far as examples of why Visual Basic is an inferior language ... well, Visual Basic is Turing complete so I'm not going to get into an argument about this with you, because technically you'd be right in saying that any example I gave you could be done in Visual Basic. I could try to argue that certain things are "inelegant" in Visual Basic, but that's a matter of taste. If you know both Python and Visual Basic and still think Visual Basic is better, then I guess go ahead and use it. Most people seem to abandon Visual Basic once they learn another language, and I just don't like seeing someone use a Tinker toy to do any sort of real work because they don't know that the alternatives are better. It makes feel sad for them, meaning I have empathy. If you knew the definition of sociopath, which you do not, you would know that this means I am not one.
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
What they want is outlook on the front with scalix on the back.
> I don't really see any tangible part of Linux that Windows can't preform adequately well.
/mnt/mountpoint
try :
mount -t FSTYPE file
where FSTYPe is one of
adfs, affs, autofs, coda, coherent, cramfs, debugfs, devpts, efs, ext, ext2, ext3, hfs, hpfs, iso9660, jfs, minix, ncpfs, nfs, nfs4, proc, qnx4, ramfs, reiserfs, romfs, sysv, tmpfs, udf, ufs, umsdos, usbfs, vfat, xenix, xfs, xiafs.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I didn't say IIS couldn't run websites; I merely said that IIS was mediocre. It provides basic functionality, integrates well with .NET and ASP, and is configured through a GUI. Problems only occur when you start to push the envelope, to do something more advanced than just serving up pages, such as URL rewriting, or reverse proxies to legacy applications. You also run into problems when you want to use non-Microsoft languages. Whilst Apache is flexible enough to adapt to any scenario, IIS is limited to a subset of problems.
IIS clearly is usable, but only if you're planning to construct a relatively straightforward site using Microsoft technologies. Unfortunately for Microsoft, the majority of websites don't fall under that umbrella. If IIS wants to capture more market share, it really needs to become more adaptable.
I'm not so sure about that. These days it's rather easy to install a Linux distribution on a server, as many distributions have a number of preset install settings to choose from. Put in the boot CD, select "install web server", then after it's finished use a web browser to access webadmin, so that you can customize Apache without touching a command line.
Of course, some people are more comfortable with the things they know, so I suspect some people just plump for the known option; i.e. Windows. But the majority of the server market, as IBM notes, is tied up by Linux and the other BSDs, with Apache still the dominant webserver by a large margin. My point is simply that Microsoft is unlikely to gain market share, unless they expand out of their niche.
"SATA is about 2 years old"
SATA was first proposed in August 2000, and all manufacturers were implementing it by the end of 2002. Time moves quickly...
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
its obvious to everyone except an utter pedant that i meant almost no mainstream games are available on linux.
linux probably has the same level of games support that mac os x does, i.e. if you went in gamestation looking to buy some games you may very well find one or two or none at all that run on linux or mac os x.
your anecdotal success at having sufficient games support on linux is one tiny drop in what is obviously going to be an ocean of insufficiency should a meaningfully large sample of linux users be surveyed about the games they want to play.
i'm an ardent linux supporter, but please; the planet i live on is called earth. it doesnt sound like you live there at all.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
"Many people who complain about Linux 'sucking' tend to do so because if they tried it, they typically ran into a restriction that was imposed artifically by a hardware vendor or some sort of copy protection mechanism. The 'problems' in Linux are not due to design issues of technical failures at all." Actually, I switched because of a design issue. I ran Linux for years; I started with Red Hat 6.0, and then moved up the versions in Red Hat upto 9.0. I then switched to Fedora Core 1, and disliked it. I switched to Slackware 10.0, and ran that for a long time. Then I switched to Gentoo, and ran that for even longer. I was working on coding in Assembler, and I was interested in system calls. So, I figured out that Linux does system calls through 'mov'ing the arguments into the registers. I strongly disliked that design. I switched to BSD because it does system calls through pushing the arguments onto the stack. I learned later that Gentoo (I don't know if the vanilla kernel supports this) supports the pushing arguments method. Maybe I'll try that later, but I prefer BSD for a design reason. I still use Linux on my laptop, and things that have uncommon (for the consumer) processors. Like ARM, and if I get a MIPS processor, I'll probably put Linux on it.
hmm, i have always thought the quote talked about a sleeping dragon, not a sleeping giant...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Thank you for that enlightening comment, I feel so much more fulfilled by seeing that I can type some random line and get... some random operation! w00t!
Har?
Heh. It's the Unix mindset: brevity. Unfortunately it comes off as "terseness" to people who aren't into Unix. What the poster above was trying to point out was the ease of supporting many different file systems out of the box. Windows is completely capable of this as the filesystems are "pluggable" in the NT based Windows variants. But only a few people have actually done it and mostly in commercial only software. MS hasn't bothered to have build int support for much more than the basic file systems that a typical Windows user would be interested in: FAT*, NTFS, CDFS (which includes iso9660 for standard data CD-ROMs and can be augmented with udf for CD-RW and DVD). Windows NT4 was the last version of Windows to support HPFS (OS/2's file system). From my perspective, the main reason for the artifical limitations here is again, purely business reasons. MS had the HPFS support mainly so that organizations who used OS/2 would have a relatively easy way to migrate to Windows NT. However, since the OS/2 usage was fairly small and most people who were going to move had already moved by the time Win2k was released, they didn't have much reason to keep the support in. FAT and NTFS are obviously the defacto MS filesystems. It's completely possible for someone to write support for *nix filesystems like ext2/3, reiserfs (but I hear that might be murder...;P), ufs, minix, etc... as a pluggable filesystem for Windows. The reason it hasn't happened is that developing for the OS at that level is expensive and not well support (nor encouraged). The command and list of filesystems that the previous poster put up, simply show the flexibility that is already in Linux that is not in Windows. This is something that most Windows users would argue doesn't do much for them. But, for us Linux users, it's really nice to know that we can plug just about any data storage device into our boxes and grab the data.
