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IBM's Answer To Windows 7 Is Ubuntu Linux
An anonymous reader writes "It looks like IBM isn't much of a friend of Microsoft's anymore. Today IBM announced an extension of its Microsoft-Free PC effort together with Canonical Ubuntu Linux. This is the same thing that was announced a few weeks back for Africa (a program that began a year ago), and now it's available in the US. The big push is that IBM claims it will cost up to $2,000 for a business to move to Windows 7. They argue that moving to Linux is cheaper."
If you reduce the cost of software to zero and compete only on the hardware, you shut out some people from the market and trample others with your behemoth size.
Microsoft responded by stating they are happy IBM has found someone new, that's just great, and hey by the way MS is engaged to Dell who is hotter than IBM anyway so there.
I think one of the hindrances for businesses to move to Linux on the desktop is the lack of programs for Linux that allow the complete lock-down of the desktop. In Windows, there are many applications that let you control which users can access different areas in the GUI, well beyond Windows Access Control.
.
I don't know of anything similar in the Linux Desktop Environment to Windows Access Control or the other programs that are out there. Does anyone else?
Ubuntu would be great solution for the enterprise. Basic email and office apps, what more do you need? The only problem with Ubuntu is that it needs more testing and validation before each release cycle. I've had basic functionality break between releases and this will not be acceptable for business use.
...for downloading Ubuntu Linux.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
.... which IBM wouldn't even sell in its own computers. I wish 'em luck in their new endeavor. They'll need it.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Ubuntu works for me. Large community, fixed release schedule.
But whatever your choice, small to medium sized companies need to plan well ahead *before* they get locked in,
otherwise one day you'll be in your office and your MS exchange server will say "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that", then you're stuck with the thing forever.
If Microsoft introduces an incompatible change in Windows 8 (so that, for example a given version of IE can no longer be installed, or a driver for a widely deployed device stops working), it can force a company into unbounded costs of updating their software and hardware. On the other hand, once initial migration to Ubuntu is done, only an effort of a dozen developers would be needed to compile Firefox 1.0 with new libraries, update a driver to work with 2.6 kernel and so on. While for an individual it may be acceptable - and cheaper - to buy new peripherals and applications - IBM can trivially afford custom development costs to keep an operating system running exactly the same way they want it.
It doesn't make sense for any large business with non-trivial needs to run an operating system for which they can not control future direction.
More like "Year of the Linux Desktop Being Used to Reach the Cloud"? Which, I guess, will be good for the 'general' Linux desktop end user anyway. Fallout from this might prove beneficial in things like wider vendor support, more recognition, maybe some driver work in areas where attention is needed (cough Intel GMA500... /cough).
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
$2,000 US to upgrade per machine? I don't know what in the heck IBM is talking about. I've been running Windows 7 on a two year old $500 laptop without any issues since Beta. They are easily over exagerating that cost, in my opinion, and frankly it turns me off of Ubuntu to see them buddying up with IBM in this way.
*On an interesting side note, I wonder if they calculated all the man hours and reworking of customized code that most shops would have to put in to go from a Microsoft shop to all Linux - I seriously doubt it.
**Do we even want to get into the compatability issues with COTS that still plagues Linux?
"Anymore"?
Uhm, there is some history there...
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Linux is the shiv they want to give to MS.
Now if they would take some of that money and develop a market for game houses to make games for it we would have something.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Ubuntu is an impressive distro for reasons many have argued here before. Karmic is actually a great improvement over Jaunty, and I think it's heading in a positive direction.
I might not have seen it, but I think Ubuntu's server area needs professional, detailed, Ubuntu-specific (if needed) DOCUMENTATION on everything an Ubuntu admin would need to use. http://doc.ubuntu.com/ has the most up-to-date version of the Ubuntu Server Guide, which is a decent start. It pales in comparison, however, to the FreeBSD handbook.
Where's the documentation on
GRUB 2?
Upstart?
UEC?
Building your own repository?
Setting up mass deployment via Kickstart/preseeding?
These are all things integral to the operating system and its deployment. I'm not saying Ubuntu has to have the definitive guide to Nagios or other 3rd party software.
Some things are well covered in the Ubuntu Server Guide, "Pro Ubuntu Server Administration" and Prentice Hall's "The Official Ubuntu Server Book". I would like to see more enterprise tooling and documentation for Ubuntu Server before I expect them to make a significant trench in the enterprise space.
And for those who might say Ubuntu is a desktop-oriented distro,
1) You haven't seen the work or the marketing Ubuntu has done on their server side, and
2) I think Ubuntu could succeed if they can market themselves as THE operating system for an organization.
A good point, but let's not forget that under the glitzy GUI Ubuntu is STILL Linux, and you can lock it down just as tight as any other distribution with a bit of elbow grease. Security is hardly one of Linux's black marks.
If you aren't angry, you aren't paying attention.
Has anyone here been able to find a good guide for joining a Linux client to an AD domain?
ViewTouch
now sod off you stupid troll
And don't give me crap about open office solutions. It took most of these people 10 or 20 years to just get by with Office, you really think they are going to want to essentially re-learn everything? $2000 is only relevant if the people are actually fairly computer savy, which pretty much everyone everywhere is not nor do they care to bother.
I have converted several MS Office users to Open Office, they have never complained. It usually came down to one simple issue, $339.99 or free, pick one, they are the same. This is my experience with office workers, executives, and my 60 year old mom. There is almost no relearning, no one complains especially when the boss says thats how it is. If you disagree perhaps you should give open office a try, its not the same piece of crap you installed 10 years ago....
Ahhhh, the sweet sweet smell of Microsoft FUD.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
> ...there's no low to mid range POS software that runs on *nix.
True. "Piece Of Shit" software is a Microsoft specialty.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
It must make you very mad that I am at this very moment printing a map, and listening to pandora.com all the while using my wireless on ubuntu 8.10.
