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Linux's Role In Microsoft's Decline
nerdyH writes "As early as last quarter, Microsoft admitted that Linux and netbooks were eating into its fat profits. Recently, it came home, with the software giant announcing its first-ever layoffs. LinuxDevices interviewed Linux Foundation Director Jim Zemlin on Linux's role in Microsoft's misfortunes. Zemlin sums it up pretty well: 'Companies can offer their own branded software platform based on Linux. If Microsoft is getting 75 percent margins, you would like some of that high-margin business, too.'"
As early as last quarter, Microsoft admitted that Linux and netbooks were eating into its fat profits. Recently, it came home, with the software giant announcing its first-ever layoffs.
Yeah, it couldn't be because there is a massive economic crisis going on. It's all Linux.
Not a typewriter
Of course the Linux guy will say Linux. And the Apple guy Apple. So on and so forth. And there is probably a mixture of truth to all that.
But it would be interesting to get that internal memo.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Put in Apple and the economic downturn, among the causes. Linux? You kidding? Have you seen the desktop market share of it? And this comes from an heavy Linux user and enthusiast.
Making $4 Billion in one quarter isn't much a decline. Looks like layoffs were induced by greed, so that executives stocks options go up. It would be interesting to see if some of those 4000-5000 employees use linux as a platform for a technology startup.
On the bright side if I were laid-off I'd have plenty of time to juggle.
I think most of their lost profits are from people negotiating lower prices because of the Linux alternative, not so much that people are actually choosing Linux.
From TFA... Actually the first question in TFA.
Q1 -- Jim, thank you for your support in talking with LinuxDevices today. Do you think it was really Linux that hurt Microsoft? Or was it the emergence of netbooks? XP seems to ship on most, but Microsoft isn't making much money selling XP for low-cost PCs [story], are they?
A1 -- When an OEM negotiates a price agreement with Microsoft, they now have a viable alternative. It changes the negotiating relationship. It's a combination of Linux, missteps by Microsoft, and not enabling Vista for a low-power, long battery-life device.
I wonder if you can be modded insightfull for "insights" from the article? No one reads them anyway...
Agreed. I wholly plan on getting an HP Mini 1000 at some point. I'm getting the Linux version because it's cheaper, and then putting Vista/Win7 on it. Fuck paying for the OS.
FTFA:
It's a combination of Linux, missteps by Microsoft, and not enabling Vista for a low-power, long battery-life device.
Translation: it's the most bloated OS, ever.
Let's see, how they handle 7.
Netbooks are NOT that big a market yet. It just became a market in late 2008. Too recent for any conclusive statements to be made.
But even if that were the case, it is well within Microsoft's power to keep WindowsXP alive and supported for use on Netbook devices. I have seen some custom loads that run extremely well on the ASUS 900. They can do what they want -- it's their retiring OS.
Microsoft isn't losing because of Linux, it's losing because of Microsoft.
Essentially, if MS dominated the industry by creating the BEST product, then they wouldn't have a problem. Their problem is simply that their target customer isn't willing to be abused any longer. That and the of years of abuse have pushed millions of victims to contribute to the creation and improvement of alternatives to Microsoft.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
That certainly seems to be the case in netbooks. Once MS got going there, the proportion of netbooks running linux dropped fairly sharply. On the other hand, MS had to commit to keeping XP's corpse stumbling along a while longer, and for only peanuts a unit. That must have sucked.
Ironically, Linux probably does more to strangle MS's non-OS products than it does its OS products. Historically, MS's non windows/office divisions have had a great deal of strategic freedom, because MS could afford to keep burning money until the product finally found its feet(See Xbox, MSN, MS Research). If the windows/office margins suffer, the other departments become a liability, they'll have to succeed fast, or get axed.
Linux: 5,000
Microsoft: 0
but more along the lines of
Linux: n/a
Microsoft: -5,000
Bad economy: FTW
Next up, Microsoft Linux!
In the immortal words of Socrates, "I drank what?"
In the face of credible and supported competition that's FREE, it becomes hard to justify to PHB's that they'll need to spend a few grand per server on licenses (plus hopping on the license upgrade merry-go-round every couple of years) to do the same work.
On the desktop side, it's the same deal. Trying to shoehorn in a few hundred bucks of worthless software licenses onto devices that are going to be priced in the low to mid hundreds is going to be a non-starter for the companies that want to sell the devices. Enter Linux.
Cheers,
instead of boasting you've toppled MS, try going back to fixing the numerous issues with linux software that keep it off the desktop.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
This makes absolutely no sense. First, there is no reasonable way to calculate a profit margin on a copy of Windows or Office. This is not a car or a book. The incremental cost of producing one copy of Windows is nearly zero. There's no way to quantify MS's investment in their software. What would you do, try to estimate how many man-hours MS programmers have worked since 1975, and divide the cost of employing them by the number of copies of Windows they've sold?
And even if you believed this 75% figure, it's silly to think it applies to Linux. Asus doesn't say, "OK, we paid $x for the rights to Linux, and now let's mark that up so we have a 75% profit." Asus didn't pay any money for the rights to the Linux kernel, or Firefox, or Gnome, and anyway Asus doesn't sell an OS, they sell computers with an OS on them. I assume Asus does pay money to Xandros, but if amounts to any significant amount of money per Eee PC, then Asus is a bunch of complete idiots, because they could have just used Ubuntu instead for free. If they're paying money to Xandros, it had better be some small amount that accurately reflects the market's supposed perception that Xandros is somehow marginally better than Ubuntu.
Now let's imagine that Asus says, "OMG, Xandros is teh hotness, let's profit by jacking up the price because people are getting heart palpitations from wanting it so much. And we'll cut a deal with Xandros to call it Xeeeandros, cause then it's our brand, and users will pay extra." Well, no. People buy a Eee PC because they want something dirt cheap. They're not going to pay much more for Xandros than the zero cost of Ubuntu, and they're not going to pay much more for Xeeeandros than they would for Xandros.
I also don't buy this stuff like, "MS had layoffs, that means Linux is eating their lunch." Come on, now. Linux's share of the desktop is something like 1%. That's not enough to do anything at all to MS's margins. MS's real competition on the desktop is Apple. It's also fairly difficult to buy a PC from a retailer without Windows installed, so many people running Linux are paying the MS tax anyway. At most, Linux presents a very indirect, hypothetical threat to MS's future, if, e.g., Vietnam goes heavily towards Linux. Today, having Linux, Firefox, and OOo around are probably actually good for MS's profits, because it gives them something to point to when they get hassled about antitrust.