I would add that, "out of the box", Windows is also lacking in the concept of the loopback filesystem. That's VERY handy and SHOULD be a default portion of Windows however, with the frooty goodness of the GUI added. The loopback filesystem is basically just a file of whatever size you define that gets mounted as another drive. So, for example, you could have C:\diskimage\mystash.img. If Windows had loopback filesystem support, you would be able to right click on the file and select "Mount as drive...". You would be prompted to select a drive letter, with the default being the next free letter up. After selecing it, it you would see a new drive icon in your "My Computer" window. You would then treat this drive just like any other. And "Eject" it once you've got your data on it the way you want it. You could then zip it up and send it to someone else to mount in the same way. Or you could use it to test something that you might want to dispose of later. If MS had better support for the standard filesystems outside of the Windows world, you could even exchange the data complete with the proper filesystem layout and perms preserved, just as you intend. Some would argue that a ZIP file is better, but that's assuming you have a free drive to expand the zip file to. Sometimes you just don't want to mix things into C:\. I've also used loopbacks to build floppy images that I could exchange with others. It's a very useful tool and sadly missing from the Windows tool set unless you add some commercial products with limited support for it.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Ya weirdo. ;P Just kidding, I like BSD too. I should have said Windows users who try Linux. Linux users who move to BSD are more like "graduates". As I'm not really a coder (but I'm trying) I haven't had to deal with that design issue. And I think that was the point I was really trying to make in this thread. I'm not a developer, but Linux enables to me to do things that I would HAVE to be a developer to do in Windows. This doesn't mean that Windows is "superior" because of complexity. It means that Windows has failed to address the advanced needs of non-coders in a way that Linux has completely covered well.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
If you know little about the subject under discussion, then what is your opinion worth ?
:)
You've also demonstrated Windows users lack of information finding skills
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Who's in an alternate reality? MS may have abused their position in the marketplace, but that doesn't mean that you're not free to compete with them. In fact, people ARE competing with them, both in the free route (linux) and on the higher end (Apple).
Linux folk love to blame MS's dealer agreements, when, in fact, they also have themselves to blame. Linux is nothing more than a "me too" copy of an OS whose primary advantage is that it's free, and whose secondary advantage, the fact it's OSS, is a double-edged sword.
And as a "me too" OS with "me too" software, it fails to offer a truly compelling reason for the vast majority of of people to switch. Because sometimes free is worth exactly what you paid for it.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
If open source server software, such as Linux, cannot compete with Microsoft's marketing budget, why does Apache continue to hold its substantial majority in the webserver market?
e y.html
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_surv
If open source software could compete, why has Apache's market share been steadily losing ground since Windows Server 2003 was released? If you follow the current trends, in a little under two years Microsoft will have the lead.
Work in software development trying to direct sell an enterprise product for one week, and it will be impossible not to see where things are headed.
I'm a linux kernel developer by trade. I write for an embedded product that runs on linux. I've been doing this kind of stuff for 10 years. Back then hardly anybody doing enterprise stuff (Greater than 200 servers, fibre channel SAN, etc...) would even mention windows. Now you don't get in the door unless your product supports Server 2003. RedHat, and most of the development community has their head in the sand.
Linux, and its ally BSD, won the Unix war. SCO Unix was a big loser.
As far as on the desktop, I don't think we'll ever see a "Linux" win. Instead, we might see a distro become popular, but the average person won't use the term "Linux". For example, someone will say, "I run Red Hat", not "I run Linux".
No, I will not work for your startup
I'm not all that sure...
Click Next a few times, read the license agreement (you do want to know what you're signing, especially spyware-wise), more often than not deselect some bundled crap... or you can do tar -xvfj $filename; cd $extracted_to; ./configure; make && make install.
Largely I have found it to be a matter of preference; some people prefer next-clicking, while I prefer the few simple commands.
Of course, I have also been spoiled by Portage...
Ignore this signature. By order.
Of course I know little about the subject under discussion! That's one of the main reasons why we are having this discussion, is because I don't know what parts of Linux would be better than Windows. And not to mention that my opinion is worth nothing to those who care not whether a person decides to use Linux. And my 'lack' of information finding skills isn't under question here, it is of little concern to you however. What if I were to say some random FORTRAN line and then tell you that that line makes FORTRAN better than say C#. I don't tell you why, or what it does, but I just say to 'try' it and then you will know. That explains NOTHING! The other post in reply to my earlier one does, and it goes into great deal. Eno explained it in words and made a valid point out of it. So please, stop assuming that people think pseudo-explanations are valid points for or against an argument.
Har?
Hmm, if I understand you correctly, then it makes sense for Windows not to have the loopback filesystem. It sounds really handy, but I can see the horrible pirating applications of such a thing (heh, just look at daemon tools or Alcohol). Most major companies don't even want you backing up your CD's onto other CD's, let alone let you back them up onto your hard drive. And a tool like this, although it has little to do with actually making the copies, would still aid in that process. Still, would be nice to have for the honest and the honest-on-the-outside type people, if you know what I mean. Oh yeah, truecrypt operates kind of like what you explained, but it also encrypts data as well.