Do you get paid to shill?
Uhh . . .
Ubuntu needs 256 MB RAM and ~8 GB (they say four, but from personal experience, you need at least 8) of Hard drive space.
Windows 7 needs 1 GB RAM and 16GB Disk.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_(operating_system)
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
Ubuntu is in the market since Windows XP, and it didn't even break through the Vista gap, if this is IBM's answer to Windows 7, sorry it is a very wrong answer
But wait, isn't this anti-competitive? Isn't that what everyone around here always shouts about Microsoft being bundled with computers bought from major vendors? Shouldn't Slashdot be lambasting IBM for not allowing their users to install whichever OS they want? Shouldn't Slashdot be demanding that IBM's computers be sold with no OS whatsoever? Or is it only anti-competitive if Microsoft does it?
I love how when anyone on Slashdot says anything pro-Microsoft or anti-*nix, they are immediately branded a troll.
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
You heard it here first: Ubuntu IBMs unavailable in 10 weeks, timed conveniently with new promotional pricing on Windows 7 on IBM hardware...
The big push is that IBM claims it will cost up to $2,000 for a business to move to Windows 7. They argue that moving to Linux is cheaper. Only $2000 for the likes of Wal-mart, Exxon or Coca-cola to move to Windows 7 ? I doubt Linux can be done anywhere near that cheap.
so MS can't threaten to raise their per-license costs for computers. It was never "friendship", especially after the NT-OS/2 split, just a business arrangement.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
If someone utilizes Excel to its full potential, they would be pissed off if they switched to Open Office, because, frankly, Calc doesn't have the high-end functions that Excel does.
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
MS-DOS beat PC-DOS NT3.5 beat OS/2 Heck, you can argue that MS SQL Server is beating DB2 If I were choosing a side in this fight, I'd stick with Microsoft...
I love how the trolls all have more than one account.
Devil's advocate:
I am sure that if Linux had the market share that Windows does, it would have many more security problems. Part of the reason that Linux doesn't have security problems is because most of the bad guys of the technology world don't care about it, therefore they don't concentrate their efforts on it. This is not to say that it isn't secure. It is quite secure. However, just because security holes aren't utilized on a wide scale doesn't mean they are not there.
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
If someone utilizes Excel to its full potential, they would be pissed off if they switched to Open Office, because, frankly, Calc doesn't have the high-end functions that Excel does.
Yeah thats why nobody should buy Toyota cars when obviously every driver needs Ferrari performance.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Because that's how much it would cost to have an Indian replace their job if they cant adapt.
Western societies have lost the ability to compete, rather then sink or swim they'd rather sue the water for being there in the first place.
Most of the people I know would be able to adapt to Ubuntu and Open Office in no time, the problem is fear, once you get people to get over their fear teaching them a new system is easy. There is also an advantage to doing this migration in a herd. For an individual it may take months to learn a new system completely but when all their co-workers are learning it as well the less bright workers often receive the benefits of the brighter workers (just like they do now with windows). There is always one non-IT person in a team that can point out "this is how you do that" to other team members.
The only people who will have problems with Linux are the people who currently have problems with Windows. In (Australian) schools how to use computers and office suites have been taught to every student for the last 12 years as being able to use them is considered a necessary skill in today's society. My generation (I'm 27) was the last generation to produce a significant number of people who couldn't use a PC, even then it's hard to find a 30 yr old who cant use a computer.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
The past 6 months for several clients I have been running Proof of Concepts of moving from Desktop infrastructure to VDI(Virtual Desktop Infrastructure)
Microsoft have made licensing for running Windows desktops in a virtual environment so insane and added ridiculous costs just for the privilege of running Windows XP, Vista or 7 in a data centre that when you look at the ROI you don't see a massive benefit of shedding hardware.
A couple of those clients are actually now investigating migrations from Windows desktop to Ubuntu/SUSE Linux and running legacy Windows applications from Sun SGD/Windows Termial Server.
VDI offers huge opportunities for companies to shed the upkeep and maintenance of desktops and Microsoft are putting in as many hurdles as humanly possible to keep companies purchasing desktops every 3-4 years so they can still get their Microsoft tax from OEM's. I'm advising anyone these days to assess their dependence on windows if they are looking at VDI solutions and investigate deployments in Linux.
"It looks like IBM isn't much of a friend of Microsoft's anymore."
Anymore? This is old news. Remember OS/2?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I think everyone here is missing the point. This is less about how accurate IBM's claims are, and more about the fact a company as large as IBM with a name that established was actually willing to publicly say it. That by itself is a major benifit for Linux.
This is all about momentum, marketing, and market share. I mean seriously, we act as if Microsoft has never made erroneous or speculative claims in the spirit of customer coercion. This is how business works.
ANd that 1% of the CFOs that do, can still use Excel. If more people NEEDED the advance functionality then it is more likely to be added to Calc.
Half of writing history is hiding the truth.
Excel does have some nifty stuff hiding in it, but most never see it. i do some crazy financial stuff in calc with no issue, there may be some areas were excel is better, but they don't matter to rank and file users. Many of the insane things i see done in excel really belong in a different environment. R or C perhaps, there are many options.
I have also done 500+ page documents in writer and found it to work much better then the word or wp. Regardless of a feature comparison, the main reason i ran to open office was the ribbon interface in office.
I am pretty sure that the banks that rely on Linux on zSeries to manage billions of dollars of transactions per day would disagree with you. Is that not a valuable enough target for the "bad guys?"
Palm trees and 8
Agreed. The AC must have hardly tried. Installed it on 4 laptops ranging from new to about 5 years only, and only once has a wireless driver not work for me. That was about a year ago with Ubuntu 7.1.
Half of writing history is hiding the truth.
"I wonder how IBM arrived at the result of $2000."