Find free books.
I guess we've never met
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
Well, I run Linux exclusively, on my desktop at home and my laptop for work. This is probably not the best forum to declare that nobody is using Linux on the desktop.
Also, installing applications and dealing with dependencies are absolutely among Linux's strongest features over Windows, and always have been.
i have been looking a lot at netbooks online, at best buy and at staples and microcneter, and it is hard to even find a linux netbook - I seriously doubt this has caused any significant harm to MS
But, be glad to see some actual sales data
Anyway, the whole idea that linux is better or cheaper then MS is not true for the avg user,
Please pull your head from Tux's ass long enough to realize that maybe the recession coupled with the craptacular Vista cause the 'Microsoft Decline'
Linux will NEVER be a viable home user desktop replacement until you can go to Wal-Mart and buy software for it.
Don't rush me, Sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.
Yes, Linux marketed as a distro can do better. The good thing is that very soon, we'll have KDE with a business friendly license. What I would like Linux programmers to do is to get their act together and solve problems that continue to plague the Linux ecosystem.
These come to mind:
1: Multimedia. There are so many back-ends to choose from, each with problems of their own. The associated front-ends are even worse both in functionality and bloat.
2: Polish. It seams that by default, Linux distros are less polished by default. In fact, I can say they are ugly by default. This does not help.
3: Bloat. KDE is wonderful but suffers from bloat. GNOME is kind of OK, but it's interface looks ancient and lacks the functionality of modern systems.
My 2 cents.
Well but that's my point. The percentage of people I "meet" online that use Linux is astonishingly high. Yet in person I've never seen it in practice. And the few Linux people I have met first online and then in person really didn't use Linux anymore than I did - which amounts to having it installed in a VM or on a spare box.
In regards to dependancies and app installs, sudo apt-get might be more logical for you than say dragging an application into a folder as you do on the Mac or double-clicking an installer executable on Windows but that doesn't mean its relatable to the average user.
I suggest that the poster try one of the recently released distributions. My whole family has been using Ubuntu for the last 2 years. I use it as my primary OS on my work laptop, the family dekstop, the mythtv box, and the mame arcade in the basement. Dependencies are handled quite nicely with APT, and you can buy desktop support from Canonical if you so choose.
My 58 year old mother who has no computer skills whatsoever has Ubuntu installed on her new PC. I had to only set up her pc to auto update. After spending an hour with her showing the difference between Linux and Windows, she was off on her own. Since her switch from windows, I no longer get phone calls about her machine running slow, the computer crashing, disinfecting her machine from all the nasty virus' shes clicked on from email attachments.
The year of the linux desktop has already happened, its just that no one in the windows world has noticed.
I'm not trying to be an anti-Linux shill here, after all I do have an Ubuntu install and run CentOS on my server, but I'd argue that your example doesn't reflect the norm. For example, lots of people in my family run the Mac OS. Why? Because I'm a Mac user and got them set up. That doesn't mean, however that this is the year of the Mac desktop and no one has actually noticed. It means a handful of people I know were persuaded by my advice (and free lifetime support).
:-)
Now I could make that argument that this is the year of the Mac in light of Apple's resurgence and relative growth, certainly more so than Linux in the same market space, but it's a bit shortsighted I think. No more shortsighted, however, than suggesting no one uses Linux in the comments of Slashdot. I'll give you that.
Linux has a Sane Desktop environment: Its called KDE. It conforms to FreeDesktop.org standards.
Linux has actually TWO Sane mans of Installation. RPM, DEB. (Sorry Gentoo Users, Portage doesn't cut it.)
Under absolutely no circumstances should ANY Linux application be "installed" by typing ./configure; make; make install. Those steps are for DEVELOPERS and MAINTAINERS only to MAKE packages (RPM, DEB.)
Couple things. RPM and DEB need a standard and understood hierarchy. DEB wins out here. There is less variability in the configuration of DEB, and a great deal of variability in RPM (SUSE, Mandriva, Fedora.) This creates problems that could be solved if someone created a "Unified RPM standard". As far as the RPM and DEB differences are concerned, its my opinion that dpkg and RPM should be interchangable on both systems without having to "convert" from Alien. For example, if I am a Mandriva user, and Ubuntu has something I want, I should be able to set up dpkg and rpm to understand each other and retrieve the DEB Packages from Ubuntu.
There do need to be improvements in SDL, SDL is getting stale.
Another issue is Upstream maintainers. Upstream coders are coding some of these applications with bizzare and stupid configurations that don't work well with EITHER Package manager and all they provide is a tar ball. And then you look at their Windows build, and in some cases its easier to install the Windows Build in Wine. Thats unforgivable.
However, I think that what we are seeing right now is not the outright resistance to Linux. Its not that Linux sucks, its just that Adobe, and Quicken, and several of these ISVs have strictly Anti-Linux policies. Its kinda the same thing as when you see these heavily DRMed web sites that Are Windows+IE only because they rely on IE DRM, and have a written policy against Linux OR Mac.
The fact is, they hate Linux, not because it sucks, not because its hard to write applications for, its that THEY HATE LINUX. Its not rational, its not anything there is a reasonable excuse for. They just hate Linux and they want to see Linux die.
Microsoft Revenue/Growth
Year Revenue %Growth
2005 39,788 -
2006 44,282 11%
2007 51,122 15%
2008 60,420 18%
Red Hat Revenue/Growth
Year Revenue %Growth
2005 196 -
2006 278 41%
2007 400 43%
2008 523 30%
Red Hat is growing much faster than Microsoft, but Microsoft has 115x more sales.
Linux had nothing to do with the decline. The economy along with the failure that was Vista is what led to the (minor) decline.
Go to one of the SAGE conferences, and you will have a hard time finding a Windows notebook, other than the Microsoft employees. They are pretty scarce at the O'Reilly conferences as well. (Yes, I only use Linux on the desktop.)
I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress -J Adams
Also, installing applications and dealing with dependencies are absolutely among Linux's strongest features over Windows, and always have been.