As for the first part of your post, I can see the benefits of such a system, but I also see the drawbacks. A 'closed' system would promote some kind of standardization amongst different providers of filesystems (if there are such providers) and would prevent a large menagerie of different and incompatible types. This is one element of Linux that seems a bit confusing to most, as there seems to be many many different types of Linux, all because the developers decided to do something just a tiny bit different than other developers. Projects branch off from each other and end up completely different at the end of the day. But of course this has little to do with filesystems. Of course Windows has these same problems on the application level, but at least the OS itself never 'completely' branches off (I'm excluding things like win03 server and the pro/home style it's in right now). But back to my other point, a closed system also promotes stagnation and lacklustre performance goals to support legacy operations. Like the x86 platform, just thinking about it pisses me off, stupid Transmetta couldn't do better in the marketplace so we will never see a much needed update to an ageing and inefficient platform... Anyways, I'm done ranting for a little while...
Har?
Linux has a long, long, LONG way to go before it's a viable alternative to Windows for regular computer users who aren't professional software developers. Hell, I work as a systems admin, and I still can't stand to run Linux on my home computer. It just doesn't work! Things frequently go wrong. All of your hardware except for ONE item will be recognized and installed during the initial setup (it's a built-in feature that one of your cards or something simply will not work straight away, I'm positive about that). And you'll find yourself digging around in some obscure config file with a stupidly unintuitive text editor within your first two days of installing Linux. I guarantee it.
Linux has nothing on Windows. As long as the majority of people are still writing apps for XP, I'll be happy. Things that run without me having to compile them after downloading a thousand libraries and other required files. All-in-one installation packages make me very happy. Bandwidth and disk space are getting cheaper by the millisecond, there's no excuse to make your setup packages as small as possible at the expense of convenience. I'd rather download a 10 MB self-extracting archive than a dozen smaller files from various locations around the web.
Normal people without a qualification can't install software in Linux. They just can't. It's too difficult a task. They run ten copies of everything because most Linux IDEs don't properly inform you that an application is loading after you've double-clicked on the icon. They can't run any of the programs other people talk about, nor can they open documents that 90% of the world save with MS Office tools.
Look, having no competition is bad, as it means prices stay high and we remain the property of a single corporation who can get away with doing absolutely anything they want. But right now, Linux isn't competition for the market at large.
This is not a position I'm willing to debate with you.
People with much more credibility than you have decided on multiple occasions that Microsoft is NOT operating in a free market. Either you live in an alternate universe, you have a different definition of "free market" than the rest of the world, or you're simply dishonest. In any case, a rational discussion will be impossible.
The opinions you put forth have already been debated and shot down in federal court multiple times. You may as well try and claim there's no evidence linking cigarettes and cancer.
In both cases, the overwhelming evidence is right there and the experts have already deicded. You don't have any new, unconsidered evidence or theories. You just don't like the actual facts of the situation because they're damaging to your argument. This is not a position of integrity.
Life is too short to proofread.
It's encouraging to see two of the leading players in the tech industry, who compete at many levels, working together to improve interoperability between products to benefit end users--businesses and consumers
Not just Ubuntu. There have been graphical frontends to every major package management system available for years. Since the late 90's it has been just as easy to get about with a GUI in Linux since late 90's early 2000's 90% of the time, and the better/free software offset the few cases where it really might be necessary to touch the command line to install or fix a given application. Keep in mind that in the remain 10% of cases, there is easily available documentation to reference or other free alternatives to try before consulting the docs if one wishes. If you are desperate and want, you can use mailing lists or forums or irc channels with dozens, hundreds or even thousands of knowledgable volunteers who are willing to help. In contrast, in Windows-land, documentation is much more sparse and harder to find. When you encounter a problem, you *can't* try to debug it from the command line if you want. You must wait on the vendor to get around to finding a solution and supplying a fix of some sort, sift through thousands of sites with half-functional shareware, sift through sites proclaiming to have free software that is never really free until you find an alternative that really is free or has the functionality you want in shareware version, or actually risk buying new replacement software and having the same thing happen again. There are way fewer support avenues or documentation most of the time because it necessitates *gasp* letting someone know how their software works. Sometimes there is tech support lines you can call where the clueless operators will try to read a script for ya and maybe take down your name and notify you in 2-4 weeks with a url for the fix. Just because command line exists doesn't mean anyone is forced to use it. It is there for those who aren't too lazy/dumb/unmotivated to use google 5 minutes and copy/paste some commands as well as advanced users.
Ummm... all package managers have some sort of search functionality to search through package names & descriptions. These search filters are even more advanced in their graphical frontends. It is as easy, if not easier, than searching google and sifting through results for Windows software.
ericcartman: Just curious, where are you from? I don't know if you know this, but the government and educational segments are really about the only places where Linux is actually taking off. Many countries have already abandoned MS *entirely*, both in their government and the school system. In other countries MS never had a foothold to begin with because hardware and software were both too expensive until recently. That isn't the only reason why governments are using Linux, mind you, but it is a very important factor in developing countries and in countries that want to most efficiently use their citizen's money and actually keep their data safe.