From the actual press release: Independent market estimates range up to $2,000 for the cost of migrating to the Windows 7 operating system for many PC users. New PC hardware requirements account for a significant portion of the added expense.
For those that care, the Actual IBM press release
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/28649.wss
Disclosure: I do not work for IBM.
I find it interesting that these stories never seem to talk about the cost of retraining in that switch from Windows to Linux in the work place. The authors must be those same people that keep writing about how software companies should replace boxed product with downloading because bandwidth is free.
I'm not saying that many companies wouldn't benefit financially from the switch. Many would. But there are a lot that wouldn't. Anyone who thinks the Microsoft license and the cost of the hardware are the only expenses has no business being a decision-maker in their company's IT.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
the question was "Do you believe insider trading is rampant within IBM?"
Apache would like to have a word with you.
Sure, let's talk about Apache then: Apache 2.2.x, 17 advisories, 28 vulnerabilities, 2 unpatched. IIS 7.x, 2 advisories, 2 vulnerabilities, all patched. Are you going to apologize now? I didn't think so.
Do you get paid to shill?
Being a devil's advocate on an issue != being a troll on an issue, but pretending to be a devil's advocate just so you can FUD = Troll.
You don't know what you're talking about (as shown above), and you attack the person instead of the message. On top of that, you've been spamming your silly "shilling" accusation all over the place, no matter what other posters say. I think you're the troll here, and not a very bright one either.
Windows Server products meet those criteria too - provided you configure them in a specific way which renders them unable to run most off the shelf applications, and do not apply any updates between Service Pack releases.
Too bad your users don't have the same freedoms you enjoy. You're right—software freedom is the way to go. Sharing and improving, truly controlling one's own computer and the social solidarity that gives rise to is the single most important reason why nobody should use proprietary software. Including yours.
Digital Citizen
maybe some driver work in areas where attention is needed (cough Intel GMA500... /cough).
Except that the GMA500 driver is not open-source:
The driver is developed by Tungsten Graphics, not by Intel, and the graphic core is not an Intel one, but is licensed from PowerVR. This has led to close source 3d accelerated drivers, instability and lack of support.
rtfw
Anybody want my mod points?
Windows expertise fairly cheaply
Like the sidekick cheap?
or London stock exchange cheap?
The deal you get on the back of a napkin during a nice lunch is soon gone with recovery and the PR mess of epic fail.
The only thing cheap about MS is the first try as a student to get you hooked.
Just like a smart drug dealer at the gates.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I know of ten or twenty national air traffic control systems which run Linux.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I am sure that if Linux had the market share that Windows does, it would have many more security problems.
Seeing as you like devil's advocacy, let's examine this for a statement for a minute. It seems reasonable to me that many hackers would prefer to compromise a server rather than a desktop seeing as servers are always on so they're great for a bot-net node and many of them have more interesting things going through them like e-commerce, banking, etc. Let's think about this in light of the fact that according to this article Steve Ballmer himself recently thought Linux has a 60 percent share of the server market.
If that's even remotely close to being true, then it doesn't stand to reason that hackers aren't trying to exploit it. I'd posit that they are. For some reason they just aren't succeeding very well. Hmmm.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Why would I apologize that Apache talks about their issues and the IIS team hides them?
I think your the same guy as the one above, which does not really matter. The fact is he has been spreading FUD throughout this page and I called him out, so what?
And I love how the Linux fanbois on /. will drown out all other thought. Linux is not as superior as you all would have the world believe. Sure, Windows has a crapload of problems and MS is just an evil company - and we all love making jokes about Sweaty Steve... but seriously - Linux on the Desktop still has a LONG way to go before it can really permeate the mainstream userbase. One of the biggest reasons? Linux still requires some level of computing competence to use. Most users - especially non-tech-industry business users - avoid this competence like they flock to MBA alumni get-togethers.
/. irrationality when it comes to the OS wars. Windows has a lot of suck wrapped up in it, we can all agree - but Linux isn't ready to be the desktop alternative yet either. It's just not.
I'm kinda getting tired of the
IMHO, the OP wasn't so much trolling as he was just wrong. For dedicated machinery like a POS box, or a mail gateway, or a DNS server, or anything where you're locking the box down and making it perform specific functions, there's probably no better option than Linux. But for a multi-use, end-user machine that is being used by anyone for anything, Linux just isn't there yet.
Down with the career politician! SUPPORT TERM LIMITS
And don't give me crap about open office solutions. It took most of these people 10 or 20 years to just get by with Office, you really think they are going to want to essentially re-learn everything?
Unless you're like my employer, which uses Access as a platform on which to run an off-the-shelf VBA app (from which we're slowly migrating), is the retraining from Microsoft Office 2003 to OOo 3.x with its traditional menus really that much harder than the retraining from Microsoft Office 2003 to Microsoft Office 2007 with its ribbon?
Try ubuntu. The reality is it has gotten there, you just don't want to admit it.
Heck, I would say it has gotten further in the install and go department than windows probably ever will. Both Gnome and KDE are brain dead easy to use.
If someone utilizes Excel to its full potential, they would be pissed off if they switched to Open Office, because, frankly, Calc doesn't have the high-end functions that Excel does.
Yeah thats why nobody should buy Toyota cars when obviously every driver needs Ferrari performance.
Enough with the car analogies. Besides, the guy is right. Calc is the Hyundai of spreadsheets. Works fine for ma and pa, but it sucks for anything significantly complicated.
I believe IBM's estimates on Windows 7 upgrading costs about as much as I believe Microsoft's TCO Linux estimates which is to say not at all. Come on - if you guys can't look at that $2,000 number, roll your eyes and mumble something about marketing then you're hopeless....