You're completely delusional. I've been using Linux since 1997, and any honest Linux user will tell you that they've taken several trips to dependency hell. Questions like "Why are there so many different package managers?" "Why does every distro put its config information in a different place?" etc have yet to be worked out in Linux. Many people will say this is a strength of Linux, allowing people to make their own choices. However, normal people don't really care to have the choice of putting the "control panel" in different places and would prefer it just to work.
Let's face it, it's easier to work in Windows (for most normal, desktop tasks). The great thing about Linux is that it will do whatever you tell it to do, always. The bad thing is that sometimes it's hard to figure out how to ask ;).
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
I use Linux exclusively on desktop, laptop and server. I have a couple VMs for the very rare times when I have to compile a windows app, which get booted maybe once a month for the only purpose of doing a build.
At work I have Windows on the computer, but all it gets used for is to start a VM with Linux in it. I turn it on, log in, start vmware, maximize, and do all the work in the VM. The only reason it's there at all is that I'm too busy to justify spending time on reformatting the box.
Will never happen. Ever. You can't go to thousands of people who aren't working for you and tell them "I decided that your project [insert toolkit here] is redundant and you should all go work on [insert other toolkit here]". They'll simply tell you to go take a hike.
This also assumes that Windows is consistent. But it isn't. MS Office has long been using new strange widgets. Even antiviruses seem to for some reason need to reinvent the GUI. Nearly almost any hardware device will come with applications that aren't standard looking.
I actually find that Linux is a lot more consistent looking than the typical Windows desktop.
Like apt, for instance? Have you tried any recent distributions?
Red Hat and SuSE will be happy to provide it. Though I don't know a single person who called MS tech support.
You must have not been paying attention to the news. For a long time, "We're considering Linux" have been the magical words to get a nice discount from MS on a volume order. Without Linux, MS could be pretty sure that with Apple as the other possibility, not going with MS could well be more expensive. With Linux though, cost can be reduced to the internal cost of implementation, without any vendor getting a cent.
yet I've still never met a single person that uses Linux as their primary OS
In my opinion, until Linux gets a unified interface, a sane way of installing applications and dealing with dependancies and manages some actual commercial support I just don't see it appealing to the average consumer.
I'm just not sure if your kidding, trolling, or just making this stuff up based upon opinions from the 90's
There are plenty of people who use Linux as their primary OS.. and both apt, and rpm, ARE the sane way for installing applications, it's the MS .exe installers that are insane. You can make either to install programs just as simply as you do with Windows by double clicking an .exe (as opposed to through a repository) that's how robust both managers are..
Linux doesn't need an unified interface.. It's quite simple. Their are Popular distros such as Ubuntu (apt) and Fedora (rpm).. you pick one, use and learn it, and it is a no brainer to switch to the other and try it out if you want.. just as it is a no brainer to switch from gnome to KDE or to Xfce..
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
In regards to dependancies and app installs, sudo apt-get might be more logical for you than say dragging an application into a folder as you do on the Mac or double-clicking an installer executable on Windows but that doesn't mean its relatable to the average user.
You hit the nail on the head.
Not only that...once you hit circular dependencies or find that "sudo apt-get install xyz" returns "installation of xyz has been kept back...," you cannot appreciate the problem with installing apps on Linux.
Folks like the one you responded to are the reason why Linux will not be significant on the desktop for a long long time.
But let me ask...what is wrong with Apple's or Microsoft's way of installing software?
When movie theaters started to boom in the 1920s, a time of general economic prosperity, the theaters used to rent out space in front of the theaters to sell popcorn. Then, during the depression, the theaters realized they weren't making enough money. They also realized that it's almost free to make their own popcorn, and that you can mark up popcorn by obscene amounts and nobody will say boo. Thus, movie theater concessions were born.
Sometimes it takes an economic downturn to realize that you're getting hosed by renting out space, whether it be on your hard drive, or in front of your movie theater.
wow, 75% of $0 is umm... $0... I'd rather 75% of $400+ (here in Australia). Linux has been around for a long time, if it's anything, it's going to be the small mobile items that helping lower it's install base.
Do you think it was really Linux that hurt Microsoft?
You ask this question of the director of the Linux Foundation? The question contains the answer. It's about as objective as Stephen Colbert asking, "George W. Bush: Great President or the Greatest President?"
This article reads like a couple of self-satisfied nerds patting each other on the back (to use a less colorful metaphor than I'd like to). I'll rejoice on the day that Linux's increased market share in the desktop world hurts Microsoft's dominance, but I seriously doubt that it did this year.
If Microsoft really said Linux was hurting them (and I didn't see where in TFA it says they did, please point me to it if you did), it's probably because they don't want to admit that they are partially at fault. I don't see why they don't just blame it on a massive global recession.
Being a computer scientist means you tell people how computers should work, not that you know how they actually work.
Windows 95 was not MS's first "serious entry into the OS market".
MS-DOS was a very "serious entry" into the OS market, as was windows 3.0, 3.1, and NT. In fact, I still support an old NT 4 server that predates the release of Windows 95.
Please don't let your inexperience confuse you. Millions of offices ran on Novell, DOS, Lotus, and Wordperfect long before Windows 95 came along.
Sure those early operating systems weren't anything compared to the UNIX workstations of the day, but neither were the computers they were running on.
Also, you don't seem to realize that there is nothing that says that an OS has to have certain features to be a good OS.
MS-DOS was a very good OS for standalone workstations where only one user was going to be interacting with the system and only running one application. The early PC's were not really capable of much more anyway, so DOS did what it was intended to do, and did it well enough at the time.
Even though I hate to admit it, Microsoft has brought far more to the industry than you give it credit for. I wish that someone had provided some viable competition all these years to force Microsoft to innovate a bit more, but they pushed the industry fairly well for a monopoly. They didn't really have to, they could have stretched their releases apart by years more than they did and made even more money. Upgrades have never been a big money maker for MS, it's bundling with new pc's they depend upon anyway when people are replacing their computers every couple of years.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
Sorry Coward... and you are a coward.
I am not a M$ Fanboi. I just prefer an OS to be stable and support what I need it to support. I have both Mac and Windows systems (as well as a couple of Linux builds). I am just sick of you Linux fanbois thinking you are going to change the world with Linux. It will never be anything until it gets FULL support from developers.. which will be never.
Don't rush me, Sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.
I've still never met a single person that uses Linux as their primary OS.
I have for the past seven years. Sometimes, for months at a time, as my only OS, until I need to boot XP for a game.