They teach MS Office and Photoshop at community colleges as well. One *could* argue that it is because their instructors & directors are too dumb to know better or too lazy to even care about alternatives. That argument could be applicable to universities as well as technical colleges and sounds just as plausible as 'MS software must be better because it is what the teachers teach with'. I was originally taught addition with an abacus, but that doesn't mean it is better than a calculator.
Most of the focus of the Linux is on the server and desktop market which is where most of the developers have the most experience and interest. Most aren't getting paid, why would they learn something they have no interest in and code something for scratch for free? Would you really trust an car mechanic to build you a plane from scratch? You'd be stupid for flying in it and he'd be stupid for trying to build it in the first place unless he had a real interest and/or aptitude for it or was at least getting compensated heavily for learning, implementing and testing everything needed. Windows developers develop more business software because (big surprise) they are the ones who are interested in money and invest time learning how such matters work.
It would have been so much easier if you just wrote: "Yeah... what he said". Heh.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
He already did:-
i.e. set up an 18 PC renderfarm for the cost of the hardware. Over to you. Windows simply cannot do that because each licence of Windows costs $$$ and AFAIK nobody's producing a Cinelerra quality tool free for Windows. If you could set up an 18 PC renderfarm on Windows the cost would be prohibitive for an enthusiastic amateur. In Linuxland you just hook up every old computer in the house that can run Cinelerra & you're there.
Licencing is the killer app for Linux.
What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
> What if I were to say some random FORTRAN line and then tell you that that line makes FORTRAN better than say C#.
If I was bothered, I would go look it up before bitching.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Extrapolating long term predictions out of short term trends does not usually yield accurate results. For instance, you could say exactly the same thing about the period of June to December in 2001. Indeed, IIS market share has yet to even reach regain its peak in March 2002, and if you look at the current running figures for November, you'll notice that Microsoft's market share has actually dropped a little.
Making deals with large domain-parking companies like Go Daddy couldn't have hurt Microsoft's market share much, either.
"This is not a position I'm willing to debate with you."
Yet you keep doing so. Huh. As to definitions: A free market is a market where price is determined by unregulated supply and demand; the opposite is a controlled market, where supply, demand, and price are set by a government.
So no, my definition isn't at doubt, and I'm living in the same universe. But since it seems that I'm not the one attempting to twist definitions to their own ends, perhaps I'm the one who should be questioning someone's honesty.
"You just don't like the actual facts of the situation because they're damaging to your argument."
In light of the above, I couldn't have summed it up better myself. But I will say that, since you seem to be a Linux advocate, that you and your breathern stop whinning about past history and about how MS doesn't play "fair", stop rationalizing away all of your platform's faults as features, and LISTEN to people when they offer constructive criticism.
Because I'm not the only one saying these things...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I have never. ever. EVER seen it "not work" and I've been using XP since Beta 2.
Yes, what a nice NT micro-kernel, with many concurrently running subsystems (since 1993)... Dave Cutler's dream was made true...
There's one catch, however: NT itself is not officially documented, so no one can write new subsystems for NT outside Microsoft. The NT 6.0 release will ship with neither the OS/2 subsystem, nor the MSDOS NTDVM subsystem. You will only be able to run win32/386 and win64/386 (forget the POSIX-compliant subsystem, it is of no use to 99% of users).
The end result is exactly the same as if NT was monolithic. NT's modular design is reduced to simply allowing Microsoft not to depend too much on win32. Thus, they will be able to flee away from win32 (towards for instance a CSharpOS thin client with full PALLADIUM/DRM enforcement) anytime, with low transition cost for themselves.
In the end, History will never remember how great NT's design is. It will be buried under the "windows" brand name.
So I will ask, give us even one example of something that Linux is capable of that Windows is not capable of doing.
Could I plug two (or three) keyboards, mice and monitors into a windows box and have three people running totally seperate desktops all at the same time from the same box? You can do it on linux without virtualization. Just curious.
You may as well deny the moon landing. You'll have people who agree with you there as well. You've just a raving nut.
Life is too short to proofread.
Yep, only when you have to read a 10-page sheet and click 10 times the next button will Linux be ready for the customer. Get up to date. With adept you only type the name of the program and you click apply changes. No lousy next buttons.
What this gives NT that Linux cannot do is the ability to natively run multiple OS subsystems concurrently that also can communicate with each other at the kernel level.
Win32 is an example of one subsystem in use on Windows and runs independantly of other subsystems like the *nix subsystem, OS/2, Win16, and Win64 subsystems to name a few examples. The subsystem OS architecture concept is not virtualization nor emulation, as each subsystem are true OSes acting independently with their own subsystem level kernels that sit on top of the NT architecture.
It is even rumored that MS has worked on a non BSD based *nix subsystem for Windows that is Linux based and would be able to run anything Linux could run with no virtualization or emulation and it would also have the ability to talk to the other subsystems, like the Win32 subsystem.
You talk big... And judging by your previous comments, you have a very strong opinion on things you don't seem to really understand. Care to back up any of these assertions? I would be very interested to see proof positive of this.
you are an elitist idiot.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
You shouldn't have to! And if you do, then you are missing the point of having an intelligent discussion!
Har?
Because I don't want people to misuse their tools on me?