Screw that, Ubuntu server needs to reliably support installing on Software raid. (tried it, failed, used debian instead)
Successful exploitation requires that a threaded Multi-Processing Module is used and that the mod_proxy_ftp module is enabled. (...) An error in the included APR-util library can be exploited to trigger hangs in the prefork and event MPMs on Solaris.
And the second (first in order on the site) unpatched vulnerability deals strictly with a mod_ftp input validation issue. Again, I rarely even see mod_ftp even used as opposed to an entirely seperate FTP server daemon but disabling the faulty module is simple enough in environments requiring absolute security.
And input validation issues are usually patched fairly quickly anyways, I mean come on, this is 2009 and there are too many developers for the project that wouldn't let this sort of thing continue for this amount of time. Not to mention the fact that these unpatched vulnerabilities are nothing compared to the olde IIS Webdav exploit of a few years ago - too bad there wasn't a community aware of it sooner other than the underground black hats already using it to their advantage by the time it was brought to the attention of MS.
Please don't ever use the Wine as an example of Linux being compatible with Windows software. Because a huge majority of programs simply don't work with it, and those that do have had special coding done in Wine to make them work, and even then they are as buggy as hell.
I'm not trying to bash Wine, I'm simply stating the facts as observed from four years of using Linux on the desktop.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
Why isn't IBM jumping first, and take the lead to move the whole IBM to Linux desktop? You know, the do-what-you-are-preaching concept? Last week, 5 IBM people came to our office to pitch for a 3 million contract, and I saw every single person (technical and sales) is running Windows Vista, with the latest MS Office. The only thing I recognized as IBM-made is Lotus Notes, which we also use here.
About 8 years ago, it was the same thing with Sun. We had a bunch of Sun people came to our office (another company), and they kept bitching about MS Windows and MS Office, while at the same time preaching Linux and Star Office. And guess what they were running? Yeah, you got it. At one point, I had enough of their bitching, I told them with a straight face: "Why don't you guys install Linux and Star Office, and send me that fucking slide in open format?" They looked at me as if I was from Mars, then I turned on my laptop, and it was running Linux.
One suggestion to the big guys: don't preach, do it. Then everyone will follow, you have enough clout to take the lead.
Change takes time, especially when companies have been used to various programs such as Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, Excel and Outlook. As SparafucileMan noted, it can take months before people are 'adjusted' to Linux systems. If you're wanting your workplace to operate under a *nix environment, bring it in slowly and teach people as you go, don't push it hard and fast.
Are you suggesting that I have multiple accounts, and use them to troll? Sorry, wrong on both accounts. I have only one account, and I merely state my opinion, or even the opposite of my opinion, in order to avoid the mob mentality. I know that if one wants to be popular on slashdot, one must be a *nix fanboy. It is good that I don't want to be popular. I like to point out multiple sides of issues. I have defended both Open source and closed source, Linux and Microsoft. If I wanted to troll, do you really think I would use my real account name, and risk karma? Wouldn't it be easier to just post AC? Before you go branding someone a troll, consider the possibility that they are merely trying to establish a point of view that may be counter to your own.
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
If someone utilizes Excel to its full "potential," they're probably producing absolute garbage:
http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~jsimonof/classes/1305/pdf/excelreg.pdf
http://www.daheiser.info/excel/frontpage.html
And to quote from the secunia website:
"PLEASE NOTE: The statistics provided should NOT be used to compare the overall security of products against one another. It is IMPORTANT to understand what the below comments mean when using the statistics, especially when using the statistics to compare the vulnerability aspects of different products."
But just for fun - don't forget that IIS needs to run on Windows: 212 Secunia advisories, 282 Vulnerabilities, 12 Unpatched...
That's the secunia report for Windows 2003 "Web Edition" - which is reasonably representative. Compare that to OpenBSD.
Goodluck with that! :)
I can see that one going down:
CFO: "Why can't I open this spreadsheet that accounting sent me?"
IT: "You're using Open Office...that spreadsheet was made in Excel and Open Office doesn't support X feature."
CFO: "Well how the hell can I open it then?"
IT: "We need to wait for enough other people to have the problem and for the developers to add the features."
CFO: "My god...how long will that take?"
IT: "Could be a few weeks, maybe months...or never."
CFO: "Fuck that. I don't have time to waste. You said Excel will open in? Get that installed on here NOW!"
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
"New PC hardware requirements account for a significant portion of the added expense."
FUD. I'm running Windows 7 happily on a machine that has 512 MB RAM and 1GHz processor.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
I've had lots of troubles with some of the Broadcom cards and the newer b43 drivers have yet to work properly for me. Similar experience with the Atheros cards. The new driver works with one of my four cards. The rest have to be cycled back to the non-free driver. No big deal... just, the How-To should probably mention that up front [try the legacy driver first] before diving into major config changes at the CLI.
Otherwise, I'm no hater. I've been going strong for the past 12 years and while Linux isn't exactly for everyone, it's been fantastic for me.
OpenOffice development is glacial. You might see it added to Calc-- if you live a very long time.
Comment of the year
Unless I missed something about buying Lenovo back from the Chinese...
There needs to be a Godwin extension that refers to the first time Wine is used in a discussion about how Linux can replace Windows.
I wonder how IBM arrived at the result of $2000.
Actually I wonder how slashdot arrived at it's headline. The way it's written it sounds like the entire business could be moved over for $2000 (ie not per PC). Now that'd be a bargain wouldn't it? ;-)
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Microsoft's strong point has always been weird hardware, applications and development tools, since day 1 of Microsoft.
This is my sig.
WHen I bought the wife unit a Dell Mini 9 with Ubuntu pre-installed a few months ago, she looked at it and asked if I was joking.
She had seen/used my Mandriva w/ KDE4.2 laptop and even used the Puppy on the old desktop so she was willing to go for a Leenuxy thing.
She took one look at the ugly Gnome interface and asked why I had installed this ugly Windows 95 that was depressing.