We brag about how its making inroads and how its impacting the marketplace but we rarely see it in person.
Asus EEE PC. The machine's very existence depended on Linux. Once Linux proved you could create something that cheaply, that small, with good battery life, everyone else rushed to get in on it, including Microsoft. But even if XP had really been an option when it was built, MIcrosoft wouldn't give them the price they wanted.
So, whether or not it actually makes it onto someone's desktop, the fact that it's there as an option changes the negotiation. If I need an operating system for something -- maybe I'm a Fortune 500 company with thousands of desktops, maybe I'm a Toshiba or a Sony and I'm building a new set top box or otherwise smart device -- I can now negotiate a much lower price for Windows, because Linux is a real option, whether or not I ever intended to use it.
until Linux gets a unified interface,
Name an OS which has one.
a sane way of installing applications
Package managers are stranger, but they are more secure, and they are, in fact, easier.
Among other things: Reinstalls are no longer something to be feared. Just back up your home directory, reinstall, then go to add/remove programs, check all programs you need, and click "apply".
Compare with your "sane" way which involves digging through old, possibly scratched and useless CDs, as well as browsing online through dozens of web pages, looking for installer programs -- which are essentially unverified executables, each one opening you up for a MITM attack.
and dealing with dependancies
I'll forgive this, since you clearly haven't dealt with Linux directly in years, if ever.
Dependencies are not an issue. They are so much not an issue it's not even funny anymore.
Remember what I said above, about "add/remove programs"? That's it. All the dependencies are taken care of automatically.
and manages some actual commercial support
I bought this laptop with Ubuntu, from Dell. That means I actually have support. I can actually call Canonical if I have a problem.
I can also buy software for Linux -- Canonical has a repository of commercial software. Then there's programs like Maya, etc.
There's also Linus, and a number of other kernel developers, who have their paychecks written by an organization which lives purely on donations from these guys -- in case you're too lazy to follow that link, that's HP, Hitachi, IBM, Intel, Oracle, AMD, Google, Motorola, Nokia, Adobe, Dell, Mitsubishi... I could go on, just follow the link.
I would call that a significant amount of corporate support -- and that's not counting the developers these organizations often hire to work for them, but on Linux and open source.
I just don't see it appealing to the average consumer.
See, that's the more interesting question, and that's where the flamewars happen.
But often, it's a moot question. The rule of thumb I've found is that most people love Linux, when they give it a chance, and it will do 99% of what they want. But there's another 1% that they can't live without, that's different for everyone, that it won't do.
Many of these, there's really nothing the community can do to improve things, without destroying what makes Linux great. Consider: You complained about not having a "unified interface". If that meant enforcing human interface guidelines, it would kill some very interesting apps which explore some radically different ideas about human interfaces. If it meant just a
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I sense a FUD meme coming:
"See! Linux is socialism! It caused Microsoft's layoffs! It's causing te economy to fail!"
In the next month or so, or soon before Microsoft's next earnings report.
You're completely delusional. I've been using Linux since 1997, and any honest Linux user will tell you that they've taken several trips to dependency hell.
You are right, however, I have not had a dependency hell since around 2001, and the user base now is somewhat larger than what it was then, so it stands to reason that a lot of linux users will have never seen a dependency hell.
Well, your post caused a disturbing mental picture....
RMS taking over Ballmer's job at MS.
No More Flying Chairs!!11!
P.S. Though look out for the crazy greybearded man running around with a katana, frothing at the mouth and shouting:"Mobilze the HURD! Time to attack!"
Head A Splodes!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I'm so tired of slashdot's support of buzzwords articles and think tank mentality
And yet you're still here. Doesn't that make you a troll?
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
I wonder if you can be modded insightfull for "insights" from the article? No one reads them anyway...
Apparantly so. Thrice as of this writing.
I am officially gone from
I was an employee of Microsoft in end user tech support in '94. I'd been a contractor for six months, then I went perm. About a month going perm, all ~200 of the remaining contractors at my worksite were let go, every last one of them. (This was including my roommate at the time.)
So whe they call this the "first ever" layoff for the company, take that with a (salt lick sized) grain of salt. Sure, it might be the first ever for "perm" employees, btu I frankly don't see the difference.
Your assuming most people install crap on their computers. You and I might, since were technically inclined, but the majority of people I have helped with their home computer have almost nothing installed that was not included with their computer (hell, they don't even have updates installed). Other than apps that install by visiting web pages. I have setup several relatives with Ubuntu. They browse the web with firefox, (especially Hulu.com) check email with theunderbird or webmail, chat with pidgin, and every time the icon at the top shows up, they click it to install updates.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
I think Microsoft will still dominate market share until Google makes an OS based on FreeBSD. Until then, Microsoft's biggest competitor is itself because while their software is over-priced, most people just keep reusing their old XP disk rather than trying to learn something new. Linux doesn't have the marketing power required to take on Microsoft no matter how good the software is. I'm not a fortune-teller, but if I were, this would be my prediction.
what do you mean by full support from developers? Do you mean having software for the system like adobe? They are starting to get there as flash has been on a parallel release for a short time. There are other developers working on linux now too but your right it's not just there yet. Well if that's what you mean by full support of developers. But no OS has the FULL support can't run garage band on windows can you?
The main reason I wanted to respond was because you also said until you can go to walmart to buy linux software it will never work. I guess you haven't seen the news http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/10/200-everex-gree.html/ http://news.cnet.com/Walmart.com-to-sell-more-Linux-software/2100-1012_3-5066148.html/ or http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/linux/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202805941/
Also typically the point of linux is that you don't have to go out and buy the software, it comes with the OS or with a quick apt-get from a repository. It's free typically you won't see it in the stores for that reason. I would like to see in the future stores selling the CD's and DVD's of distros, as well as openoffice and other alternatives for the cost of production and shelving but I don't think they need to for it to catch on. You just need enough people who have had a good experiance with it for it to start being a force.
I'm not a linux fan boi I don't think that it's had a large effect on Microsofts market but it has definatly changed it. Linux is a large part of the embeded market, they had Microsoft playing catchup in the netbook market, and distro's like ubuntu are getting closer and closer to being where they need to, to take on Microsoft. I would argu for most people it's there.
here is a great example of up and comming operating systems for net and note books.. www.hyperspace.com
Have you ever considered just actually using Linux? That machine's so underpowered that it can't play games, which is the only thing that Windows really has over Linux any more. That, or if you need to run MS Office for professional reasons, but if you're pirating the OS I'd hope you're not doing that.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
No. It never was "good", in no case "very good". And it also did not "well enough".