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
I'm sorry I totally missed this topic yesterday. Don't we all love fairy tales and David & Goliath stories? Ooh, I remember one when I was a kid I think it was the "little train that could". I'm not even going to begin to question the source here, because those numbers seem waaaaay out of proportion, instead give the linux developers credit (if the numbers are correct). Funny how I didn't notice a "the war is won" about Microsoft's client domination? Bias...perhaps? I also remember countless people slinging mud in GWB's face for having a banner saying "Mission Accomplished" before...I think you people are a bit too excited, too biased, and counting your chickens before they're hatched...on false information nonetheless.
Wow must be nice to live where you do. I live in the US, California to be specific. Let me tell you the LAST thing our goverenment wants is to keep our data secure, they are too busy trying to get into our personal business than worry about our data being safe. BTW I work in a place known as Silicon Valley, you may have heard of it. After reading your letter I was trying to remember the last non-Windows company I had done business with in the last decade and nope can't think of one. I own a small job-shop and get quite an exposure to the industry and no new OS is up and coming that I can tell. But then it is only Silicon Valley, perhaps we are waiting for the rest of the world to show us the way. Last night on DIGG or maybe /. I read an article about giving a Linux based computer for Xmas, a good idea I think. But I had to laugh as the author was impressed with his finding I believe 100 places you could get a pre-installed Linux computer.If I went out my front door in Palo Alto I bet I can walk to 100 places selling Wintel computers. My point being the parent said the "war was over, Linux won", well not in my little backwater part of the world. As for schooling I sadly only have time lately for a class a year or so, my last one being a writing class (in spite of how this letter looks) and I recall my instructor on the first day of class saying we had to turn all assignments in based in a format she could read in her office 2000 based computer. No ands if or buts, as the saying goes, ditto for my web design class, the program used was Dreamweaver. Wouldn't call either of these people lazy or dumb as they were both published and working on new books, raising families and teaching. Using the industries standards is what I'd call it. I try not to put people down for not being like me, or doing things like I do. I really enjoy using Linux and open office and various other programs of that ilk but I also deal in reality and in my reality Linux is just a small stream in the river of computing, perhaps someday it will dominate that river but not now and it certainly hasn't "Won the War" around here. /rant off
That's a really bad example - how do we know that the firewall wasn't still on on the Windows side of the house, and Torrents being based on a upload-to-download ratio, you were getting higher download rate simply because you didn't have a firewall on?
Using one task on either OS alone as a factor is a flawed methodology.
Here's to the crazy ones
--- So I will ask, give us even one example of something that Linux is capable of that Windows is not capable of doing.
;)
1. Let's say you broke your Windows installation by tempering with the registery. Reinstalling the whole system is only a last resort as you spend a lot of time configuring everything.
You will need to boot up the system from something else then the HD and restore some registery keys.
How exactly are you going to do that?
With Linux, you boot with a live CD, with GUI if you wish, Google around a bit to see if there is something on the net that can help you, call and edit the currupted txt file and you are done
Windows has a very nontransparent way of storing configuration data and the only thing you can boot from the 'live CD' is rescue tools and the installer.
2. Let's say you want to move the OS to an other HD.
You can with Linux (with Gentoo at least). This is a total nogo with Windows.
Windows is loaded with obscurity and copyprotection.
3. Let's say you are in some 3rd world country in an internet cafe with a 1kb/s line and a VGA videocard. You want to check/edit some stuff on your home machine. This is again a total nogo if you home machine runs Windows.
With Linux, you can reconfigure you home machine, and up or download anything. Just use an SSH client.
Windows lacks the commandline power of *nix.
You also run into problems when you want to use non-Microsoft languages. Whilst Apache is flexible enough to adapt to any scenario, IIS is limited to a subset of problems.
.NET you don't have to use MS languages, but given it is a MS Sandbox.
.NET but even the ISAPI and CGI abilities. And in this argument IIS offers more features than what you can get on any *nix, when you add the MS solutions to the mix, especially ASP, AJAX, .NET, Sharepoint, etc.
Ok, even with
However, I would have to say, what about PHP, Perl? What about MYSQL? These all run quite well on a Windows server in large scale environments. Also if you will note, many reviews show PHP is faster on IIS and Windows than other solutions...
So I don't see how you can by any stretch say MS Server doesn't work well with non-MS products.
Problems only occur when you start to push the envelope, to do something more advanced than just serving up pages, such as URL rewriting, or reverse proxies to legacy applications.
I think you are biting off a bit more here in your assumption than what you realize.
Considering this thread is about Windows and Linux, focusing only on IIS vs Apache is not very effective, as Windows does Apache quite well. It is also not a good argument because IIS does offer a lot of abilities with not only the ASP and
As for the 'odd situations' or the non-MS situations, this also doesn't hold up as a valid argument. From a personal point of view, we have clients with some of the most high ranking usage sites on the internet that are using MS Servers and yet also serving information and pages from quite 'legacy' systems like from COBOL to even 1990 Sybase data.
Also you seem to skip over Windows does *nix quite well when looking for solutions. MS has made Windows Server the 'me too' when it comes to features and finding product solutions. Even if you can't find a solution that compiles for Win32/64, you just use the Unix subsystem of Windows and run the same standard applications any *nix could offer.
I'm not so sure about that. These days it's rather easy to install a Linux distribution on a server, as many distributions have a number of preset install settings to choose from. Put in the boot CD, select "install web server", then after it's finished use a web browser to access webadmin, so that you can customize Apache without touching a command line.
Then setup DNS, Server Applications, MYSQL etc etc... There is no out of the box solution that fits most users. So the difference here is that with Windows the admin sets a policy that configures the server automatically, or the admin does a few clicks to configure everything and can be done before most *nix admins find the first couple of configuration files they need to change on their particular distribution.