I laughed so hard she thought I was laughing at her and not at the sad brown desktop and I almost slept on the sofa that night.
I installed something else the following day and got lucky that same night.
Damn you Ubuntu! Why you gotta be so ugly?
I might not have seen it, but I think Ubuntu's server area needs professional, detailed, Ubuntu-specific (if needed) DOCUMENTATION on everything an Ubuntu admin would need to use. http://doc.ubuntu.com/ has the most up-to-date version of the Ubuntu Server Guide, which is a decent start. It pales in comparison, however, to the FreeBSD handbook.
You know, there could be a hint in there somewhere. ;)
Just use FreeBSD. Trying to get anything meaningful done with Ubuntu is like playing with a Rubik's cube while having your head stuck with one of those steel amputation traps that Jigsaw uses in the Saw movies.
These employees, who would take months on the transition between two sets of software with extremely similar feature sets...
How productive are they again?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Wait, that's Microsoft FUD? I thought he was talking about Windows!
-- Tim Little
Why is accounting running rogue software without permission from the CFO? How about "CFO: Why the hell is this accounting peon running Excel when the company switched to Open Office months ago? Fire him for piracy."
If you don't implement a standard company-wide, then you will run into trouble. Simple.
It must make you very mad that I am at this very moment printing a map, and listening to pandora.com all the while using my wireless on ubuntu 8.10.
Do you get paid to shill?
Do you know of anyone who's offering paid shilling positions? I could use some extra money, and this is hard work, ya know. ;)
Instead of Windows, they went with OS/2, which bombed, at least in mainstream terms.
OS/2 Warp was by far a better operating system than Windows 3.x and Windows 95, but Windows then had an easier go of hardware compatibility because it could work with existing DOS based stuff, and OS/2 was a wholesale replacement. The problem with OS/2, was, that Windows NT was better than it.
This is my sig.
Is it just a coincidence, or is IBM displaying a new confidence now that the whole SCO v.s. Linux adventure is over?
eh. Situations like this one...
I've noticed that many formulas or cells with equations in them in general end up becoming a static number when opened in Calc from Excel.
The data is there, the results are there, the charts are there... etc. The only real problem turns up when that CFO needs to edit it. And odds are really high that is not the case. (In which case, it should have been presented to him as a static image or pdf.) And when the CFO needs to make edits, he either has Excel or he dictates the changes that need to be made and the minions go ahead and do it.
ERROR: SIG NOT FOUND (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?:
I think they're going for desktop here, seeing as how they're comparing it to win7.
I thought IBM was still pushing redhat for lower end servers, and AIX for big iron?
Sent from my PDP-11
In the wild lions, tigers and bears do not go after the most abundant prey. They go after the easiest prey.
I really don't understand what problem you could have with my above comment. I mean, it is simply statistics. If Ubuntu was the OS that everyone used, then people who wanted to do harm to others' computers would be finding every security hole they could find and utilize in order to accomplish their nefarious goals. Linux has holes. Deal with it. It doesn't have as many as Windows, but they are there. You are obviously a fanboy in the extreme. Have you noticed that many of your comments, just on this page, have been marked as Troll? Does this not tell you that maybe you are getting a bit out of hand with your zealotry? Listen, I've used Linux. I've used Windows. They both have their ups and downs. I seriously don't understand what, in my above comment, you had such a problem with.
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
I have converted several MS Office users to Open Office, they have never complained.
I tried to convert myself to OpenOffice, and had to give up after I encountered too many bugs. For example, paragraphs would jump from one page to another; three ways to anchor an image, all wrong; table of contents is way too complex and not matching the pagination of the hour. I'm sure there were other issues also. That was pre-2.x OpenOffice, something like 1.4.x, but still it was a production release and it just was not dependable. I wasn't even importing Word documents - the whole document was written in OO from start to finish, and it was highly problematic.
I currently have the latest OO installed on this laptop at home, and I'm trying to use it again, carefully. Absence of that horrible ribbon is definitely nice. But reliability-wise MS Office is probably still better. Fortunately, I do not demand too much of reliability at home. At work we all use MS Office 2007.
Sure, let's talk about Apache then: Apache 2.2.x, 17 advisories, 28 vulnerabilities, 2 unpatched. IIS 7.x, 2 advisories, 2 vulnerabilities, all patched. Are you going to apologize now? I didn't think so.
Oh boy. You fail so much, it's not even funny.
What you mean are published vulnerabilities. What you are not mentioning are
- those than MS and the crackers know exactly about, and
- those that linger in the code, because nobody can check for them
Apache has more *known* vulnerabilities. This is something *completely different* from just more vulnerabilities.
With IIS, they are simply not known. And why not?
Because MS sued websites listing unofficial vulnerabilities into oblivion!
We sorted your argument out a looooong time ago.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I for one use PDF export, Flash export, and other similar features missing from Microsoft Office
Office has had PDF export for... a couple years? I'm not sure if it was in the first pressings of Office 2007 and may have been in it's SP1 (I think it has an SP1), but I definitely have a PDF export option in my Office installation, and it's definitely at least a plugin from MS.
The difference between the two though is MS Office 2007 changed for the worse- not the better.
My experience is that the changes of Office 2007 were very polarizing. A lot of people (often technically inclined) hate the changes, a lot of people really like them. Now that I'm done saying that, I'm pretty indifferent; time to adjust for me was pretty low, but I don't find myself feeling more productive either. (I'm not a heavy Office user; I was using PowerPoint a lot a few months ago, but that's about it.)
Go and spend 24 hours or so on Ubuntu's forums before you try and tell me it is stable.
That's your argument against Ubuntu? Do you know just how many forums are dedicated to solving various Windows fuckups?
the problem is fear, once you get people to get over their fear teaching them a new system is easy.