In fact, DOS was a true step back compared to anything that existed at that time and it took a whopping 15 years until it arrived where others were already in the early 80s.
I have no qualms with Linux and triple-boot my main machine with it. I use Offuce 2007 and Digsby and other programs that I wholly prefer over their OSS counterparts, so Linux just isn't as good of an option as a custom Vista install. Plus, I'm just more productive all-around in Windows than I am in Linux.
Allow me to introduce you to the 'Enter' key.
It is used to break up your text, and make it easier to read. Please use it in the future.
No tyrant thrives when every subject says no.
Again, your spouting your beliefs about what an OS should be capable of as though they are the definition of the word.
When you can convince me that you can run an MS-DOS application without DOS, then I will agree with you... but as far as I know, most DOS applications depended upon DOS. So it wasn't a boot loader.
It didn't do a spectacular job, and was crap by today's standards, but it most certainly was an OS unless you butcher the definition.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
What's this 'Enter' key you're talking about? You see, geek jargon like yours is what is keeping linux back. People just want to hit their mouse buttons, not learning arcane key combinations to get the most basic tasks done.
Microsoft isn't reporting billion dollar losses.
Microsoft is reporting a bare 2% growth in revenues, to $16.6 billion dollars in its second quarter.
Microsoft is debt free, with tens of billions in liquid reserves and Exxon-Mobil grade corporate credit.
The last I heard, OpenOffiice.org was down to 24 full time developers.
Sun is hurting.
There are others who have made big commitments to Linux and open source who are hurting.
Before the geek crows too loudly about Microsoft's "dilemma" he might usefully rate his own chances of survival.
And Microsoft's reply is... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28039226/?pg=7#Tech_JerkGadgets/ Wow. What self-indulgent lunatics.
Give me an example of what was alternatives that IBM ignored when it chose MS-DOS for the IBM PC. And why they were better (for the target market) than MS-DOS.
I can only think of one OS that was truely better at the time for personal computing, and that was OS-9 (not Mac OS-9)... but I'm not sure that it could have been ported to the Intel 8080 as it was written entirely in assembly and wasn't ported to any other processors until 2 years later in 1983 and not to Intel until 1989.
Sure there were tons of interesting things happening in the personal computing OS space in those days... but when IBM went shopping, there were not really that many choices that would have made good business sense. CP/M would have been the best choice, as it was the most popular... but they wouldn't sign the papers IBM required... hence the reason Gates bought QDOS (a CPM like OS) and renamed it MS-DOS in the first place.
So technically there was nothing for intel processors that was better, and the only os that made better business sense wouldn't sell... that left MS-DOS.
I will agree that MS could have greatly improved on MS-DOS and didn't, favoring compatibility over capability... but don't forget that tons of software of the time was proprietary so it didn't make sense to break compatibility to favor features.
I think if anything, it's IBM's fault for coming into the scene before a decent OS had been ported to intel processors. Hell QNX was only a year later and put DOS to shame... but in technology, it rarely pays to wait.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
to go on a diet. Can you proscribe (but not prescribe) LinoSuction to help us out? We won't tell anybody you are helping us out under the table.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Agreed. And that's aside from the fact that no one should be celebrating job losses anyway. Granted, it would be nice if devs would quit microsoft in favour of paid work for a free desktop project, but job losses are never good, and it's just cheap to gloat over them. Those people have lives to live, dreams to fulfill, kids to feed, etc. Yes, microsoft as a company sucks. But really... grow the fuck up, and don't misrepresent free software's ideals please. We're about making lives better, not celebrating loss.
I run Linux exclusively on my desktop, laptop, servers and my Mac. Mac OS sucks for my needs so the obvious choice was to install Linux. As far as an easy to install packages, its as simple as starting an application, searching for the application you want, reading the description of the package, selecting the package and clicking apply. All that is required is a connection to the repository or to the install CD. Dependencies are automatically satisfied as needed for almost all applications. Several of my non-techie clients are also running Linux after I let them play with my laptop and they saw how much easier it was compared to Windows and Mac. Most of them love the fact that most OSS is free and much of it is 100% compatible with their previous Win32 and Mac data.
I think it is the start of how it should be. I think a world where you did not have one dominant platform would be for the best.
I could see it getting to where MS has around 60% market share, Apple 25%, and Linux the rest. The only reason I do not see Linux with a larger percentage is because of everything from marketing and bullying by the other two and resistance.
Once you start seeing these levels you start seeing more innovation from all of them.
Hi I use a Linux desktop not a VM it's my primary O/S,
Perhaps I should explain why, perhaps no 1 is I don't like using pirated software, and open source provides maybe 99% of what I want and I can live without the 1%. Theres still a few cases where software isn't native to Linux, and I might want to use it, and between wine and a VM it's covered.
I hate the DRM and intrusive nature of windows. WGA was the final straw for me even on a fully paid up Windows Install I would not allow that spyware to run on any of my PC's.
I also hate the closed nature of windows, Linux pretty much gives me access to all area's. I can get to the source when I want and I can have all the tools at my disposal. I enjoy being able to give back to the community, little bits for sure but thats Linux for you everyone can contribute and make the whole experience that little bit better.
Compare that freedom with Microsofts product and it's stand alone o/s with networking bolted on. The Viruses the malware the constant waste of resources expended trying to keep a system clean. Yeah cleaning up windows systems lots of windows systems I sure got fed up with doing that over the years, and the usual have you got a copy of...
Another thing apart from in a VM windows isn't very portable with Linux I can have a set up with what I want set up on a usb drive and I can take it to whatever system I want (admittedly there can be the odd hardware issue usually just wireless and easily fixed).
A lot of people complain about setting up hardware to work with Linux, the surprising thing is how much works straight off with no searching for a download that you hope is genuine and works.
For me windows is a chore an obstacle more often than not to my curiosity. It's part of the rat race and its getting worse, bloated and patched up. Linux and OSX are great modern operating systems and they both out perform windows on a given hardware. If I wasn't using Linux It would be OSX but Apples determined to keep OSX away from generic PC hardware, which is a pity since it gives a secure consistent environment that could be main stream. OSX on a netbook would sell big time, after all if a user doesnt like it windows or Linux is an option.