I truly hate to put a negative mark in the *nix box here, but Windows is far easier to configure in a Server environment - especially one that requires a lot of features to be setup. And this not only allows the level of expertise to be lower, but it also means faster installations for experienced IT people.
The 'ease of use' is an area throughout the *nix and open source world that usually is left as a last thing to do and doesn't always get implemented.
So the *nix solution works well, but the code to make it easy to setup or configure is often left out of the product because the 'experience' of the user is assumed to be higher. However as everyone here has seen, a lot of unexperienced users are trying *nix and Open Source solutions and either fail or have bad installations because they didn't know to go install the extra part of the GD library or that for their type of solution they need to configure Apache to balance memory and the cache better.
So this has become a major difference and problem with the 'experience' assumption. It is also a problem preventing these soltuions in many environments because the steep learning curve and small companies wanting products that even their non-geek people can make adjustments to if needed in a pinch.
Take Care...
1.) It is harder to 'break' a Windows installation than what you realize. If you are running Server, you would have a backup of the installation, like any good IT person. If this was a desktop senerio, like XP or Vista, you just boot into safe mode and restore the system back to a date before the problem. The last of these solutions is about five clicks and is something simple enough that you could walk any user through over the phone. It is also something you can't do on Linux.
2.) Moving Windows to another HD is not hard at all, we do this all the time, and I think if you ask even in the SlashDot crowd, most everyone knows of SEVERAL simple and easy ways to move a Windows installation. You can easily even flip Windows drivers to the generic defaults and move the Windows installation to a new computer, let alone just changing a HD.
3.) Have you ever noticed something called Remote Desktop in Windows? Have you noticed that Windows has a Telnet and FTP Host? Do you also realize, you can run a SSH host on Windows? Also with Vista, not only do you have these tools available, but using IPv6, you don't even have to remember your IP address and can just ask for you computer at home by name.
4.) "Windows lacks the commandline power of *nix..." Hmmm. This makes me ask, have you even used Windows in the last 10 years? Use a remote command shell (or local command prompt) you can do anything from the command line using the inherent tools or via the WMI. You might want to also take a look at Monad, the new command line shell technology from MS. It is a new pardigm in command line interfaces, and there is nothing on *nix like it yet.
I think I found the source survey that is the grist for the initial blog entry by Dana Blankenhorn, "The war is over and Linux won." The survey is available from www.ibm.com/linux/opensource/ (right column link).
It seems the survey population would certainly have some bias. Participants were people who had signed up for IBM Linux/open source newsletters. To IBM's or the survey company's credit, they clearly the describe the survey parameters in the 1st paragraph of the article. To quote from the article:
"In September 2006, IBM sponsored a survey of readers of its Open Source & LinuxLine newsletter to gauge the levels of adoption, planning, and platforms for Linux and other open-source software. The survey was conducted by Unisphere Research via e-mail notification, which directed participants to a Web-based survey instrument. A total of 434 anonymous responses were collected by the survey deadline."
The survey itself contains some interesting bits, but I would be reluctant to directly extrapolate from the survey population to the overall market. That said, I think the up-front disclosure of methods in the actual survey negates any FUD charge. I chalk it up to Linux/open source exuberence by the blog author.
Yeah, BSD is good. :) Linux definitely caters to developers much more than Windows. I've tried programming in a Windows envrionment and strongly disliked the design. .NET is a disaster. I like a *nix environment for programming. It's far superior in my mind.
.wav files to .mp3 while keeping the same name of the files and only changing the file extension in only a few lines of perl code.) :D Windows fails to address a lot of the things that I find are crucial to me functioning in a computer environment.
And for things like scripting and automating tasks, *nix wins without question. You can keep your files organized and do all kinds of things that would take hours in Windows that you can do with one line of bash or perl scripting (for example, I converted a whole bunch of
Not to mention that Linux and BSD are open source. I can learn from coding projects that have been done before to do things that I want to do. I can also contribute to the projects and improve the software itself. While with Windows, you can't even modify the programs that are given to you (unless you feel like programming in machine code for three years.) Nor can you make the experience of using Microsoft software better for everybody else. You can do that in an open source environment.
Oh come off it, SSHD runs perfectly fine on Windows - not out of the box granted, I have a ssh session open to my desktop at the moment. And if you really need to be rebooting stuff remotely, then you really need to look into having a serial console going. SSHD isn't the be all and end all on Linux either, the amount of times it crashes or a box is unresponsive over the network. It won't be running if the kernels panicked.
There are a large number of popular products that IIS struggles to run. Ruby on Rails is the obvious example, as I've had first hand experience trying to coax IIS into running the damn thing. The best I could come up with was a reverse proxy to a backend Mongrel server - but even that was complex, as IIS doesn't support URL rewriting or proxying. If I were using Apache, there would be no problem, as it supports both operations even in its default install; as it was, I eventually went with a commercial plugin that added some much-needed functionality to IIS.
If main benefit of a Windows Server is its ability to run Apache, then why pay the cost of a Windows license at all? In order to sell Windows, Microsoft has to offer more than its lower priced competitors. If the best argument Microsoft can put forward is, "It's runs everything Linux can, but its more expensive!", then I can't see it encouraging many people to choose Windows over a less expensive open source OS.