Even worse problem is that many people actively do not want to learn a new system. Instead they use the new system as a justification why their work is not done yet. I had such workers. You have only two options with them - either fire them or to satisfy their every whim, until they run out of excuses. If I were free to choose, the former option would be frequently used. But there are other opinions and other considerations; an essential worker with unique knowledge is often valued more than all the computer equipment and software he can possibly need.
I even agree with you that modern western workers are lazy. Often they feel entitled to the job and to the salary, even if they don't do much to earn them. That's when these tricks with excuses are played, pitting IT against their managers. This is one of reasons why using non-mainstream equipment and software is risky.
I 'fail'? I made a hypothesis, had several point out ways in which Linux had the marketshare in servers, and I 'fail'?
I was wrong. But, 'fail'? I truly hate how anytime someone is shown to be wrong in some way, even if they weren't establishing something as fact, if they were merely hypothesizing, they 'fail'. When I hear someone say, 'Fail', I picture some 13 or 14 year old boy who just got their first hair on their sac, and are trying to impress someone. The fact that you are using it while posting AC just makes me wonder more and more about whether or not you should be using words like 'fucking'. Your mother may need to wash your mouth out, little boy.
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
Well, I stand corrected. The only thing I can think of to say that it isn't quite the same is the fact that servers generally have more in-depth security administrating than a home pc. I do, however, completely see your point about servers being a bigger target.
By the way, I appreciate the fact that you posted a well-thought out, polite rebuttal to my comment. So many on this site instantly go to accusations and threats when they read a point of view they do not like. Especially on this particular article's discussion.
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
FUD. I'm running Windows 7 happily on a machine that has 512 MB RAM and 1GHz processor.
FUD. My work laptop has 2 GB of RAM, 3 GHz CPU (two cores, IIRC) and it is too slow for intensive work. In the business environment booting Windows is not enough - you also need to open and keep running Outlook, Word, Excel, a corporate antivirus, a dozen of other system utilities installed by the IT, an IM, IE (a dozen tabs,) and often a poorly written "enterprise" app that will gladly eat all the RAM that you have and ask for more. All that is supposed to run very snappily, and not wedge the laptop for 5 minutes when you switch applications.
The MS machines I run are all virtual on Linux except for a gaming machine. I don't need Wine at all.
You need Windows then.
If I have an issue with any particular machine I can just revert to a clean VM, and for some I use snapshots
That's a good thing about VMs. However starting with Windows XP if not 2000, Windows needs to be activated. That specifically was one of the reasons I switched from MS Windows to first Linux then OS X.
Unless you think IBM is going to offer Ubuntu with WINE pre-installed??
Ubuntu can install WINE, it's in the repositories.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
CFO: Why the hell is this accounting peon running Excel when the company switched to Open Office months ago?
IT: Because this peon is an outside contractor working for an accounting company that you hired. That company has 10,000 employees, 50,000 clients and I don't think they will want to switch to OpenOffice just for us.
make that medium iron.
Sent from my PDP-11
If Windows 7 can run on a $70 Atom board, and run reasonably (using the 230 and 330, not the crappier laptop versions), then I fail to see why it costs $2k in hardware to switch.
I'm all for more Linux in the world, but let's be honest here. IBM has had a stake in migrating businesses to Linux for quite some time now. We have to follow the money when IBM says something, and realize that in many ways they are serving their own self-interests.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
IBM pushes a lot of stuff, really. They also push SUSE whenever it suits them, seems they're a bit cautious to push one vendor only.. Wonder why..
-- Linux user #369862
Well - I've been at this for awhile, and I have never seen this happen. When I first saw your insightfully post, it was marked +3 Insightful, and I added another insightful. Immediately after my moderation, it was +2 Insightful. Then after I posted the comment above, invalidating my moderation, it was 2. Now it is at 1. The ms shills must be jumping all over you, and I suppose you will end up at -1 flamebait. Sorry - I tried, and of course now I'm locked out of moderating in this topic.
That is of course mindless numerology.
What the actual problems are is the important thing. Otherwise an untested application run only by me that I can't bother recording the problems of wins every time - zero reported bugs! Reality is where applications that are actually peer reviewed and the problems fixed are the better ones. In the past IIS was very poorly tested, so while there were very few known problems a lot of unknown ones kept cropping up and bringing the thing down in a steaming heap. I have not touched it since because the same claims of perfection we hear now were made about their unusable early releases.
Sounds like a problem with that poorly written enterprise app, not Windows 7. I multitask all the time...Firefox, Word, Visual Studio, Zune software...and it's not slow.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
You clearly have never worked inside a large company, or if you did, you didn't pay attention. They have better things to do with their precious developer talent than recompile Firefox and Linux kernels all the time. Stuff like writing Visual Basic applications to assure that they will forever be tied to Windows, leaps immediately to mind. Oh, wait...
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
I should qualify that by saying that this is on a different machine with 2 gigs of ram...I use the 512 MB machine for surfing the web and taking notes.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
High end functions? Such as?
It's just a spreadsheet, it's not Mathematica or MATLAB. If you want to use stuff from Mathematica both Openoffice.org and MS Excel can do that with a plugin.
And don't give me crap about open office solutions. It took most of these people 10 or 20 years to just get by with Office, you really think they are going to want to essentially re-learn everything?
Yeah, like Office 2007?
It's an incredible time sink and absolutely crazy that you can't enable a 'classic' interface so you don't spend 45 minutes doing some simple task that you could do with 2 clicks before.
There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come.
Definitely not a Troll, unless Steve Ballmer has mod points, today.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
This is not off-topic.