Linux is an option for people who like computers, but for a large majority they wouldn't want to take time to learn a different way of doing things but for them there is OSX eventually , I hope.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
So it's half an OS? If not an OS, what is it?
Compared to the other OS's for similar hardware of the time, DOS was certainly an OS. And you forget that at the time, a lot of software was written to access hardware directly.
To say that MS-DOS was not a "serious entry into the OS market" is like saying that the Model-T was not a serious entry to the auto market. Sure there were better cars, but the model-T shaped the industry.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
Translation: "I like and use Windows, but I'm too cheap to pay for it".
> Didn't you say in the past that MS could give away Windows for free for 7 years before they started running out of money?
Are you talking to me personally? I don't recall ever saying that, unless in jest. But I'm old and my memory is going. Where was I alleged to have said that?
> Could IBM manage that? If so, why didn't you say it then? If not, there's your difference.
Um what? How strange. Ok, I'll bite: At the end of 2008 IBM had 12.9 billion cash on hand. Not counting repurchased shares, it would be a little over $23 billion. In the same time period, Microsoft had $10 billion in cash, or about $21 billion if you add in short term investments.
I could stop right there, but just for the sake of argument, let's continue with the $10 billion figure. That's 42,553,191 copies of Vista Ultimate at Amazon prices. (I'm sure Amazon would love the business.) or 111 million copies of Windows Vista Home Premium Upgrade. Microsoft claims to have sold 60 million copies of Vista from July 2005 to July 2007, (which I suspect is stretching the definition of "sold" but let's go ahead and use that) so let's say 30 million copies a year. So either company, should they be so inclined, could give Windows away for between 1.5 (Ultimate) and around 4 years (Home) just with cash on hand. Double that if you consider short term investments (Microsoft) or shares repurchased (IBM). That'd be really close to 8 years of Vista Home Premium, so yeah, from back-of-napkin figuring it could technically be done. And that's using retail figures. Using wholesale costs, I can't imagine how long Microsoft could give away Windows using cash on hand. A really, really long time.
I'm not sure where we're going with this.
My original point was that IBM is heavily invested in Linux, (which was inferred, sorry if you missed that) and if Microsoft's layoff was due to the threat of Linux, (whatever that means) then why is IBM doing a comparable RIF at almost exactly the same time?
In other words, "it's the economy, stupid". Companies don't wait until they're out of cash before shedding employees, they do it as soon as the immediate future starts to look bad.
In conclusion, I'd like to blame the Microsoft RIF on the impact of open source software as much as the next Linux geek. But you'd have to make that observation in a complete vacuum.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I think a better analogy would be: "To say that MS-DOS was not a "serious entry into the OS market" is like saying the bicycle was not a serious entry to the automobile market."
Remember, MS-DOS didn't come around before multitasking operating systems, it came after. Unix was around for long before MS/Q-DOS, and Multics was around before that. The concepts of memory protection, hardware protection, etc. were well established. I'm pretty sure MacOS had all that too, even though its multitasking was only cooperative, and that came out in 1984.
Linux had NOTHING to do with it?
Absolutely 100% nothing?
And you tell ME to pull my head out? Stop licking Ballmers tonsils from underneath.
I'll put this argument to you. More people have downloaded Windows 7 BETA than the total number of users of Ubuntu.
Vista in 2 years has gained 20 times the desktop market share in 1/9th of the time that Linux has existed.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
After a trip with Gates, Warren was asked if he invested in Microsoft, and he answered something to the effect that he 'didn't understand the long term viability of software as a business model.'
Warren is FAR more understanding of core business issues than techies give him credit.
by full support, I mean hardware and software, all plug and play... not tweaks to get things to work.. not drivers released as an afterthought. Is it better? Yes.. it is, but it never will be a viable alternative unless it has that kind of out of the box support and availability.
And no.. you can not run garage band in windows, but you can run it in MacOS. And jus because they make flash for Linux doesn't mean Adobe has any real intentions of full support because there is NO MONEY in Linux. With out money behind anything, it eventually withers and dies. Capitalism rules...
Don't rush me, Sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.
"So it's half an OS?". Nah, that's OS/2. $foo/2 equals half of $foo, I would think....
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Microsoft is dying.
Net Applications confirms it.
I wonder what that search result count will look like over the next two years.
Hundreds - literally hundreds - of replies and Slashdot misses the biggest thing that hurts Microsoft's bottom line.
The roaring dollar.
A huge percentage of Microsoft's income is from foreign sales, measured in whatever currency they happen to use.
For example: 1 GBP is $1.38. Not too long ago it was nearly $2, in fact exceeding it. When a British company pays the same this year as last, Microsoft's bottom line falls out. In fact, this is partially why their bottom line was so good last year - the dollar was incredibly cheap.
Frankly, the ignorance, grandstanding and flagrant disregard for reality and economics on Slashdot (OMG, it's LINUX killing Microsoft) makes me want to vomit on some orphans.
It's especially a good deal because last I checked the linux version is much cheaper and comes with 2GB of RAM.
But I know futureshop has a 8GB+8GB (SD card) Acer Aspire One on... So pick your poison. Sometimes you get a good deal. Hopefully it won't be long before you see good deals on the HP Mini. (and I'd look for the 2140, it has the nice aluminium body) :)
Personally, I'm waiting for the Freescale i.MX515 and associated netbooks. 8 hours of battery life? Yes please. It would be nice to see if its performance is as good or better than the beagleboard... it's also cool that it uses DDR2, maybe this time we'll see 1GB of RAM on these (or at least 512MB. the 256MB (I saw "2Gb") limit for the OMAP3530 is ridiculous.)
Actual it sounds like if anything hurts microsoft its microsoft.
linux has found an area to be installed in netbooks but microsoft reactions is to give away products like window xp on said devices to prevent linux.
this is one example but from alot of sources microsoft has been discounting windows when faced with linux instead of competing in a healthy way.
so giving windows away to stop product ABC from happening is hurting them .... this is good there making the decisions (this could also be viewed as anti-competitive and abuse of monopoly power yet again too) eventually they will not be able to give away said products (linux is not going away and it keeps growing and changing faster)
also note office is there cash cow, well instead attacking why not make office for this new platform and compete (also the interesting thing is if they ported office to linux it would help lock in there formats and they could charge more for it and people that use it would buy it)
life is linux, linux is life
stop it.