As I pointed out previously, you don't have to edit configuration files directly to configure systems in *nix. Also, systems like MySQL don't really need to be configured beyond their default settings for small to medium-sized applications, and are usually installed by default on server systems anyway.
You also may be understating the advantages of text configuration files. Not only are they more flexible, but they are easily copied from machine to machine, and can be extensively commented. They can be written to and altered by other programs with relative ease, allowing setup to be highly automated. I prefer configuration files, probably because I'm used to working with code. I recognise that many people steer well clear of them, but they are not without their merits.
That's not to say Windows doesn't have it's place. Linux servers are usually good for two situations; if webserver needs are basic, and are covered by the default settings of the distribution, or if your webserver needs are relatively advanced (perhaps you want to run Rails through a reverse proxy, or want a webserver cluster to run a large site). IIS covers the middle ground, hence my 'mediocre' comment.
The problem with aiming for the middle ground is that complex configurations can be outsourced, and due to the ease of cloning configurations for no additional cost, one can sell in bulk to customers who want similar systems.
Or, to put it another way, if Microsoft's server offerings are so effective, why do they not hold a majority market share?
I gave up using windows 98 in 2003, you say the NT architecture is better? I'm not going to spend £180 finding out if that is so,
I wouldn't expect you to just jump to a new OS based on what someone in a forum says.
However a lot of people in here make a LOT of comments about Windows, when they have little experience with a modern version of Windows and have little to any technical understanding of the Windows architecture.
So from this a lot of incorrect assumptions are propagated about Windows that are 10 year old complaints that haven't existed in Windows for years and years.
If anyone wants to be credible in the IT world, there are many ways to keep tabs on all OSes... Even just reading the wikipedia articles on Windows,BSD,OSX,Linux are a great start to understanding that that Win98 is a far cry from WinXP, just like OSX is a far cry from System 9.
Another method to keep up to date on OSes, is to take advantage of trial versions and just keep them in a VM or a separate install that you can periodically wipe without having to pay MS a dime. (OSX is a bit harder, although projects like PearPC and others make even using OSX a non-Apple exclusive thing for low budget IT people.
As I said, I wouldn't expect you to abandon an OS that you love. That would be very wrong. However for people to make 'catty' claims that Linux is far superior and can do more than other OSes, they should at least know a bit more about the other OSes and just not 'assume' the other OSes haven't evolved since they stopped using them.
OSX and Windows2K/XP/Vista are all very good examples of this. You can't paint a Win98 brush on them, when the entire architecture is different, just like the OSX architecture is completely different than the System 9 architecture.
If you are an IT professional, you would be doing yourself a dis-service by not knowing more about the other OSes. And if you are a developer in the Open Source world, if you don't pay attention to what Apple and Microsoft are doing, you are missing out on a lot of good ideas that they companies have accomplished. People that stopped looking at their work, are assuming it is all crap because Win98 or System 9 sucked, and by doing this, they are missing the opportunity to take ideas these companies have developed or shifts in computing and using this concepts in the Open Source world.
Take care, and don't give up your OS, but if you are in the business, take time to at least read up on or do a free trial install of the OSes so you understand the good and the bad. It will make your work/experience on your favorite OS better in the long run, truly.
Take Care.
If main benefit of a Windows Server is its ability to run Apache, then why pay the cost of a Windows license at all? In order to sell Windows, Microsoft has to offer more than its lower priced competitors. If the best argument Microsoft can put forward is, "It's runs everything Linux can, but its more expensive!", then I can't see it encouraging many people to choose Windows over a less expensive open source OS.
This isn't always true... You are missing a couple things here. You can buy the Web version of Windows 2003 server cheaper than a supported Linux distrobution.
Windows also does have advantages, not only could you run both Apache and IIS and offer ASP and Apache if you need it for a particular feature. The reverse is not true.
You also again are discounting the ease of use for a Windows Server installation, which is a big corporate selling point. Budget level IT staff can maintain a Windows installations much easier than most *nix solutions.
As for Microsoft not holding a 'majority' market share, it is a valid argument, but it is more complex than what you present. Cost is one consideration, as there are a lot of mom and pop sites that are using free non-supported *nix distributions. But if you look at the mainstream buisness outside of the tech industry, like the fortune 500, Microsoft is in the majority.
Also as most people understand, there are times that a full MS server is just not needed, especially in the small scale markets. I wouldn't recommend a client buy $1500 of MS server software if they are just doing a web site and have no plans for anyting but running PHPNuke and PHPbb. This would be crazy, and would be screwing my clients. There are the borderline clients, that could go either way with MS Web Server and a free non-supported *nix solution, there never is a clear choice for everyone of what is the best solution.
In most cases if the company has the resources or are just starting development for a Web solution, they would be crazy to not consider a Windows Server, just for the development abilities available alone. But again, this is not the mom and pop operations, nor would it apply to everyone.
I believe in the free market and the open source world, don't for a second think I don't. But to just easily dismiss Windows with 'mythical' claims of its shortcomings is nonesense and does nothing to help anyone, esepcailly if your 'ideals' prevent you from giving your clients/users the best advice or solutions possible, even if it means using MS Server products.
But that's apples to oranges, surely! Windows 2003 server does not have anywhere the same level as support as any major paid-for distribution.
The number of businesses that have complex enough needs to require both Apache and IIS, and which lack the funds for two separate servers, and which don't want to outsource their hosting, seems to me to be likely to be rather few.
On the other hand, *nix servers tend to be far easier to manage in bulk.