I happened to notice today that Apple surpassed IBM in market capitalization (the total value of their stock) about a month ago. Apple has been on a tear for the last five years, growing about 24x. Even though IBM has a valued brand, a deep patent portfolio, committed customers and a broad portfolio they haven't kept up with that pace. I think that the last technology company Apple has to surpass in company value is Microsoft - and they're closing in. Apple's executing well not just in PC Hardware (where they've cornered the market on premium PCs at over 80%), but in media where they've pretty much taken all of the market for online distribution of music (and they're working on video), and in cellular phones where they're a serious threat to Blackberry. So Apple is not just in a wider base of markets than IBM and Microsoft - they're winning in all the markets they're in. They're executing well.
Microsoft wants to be Apple but Zune, Plays For Now and the Microsoft Danger FaceKick isn't going to gain them new customers in the new markets they need to win. The have a considerable negative partnering history to overcome. If Steve Jobs got a good stock incentive to come back and rescue Apple in 1996 he should die the world's richest man. Since I'm talking about how smart he is, here's a quote:
"There's an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. 'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.' And we've always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very very beginning. And we always will."
IBM could do these things and the fine article is an indication that they're slowly interested in doing so. I wish them well - I prefer committed open source to Apple's exploitation of BSD's liberal terms, though I have to admit it's more of a personal bias than a difference in utility. I don't think IBM can pull this off without outside help. The Boys From Boca thing was, as far as I can tell from subsequent history, a one-off incident of accidental genius.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Linux has been at it for 15 years and (as indicated by an earlier slashdot story this very day) sound is still broken out of the box on Ubuntu.
And you still can't reliably cut and paste between apps.
Not exactly ready for prime time.
"The urge to fly from modern systems, instead of moving through them to even greater, fairer things is, I think, an indi
So just because Windows is unstable, that lets Ubuntu off the hook, does it?
That's always the standard comeback. "No matter how bad Linux is, Windows is worse!!!1!1"
Congrats also to the groupthinking drone who modded you Insightful.
I'll have more hope for Linux when there is a SIMPLE repository for software the average person can visit and download and install software.
ClickNRun does most of what you ask. Once the client is installed, not yet available for all Linux distros, you can browse for software, or search for something specific and once you find what you want to install click to install. The client will download and install the program. Uninstalling is just as easy. CNR has FOSS as well as commercial/proprietary software, showing on the front page now is Parallels and CrossOver. For game lovers there are more than 1000 games, digital photography has 530, just to check two categories.
Looking through the client list though the latest Ubuntu I see supported is 8.04.
P.S - I have not had a chance to weigh in on Windows 7 yet, but if Microsoft keeps continuing pushing out shit like Vista, it will be Linux against Mac, not Linux against Microsoft.
From what I've read Windows 7 is what Vista was supposed to be, a better Windows. It's supposed to be stable and is smaller. If it weren't for the fact that Microsoft requires Activation and spyware I'd be tempted to install it on my Mac and triple boot, run Snow Leopard, Ubuntu, and Windows 7.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
That asde, to use that as an example is a bit disingenuous. You're presenting a serious edge case as the norm.
Sure it is for home use, but how many corporate users don't have admin rights to their desktop box at work?
With all the viruses and spyware crap going around if corporations allow users to install software instead of requiring IT to do it, they get what they deserve. Some places even block the use of USB flash drives and CDs.
Of course, this discussion is becoming more and more moot; with Vista, Windows assumes that any installer should be run with admin rights even if it would run OK without, which means that non-admins can't install stuff any more either. IMO this was a really stupid decision on MS's part, and it's the main problem I have with Vista's UAC.
You may not like it but MS finally got smart with that and followed OS X and other Unices like Linux by requiring admin privileges to install software.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I think this is news to lots of users of Ubuntu.. A huge collective WTF??
My wife got a new computer a few years ago that came bundled with a printer. The printer came with drivers for XP and Vista only. There were no drivers for Win 98, 2K pro, ME (don't laugh.. Wife's laptop for school)
Our printers are all connected to the wireless router using a dongle printserver. We returned the printer for incompatibility with the rest of the Windows machines on the Lan, not the Linux machine. The troll for printer compatiblity is shooting a dead horse. Any machine in the house on either the wired or wirless lan can easily print to any printer on the lan.
We use printservers like this one on all our printers. It saves ink. It makes using the laser instead of a inkjet easy. No cables are required to print from laptops. The LAN, Printserver, and printers are all compatible with Linux. Windows often requires install drivers for the printer and printserver. Linux simply requires entering the printserver IP address and select a compatible driver. The port for the laser is for example located at //192.168.1.101/prn on our LAN. Getting Vista to connect to it took two hours and a google search.
Vista wants a printserver name and doesn't like a printserver on an IP address or one not in your DNS server. Printer compatibility isses are not a Linux issue. Windows is much harder to connect. Vista also required a registry tweak to connect to a Simple Share Printserver. That took 8 hours of my day off and a google search to connect my wife's new laptop to our fileserver. Linux could connect either using Netbios SMB, or NFS. Vista couldn't authenticate to login.
http://www.jr.com/trendnet/pe/TRD_TE100P1P/ Network printserver
http://www.simpleshare.com/ Network attached storage
The truth shall set you free!
Windows 7 also requires Activation. Though Microsoft has made 7 more stable, I also switched because I don't like being treated like a criminal or being spied on. Neither my Linux PC nor my MacBook Pro require it. Nor do they require it again when hardware has been added or swapped. And both my Linux PC and my MacBook Pro are easy to use and polished, though the Mac is better. Actually my Linux PC was easier to setup and use than the Windows PC it replaced, for most things.
Its getting there, but I do not recommend a linux box to my family.
A few months ago my brother-in-law asked me what I thought of the netbooks Target was carrying, Asus I think, with Linux. I told him as long as all he wanted to do was surf the web, check email, or work on plain documents they were fine. But if he wanted to do some intensive computations, he used to work as a day trader, they would not be good.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Ehhh. I like Ubuntu. I've used it as a home server for a while now, and it's worked fine as a web and file server, and easy to configure and install. Also, last time I tried to install FreeBSD 7.2 a checksummed CD failed to install due to some BIOS failure.