That's revenue, not profit.
Looks like the "Vista Capable" scam is about to set them back a few months too...
Microsoft Corp. would have to come up with as much as $8.5 billion to settle accounts with the customers affected by its 2006 "Vista Capable" marketing program, according to documents unsealed by a federal court.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
| The early PC's were not really capable of much more anyway, so DOS did what it was intended to do, and did it well enough at | the time.
Thats not true. Unix, and a number of unix-inspired OSes (qnx and coherent at least) were available from the early days. Unix heritage lies in the pdp family, and the early PCs were comparable.
The bill is about decentralization of the Federal Government. You probably hope that it means that the federal government will stop abortions and make us all pray in school. Sorry. That's not what it is about. It is about returning power to the states and allowing states to have their own moral agenda. Since the USA is a federation of states, the idea is that people are still free to move from states with whom they disagree about moral conduct and into states where they agree. Some people actually still believe in states' rights, Ron Paul is one of them. I wish people would educate themselves on the notion of what it means to be a federation of states.
Just callin' it like I see it.
even then when I found a supported card, the hoops I had to jump through were absurd.
Last two laptops I've had, the "hoops" were as follows:
- Right click on the network manager icon.
- Click an available network.
With Intrepid, they've for some reason decided to follow Windows' annoying method, so it's instead:
- Right-click on the network manager icon.
- Click "New Connection"
- Click Wlan0
- Click an available network.
I didn't have to install any drivers. I didn't have to tweak any settings. It Just Worked. In fact, my mother's laptop, which has Windows 2000, has wireless which only works on open networks -- WEP, WPA, etc is completely broken. Boot a Kubuntu livecd on it, and those networks Just Work.
I realize the plural of anecdote is not data. But you can see why I might assume you had no idea what you were talking about -- your experience is so completely different than mine, and everyone I know, including plenty of not-very-tech-savvy people I see using Ubuntu.
The underbelly of an OS shouldn't be exposed to end users. Is this belief wrong or just subjective?
Well, from the wording, wrong...
I wouldn't suggest that the guts of the OS should be inaccessible to advanced users, thus hobbling their workflow, but that know-nothings like myself shouldn't have to see or interact with it.
That, I can agree with.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I'm no business analyst, but obviously Linux (the netbook market in particular) is severely cutting into the profits of computer giants like Microsoft, Apple, Intel, and IBM. If you needed a sign for the year of Linux, this is it!
Well, I've got a circa-1998 333MHz Pentium II processor with 128 MB of memory running my file server at the house. If it wasn't for Linux, I'd have replaced it a loooong time ago with some of that new fancy-shmancy Intel stuff. Now it sits there for months between reboots and hardly draws any power. And when that goes, I've got an 800MHz beastie waiting in the wings to take over.
Nope, Linux hasn't hurt Intel at all.
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
The current crop of netbooks are powerful enough to run Vista.
Stop right there. Every thing after this sounds like "Waaargarbl".
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Actually it's been Microsoft's competitors nipping at his heels that pushed the industry along. Digital Research's CP/M (which turned into DR DOS) predated MS-DOS and continued to force it to play catch up for the entire life of MS-DOS. DESQview gave DOS users windows four months before Windows 1.0 and didn't get surpassed till Windows 3.0. IBM was selling a 32-BIT GUI Internet ready operating system called OS/2 to end users since 1992, a year before Windows NT, which wasn't even targeted to home users, Micrsoft didn't do that till 1995. In 1994 OS/2 already included an entire suite of Internet utilities including a Web Browser, something that take Microsoft till November 1995 to do, although not for retail till 1998.
A lot of people seem to make a lot of money from software. Buffet is the kind of guy who will only invest in something which will still be sold in 100 years, but I don't see that as a real world issue. The fortunes earned by Bill Gates and the founders of google will still be around in a hundred years.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
The only problem is the cost of the display. As I have seen, 100 MHz microcontrollers with 16 MB of RAM are plenty cheap. I seem to remember my computer from 1996 having those specs and it browsed the web just fine. It also did image editing with GIMP just fine, as viewing documents, and etc. I didn't really use it for word processing much, but it seemed to be fine there too (wysiwyg mode may not be so fast).
In fact, doesn't the Nintendo DS have those specs and is under $150? Yeah, the screen doesn't have great resolution and is small, and it doesn't have a keyboard, but there was a web browser for it, and enterprising individuals ported Linux to it, and others wrote an organiser...
MS-DOS was a very "serious entry" into the OS market
This would be a good place to point out that prior to DOS 2.0 in 1983, Microsoft DOS did not enjoy the concept of "subdirectory". At that point in time, Unix already had networking, The Internet , user vs system security, mounted volumes for user directories, real multitasking, multiuser capability, multiprocessor capability, emulation of other systems, open software, the C compiler Windows still doesn't have and a vast number of things that Microsoft either took a long time to catch up to, or hasn't caught yet. It's no accident that "Project Athena" was launched the same year. MS-DOS was serious then? You must be kidding. Many of us wonder if they're serious now.
Every year I'm amazed at the brand new Microsoft innovations I became used to back when we hung an onion on our belt.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
As soon as I loaded Vista on my Core Duo, 2ghz notebook with discrete graphics, and as soon as it broke down and cried on my lap, I knew there was no way in hell Vista would ever be acceptable on a netbook.
Had Microsoft had the competence to control their bloat, they wouldn't have gotten caught in this snafu. In software, there are almost no examples where controlling bloat leads to anything but good things.
Look, I knew two of the "Boys from Boca". They knew their stuff. They could make an OS if they cared. They really didn't care.
They hosed that, and we still pay. That bites. I'd hate them for that, but they did teach me some useful stuff so I can't. You can though.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Wouldn't a federation of states also include the right of a state to leave the federation?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
There's a lot of crap that's being passed off as an OS these days, in case you haven't noticed.
Consider yourself spoken to.
I'll tell you something different.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Don't forget the Civil War started largely because some states declared they were seceding from the Union. Lincoln's main aim was to keep the Union a union.
In fact, I still support an old NT 4 server that predates the release of Windows 95.
Sorry, but NT 4 was released *after* Windows 95. NT 4 took the NT operating system and attached Windows 95's GUI to it. Prior to NT 4's release (summer of 96, IIRC), NT 3.5 had the "3.1" look.