I don't know why you think my claims are mythical. I'm not saying MS Server products are useless, as I've mentioned many times before, I'm just saying they're mediocre. Or, if I were to be more kind, I'd say they'd cater for mediocre needs. The amount of software they'll run is limited (no Ruby on Rails, for instance), they lack complicated modules you'd find in competing products (no equivalent to mod_rewrite or mod_proxy), and don't scale well once you start dealing with very large databases (no homogeneous clustering). And these are just the problems I've run up against in the past couple of months!
I'm not saying that they're useless; far from it. All I'm saying is that if they want to expand their market share, they need to start expand out of their niche. That's it. No Microsoft-sucks conspiracy, no Linux evangelism. Just that Microsoft products don't cater for a significant (and if we are to believe IBM, the majority) portion of the market.
Yippy Kye Aye! The Wild West of the Open Source Range sure make IT interesting these days.
I know my ears are still ringing from the hollow thud I heard (if a CVS tree falls in a forest and nobody is around...) as Microsoft discussed IP and Patent portfolios as part of the "all in the name of the customer" Novell SuSE Linux pact.
Microsoft (so far) has only used their predictable FUD campaigns to paint Linux as a contagious IP legal virus. This is the same old Microsoft dog and same old tricks... all bark, no bite. Yawn! Companies simply need to glove-up with distro indemnification to inoculate against the FUD flu.
When Microsoft started bank-rolling SCO's legal efforts in taxing Linux suppliers - they showed their cards. Thanks to Novell, the new Linux champion and SCO slayer, they appear to have knocked SCO out of the game. While many hailed Novell for defending SuSE Linux for the good of all(IBM, SUN, RedHat and all distros large and small) it also gave Novell bargaining chips at the IP table with Microsoft. Looks like they cashed a few chips in. Keep in mind Novell successfully sued Microsoft for 1/2 billion and had another law-suit on the table for another cool billion. They believe in their IP and they believe in winning law suits. Also keep in mind that Novell is really not an Open-Source company... and never has been one. They are a mixed-source company. Fragmenting the Linux business by spinning SuSE as "commercial" vs. "hobbyist" distro FUD is simply a maneuver for Novell to try and capture enterprise market share while trying to pigeon hole other distros for a time.
It's interesting to note that once Novell had all but beaten Microsoft's tin-soldier in the SCO case, Microsoft and Novell suddenly team up in the name of "customers and interoperability". Thanks to SCO, Novell will shortly own a legal precedence (IP law has a way of sticking to former court rulings) and if a ruling comes down that in "some shape or form" Novell NOT SCO owns Linux IP, Novell will be holding an IP Ace in the game. Even if it *really* doesn't own anything due to the GPL and this precedence doesn't stick, Novell still has a rich Patent portfolio of client/server computing art reaching back into the 80's. Hey... go figure, so does Microsoft. Combine both IP portfolios and you have over 1000 client and server computing patents to sort out in court. (Novell once owned 70% of the client/server market in the 90's, Microsoft owns most now) Linux is also a client/server operating system and die-hards believe GPL is a way for Linux to own the NOS market of the future. If this goes to court, IP and prior art is gonna be established and enforced. Out of 1000 client/server patents, how could it not? All of a sudden we have new dogs, new tricks - and a new row of IP teeth that can bite the other Linux distros that don't cower and submit.
Like it or not, the Linux tax man cometh. The IP and Patent portfolios Novell and Microsoft own can now be fashioned as sticks to beat other companies, kernels and distros into IP acknowledgment and submission. Whether Balmer Cassidy and Ronny the Kid actually saddle up their lawyers and go riding into Dodge with their guns drawn, has yet to be seen. But make no mistake... the legal gun barrels based upon IP patents are locked and loaded. We're heading for a show-down.
Keep in mind it's not just us wee IT country folk interested in how things play out either... Sony, Universal, Disney, Time Warner and ALL large corporations are vested to make sure patented IP wins over GPL. If patented IP can be eroded by GPL, then Copyright law is next. This is one of the major flaws with the Utopian idea of Open-Source. Free doesn't make the world go around. In societies with Judges, Lobbyist and Politicians, big money and big cunning companies with lots of lawyers do. I'm not saying its right... I'm just saying what is.
I hope that Novell and Microsoft take the higher road and work with the open-source community instead of trying to bend them over the
Who the fuck would want Vongo? They sell your personal information to the highest bidder, lust look at their service agreement. As for DRM, no matter what you will not get anything without DRM from now on, unless you are talking about indie music or movies.
Personally, I avoid music and movies/tv shows/etc and prefer to pick up a good book instead.
Well, I sure don't want Vongo. Not only because they reject non-Windows users, but also because their selection is terrible. I'm a foreign/independent film fan myself. Sadly, there is nothing that caters to people like me other than regular video rentals if you're lucky enough to have a local video rental outfit that specializes in those films. While a good book is satisfying, it sure isn't when you want to watch the latest foreign and independent films. Especially if you are a movie buff.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
The problem(s):
I'm sure I could go on. But I've been dealing with this kind of shit for over 10 years on the Linux desktop (I started with fvwm 1.4 back in 1995) and it's really not changed in any meaningful way. As I said, in 1999 or so, when there was Loki making games, and a bunch of activity there was hope that things would improve.
Now it's clear that, not only have things not improved significantly since then, they've actually regressed in certain areas.
I'll be getting Macs from now on.