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The Intersection of Microsoft, Linux, and China
at_$tephen writes "Fortune magazine has an article stressing the Chinese market's importance to Microsoft's long term strategy, and touching on Linux's involvement in the Chinese market. In the early days of Microsoft rampant piracy helped establish it as the de facto standard in PCs despite good alternatives. History may be unfolding again here, with the exception that having the Chinese government as an ally has huge additional benefits. Or perhaps Gates has met his match with the Chinese government. 'In another boost for Microsoft, the government last year required local PC manufacturers to load legal software on their computers. Lenovo, the market leader, had been shipping as few as 10% of its PCs that way, and even US PC makers in China were selling many machines "naked." Another mandate requires gradual legalization of the millions of computers in state-owned enterprises. In all, Gates says, the number of new machines shipped with legal software nationwide has risen from about 20% to more than 40% in the past 18 months.'"
This is very good! The more businesses are forced to actually pay for all those MS loaded machines, the easier they might consider using linux.
Why do you care if people use Linux or not? Do you own stock in Red Hat?
I don't respond to AC's.
I can buy a television without subscribing to cable TV service offered by Best Buy, why should a computer (for which there more options) be any different?
Any Joe Schmoe can buy a pair of rabbit ears at Wal-Mart for $5 or plug their TV into a DVD player, game system, etc.
The reality is that most people buying computers with no OS are putting a pirated version Windows on them. That's obvious. Requiring all PC's to come with an OS might not be the best way to do it, but to suggest that most (or even a small percentage) of "No OS" PC's end up with a truly free OS on them at the end of the day is just silly.
I don't respond to AC's.
No, I guess it's not clear how that works. I insist that Linux is as easyto use as any OS, but it is hard to install. II can't help laughing at the concept of someone using Linux(which is NEVER a boot loader, it's a kernel) to install grub? lilo? so that they can load Windows. Poor stupid, stupid person.
The shame is that you left out the Mac flames.
I would have gone for the Linux being booted and running the Windows version of VMWare to run OSX.
But then I am too smart and funny to troll. But you guys always suck me in.
Anyone that can't immediately see how dumb this parent is should refrain from modding this thread.