So, if the old server you support has a "Start" button, it does *not* predate the release of Windows 95.
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
No they didn't.
:-)
:-)
Republics of Ex-Yugoslavia had the right not to join the federation after the WWII. Once they joined the federation, they had no legal rights to leave. I should know that, my parents come from there.
I most sincerely doubt it's different in any other country in the world - no part of any country can just say "sorry guys, good-bye, we're leaving." and expect the rest of the country to say "oh, swell, farewell and send us a post card!"
Ok, I already see the mountain of comments along the lines of "well, I surely wouldn't object if xxx chose to leave", but it doesn't change a thing about what I just said.
Except in places like China and Thailand. Since the Bush regime destroyed our economy, deflation is a serious concern. Americans don't have the money to pay "American prices" anymore. Microsoft being a mighty spoiled corporation with a mighty high margin, it isn't surprising that they will be the last to notice and adjust. All the better for linux.
And Lord knows THAT worked out...
Nobody said it did. Unfortunately.
"If Microsoft really said Linux was hurting them (and I didn't see where in TFA it says they did, please point me to it if you did)"
.. The Linux operating system, which is also derived from Unix and is available without payment under a General Public License, has gained some acceptance as competitive pressures lead PC OEMs to reduce costs and new, lower price PC form factors gain adoption"
"Client faces strong competition from well-established companies with differing approaches to the PC market
davecb5620@gmail.com
The thing is, originally it was the states that were seen as the countries, not the union. Each was it's own little country loosely associated. Somewhere along the line the union stopped being an association of countries and grew to be seen as THE country. At that time some of the states wanted out.
It'd be akin to the United States suddenly declaring that we no longer wish to part of the United Nations. Right now we all see that as clear cut: the UN is a loose organization and if our country wants to leave we should be able to: we're a sovereign government. The states of the mid 1800's felt largely the same way.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
You can't really know how well or poorly Microsoft pushed the industry without seeing the alternate future that would have come to pass if the playing field had been level.
Sorry, but this is not correct. Yugoslavia was always one state, with a one army, one government, one economy, one anthem, one flag... and so on. Republics of Yugoslavia were from the first day actually much less "independent" than the single states in the USA are.
I've got a laptop behind me that dual boots jaunty/vista/intrepid. I don't have hardy available, but here's the steps in jaunty:
Click on the icon. Select your network. Don't even have to right click anymore (this might be a change that confuses existing users). Additionally, you can store connection settings system-wide to connect on startup rather than login.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
thankfully, for me ATI has never initiated any MITM attacks.
Seems I missed this before...
No, MITM is not about ATI -- Man In The Middle attack. As in, someone between you and ATI. Given you're on wireless, that's not entirely implausible -- but it is completely preventable, by at least signing the software, if not providing it through a common, trusted channel.
What impresses me about Linux, that no one else has done so far, is that it not only provides that additional security, but it makes the process of installing it easier than other methods -- including the Windows methods of downloading or inserting a CD.
The closest, oddly enough, is Apple's App Store, but that's entirely too limited.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Actually I was only speaking as to the situation in the United States regarding the states wanting to secede (sparking the US Civil War). I wasn't referring to (nor do I know anything about) anything dealing with Yugoslavia.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Oh, ok. Sorry, misunderstanding. :-)
It'd be akin to the United States suddenly declaring that we no longer wish to part of the United Nations. Right now we all see that as clear cut: the UN is a loose organization and if our country wants to leave we should be able to: we're a sovereign government.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul82.html
Just callin' it like I see it.
We're not a federation of states, however we should still decentralize government as much as possible.
I'm trying to resist descending into an argument of semantics, but: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation
Just callin' it like I see it.
All well stated, but I would like to add one other point; Windows 1.0 was released on November 20, 1985, but Macintosh was released on January 24, 1984, almost two years earlier (four days short of twenty-two months if you want to get technical), and the 68000 processor, though 16-bit externally, had 32 bit support internally, and could access 16MB.
I'm expressing this opinion from a user's perspective, not describing the fundamental technologies.
I'm describing both.
The fundamental technology is more secure, which does have a real impact on the user's experience.
And, as a user, I'd much rather check several boxes to install several pieces of software than have to download each individually, double-click, then next-next-next. Similarly, to keep it up to date and running smoothly, I'd much rather just have one place to check for updates, than five auto-updaters and an additional ten or fifteen programs I have to manually go back to the website and check.
It's also nice to save bandwidth and disk space by having common libraries distributed exactly once and then shared. And it's nice from a developer's perspective, because I no longer have to worry too much about reducing my dependencies, or favoring "built-in" libraries (included in the target distro) over uncommon ones.
Here was my general experience:
That does suck, no question. However:
I'm going to assume you actually had a need to do it that way. I've got foo2zjs installed, via the Ubuntu package. I didn't deliberately do so -- I'm assuming it was a dependency, somehow.
Restarting cups is exactly the kind of thing that the package manager handles for you -- never mind that I didn't have to compile from source.
And, it should be possible to either take that set of commands and turn them into a script (literally copy and paste them for others to find), or build a custom package. Conversely, it is much harder if I want to write a script for Windows which installs a particular piece of software a certain way, while uninstalling the previous one, etc -- maybe I just don't know how.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
And btw. I haven't seen a single iPhone app in Walmart lately.
bye egghat
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
QNX was released a year later than MS-DOS... and it's a shame that it was!
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
True... there is no way to know what might have happened.
I can only say that for many years, MS dominated for no reason other that the fact that most businesses were dependent on one or more MS products.
Because of this, MS could have moved much slower and cheaper and the market would likely have allowed it. We can see examples of this in the slow adoption of any of MS's new technologies. As it stands, it looks like Vista should have been held back for another year or two in development.
If you consider the speed at which most monopolies innovate, Microsoft has actually done OK (certainly not as good as one would like). A good example are phone, cable, and power companies, when they monopolized their industries they stagnated almost completely; then came VOIP, satellite TV, and ...
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
If you put it like that, both being sarcastic and not being sarcastic can be true. Vista turned out bad, so people try alternative systems or stay with XP.
I am not devoid of humor.
So that means you're either pirating Vista/Win7 or making sure that you have another PC with a legit, bought Windows license to install those versions of Windows on more than 1 PC? No wait, that second thing meant you paid for the OS.
I am not devoid of humor.