I think Ubuntu needs to focus on stability and integration on their LTS. It's a great desktop distro, and a pretty good, easy to use server.
No IBM is mainly a services company. That's why they sold their PC devision to a Chinese company. IBM does sell hardware still but it relies more on services and software.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Because MS sued websites listing unofficial vulnerabilities into oblivion!
Can you provide a reference for that?
Apache 2.2.x released Dec. 2005.
IIS 7.x released Feb. 2008.
IIS 7.x runs on exactly one OS (don't list multiple version of Windows as multiple OSes, Apache runs on them, too.)
I did the same analysis for older Apache 2.x versions and IIS6 before. Apache still loses, sorry.
Depends. There are a bunch of man pages on the grub commands, and there's /etc/grub.d/README and /etc/default/grub for the menu configuration. There's also Google.
http://upstart.ubuntu.com/
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEC
Apt supports file:/, so you can use that if it's just for personal use. Otherwise, you apparently just replicate the directory structure of an existing repository on your server and generate the necessary files. (Google produced many quick guides on how to do this.)
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/
https://help.ubuntu.com/7.04/installation-guide/i386/preseed-using.html
All except GRUB and "building your own repository" were found in less than a minute on Google.
Remember that Ubuntu is mostly an amalgam of discrete software packages, all bundled up nice and neat. The best place to look for documentation is usually the origin.
Apache 2.2 Release Date: December 01, 2005
IIS 7.x Release Date: Feb 27, 2008
Apache 2.0 - released in April 2002 - 38 vulnerabilities.
IIS 6.x - released in April 2003 - 8 vulnerabilities.
Care to extrapolate?
Enough with the car analogies. Besides, the guy is right. Calc is the Hyundai of spreadsheets. Works fine for ma and pa, but it sucks for anything significantly complicated.
Oh, the irony. People (Americans especially, it seems) love to diss Korean cars, but this is changing lately as they begin to notice that quality is already there and largely on par with established brands, and you get more features for lower price, too - and better warranty to boot. Have you seen the sales figures for Hyundai Santa Fe?
So it's fairly interesting that you compare OO.org to Hyundai...
$2,000 to upgrade any business to Windows 7 seems like a bargain. Sadly, in the end, you'll still be running Windows.
In my case there is POS software. Mine.
CFO: Then find me one that will, and remind me never to hire those fuckers again.
Or what, you think that if an outside contractor sent them an OO.o document, they'd switch away from MSO? quit dreaming.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
CFO: "Fuck that. I don't have time to waste. You said Excel will open in? Get that installed on here NOW!"
IT: No can do, I'm afraid. You used the money that we saved - that you mandated we save - on Office licenses to buy a new ivory back scratcher.
I can see that one going down
No, you cant. The mistake is never the CFO or his equipment. This is how it would go:
CFO: "Why can't I open this spreadsheet that accounting sent me?"
IT: "Because accounting used Excel and its formats, which is against company policies."
CFO gets out the cluestick and applies it to accounting.
It'll be a long time before I think the KDE4 desktop is as good as the KDE3.x was. I'll tell you how good *I* think it is. I switched to Gnome. (I considered a bunch of other choices, because I don't like Gnome, not compared to KDE3. But I like it compared to KDE4.)
Let the flame wars begin. Others will say the reverse. Personally, I haven't install Ubuntu on my Mac yet but when I do I'll install both Gnome and KDE then switch between them. I may stick with KDE after a while but I doubt I will use Gnome as the sole desktop. Why? Because I want to try Krita for photo editing, GIMP just doesn't cut it for what I want to do. I'd try CinePaint but Ubuntu dropped it.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
"The basic idea is to have an Linux OS, with IBM smart client applications called Open Collaboration Client Solution software (OCCS)(Lotus Symphony and Notes) for enterprise apps."
Good Lord, hear my prayers and keep our Linux free from the dreadful and ugly Notes monster...
No, but it invalidates your argument. Both operating systems have issues. Your point is null and void.
-- Linux user #369862
A small and very insignificant *yawn*. I have never been so jaded about a new Windows version as i am now. Vista had some new bits in it that while they sucked was fun to discover and evaluate. Windows 7 is as interesting as any old servicepack or gray rock. No amount of paid journalism can change that once people start to use it themselves and discover what it really is. Linux isnt Microsofts biggest enemy, Microsoft is their own enemy and i cant think of a more dangerous adversary.
HTTP/1.1 400
... but a giant leap for mankind!
Here be signatures
Right. Excel 2003 - because 2007 doesn't open it properly either. :P
Wonder when Microsoft's fix will be released? ;)
i find it funny since those spreadsheets open just fine when i use double O on the PCs we got in uni. maybe your just too dumb to use it properly ^_^
Closed Sourced Software companies often provide a nice knowledge support site
Likewise, free software often provides a wiki knowledgebase.
and a tech support number you can call ASAP.
Telephone support tends to be priced out of the range of small business. Even if not, high-profile free software tends to have an official channel on freenode.
Oh really? Well, if it only costs $2,000 to move to Windows 7, for my 38k users, that's a bargain, really.
slight "feature" you don't note: when MS releases a new version, you need to buy it or you won't be able to open the new version either. So in effect, you keep paying over and over for the exact same thing.
Because that's how much it would cost to have an Indian replace their job if they cant adapt.
$2000 for the replacement Indian for a year. $200,000 in fixing the damage after the company finds the Indian was totally unskilled and has also stolen the company client database.
The ms shills must be jumping all over you.
Damn right we are ! Would you rather spend 20 minutes composing a detailed response, or earn $100 in 30 seconds by simply down-modding a pro-Linux post on /. ?
If you want to find out how to sign up for the MS Professional Shill program, send me a PM. This could be your passport to financial freedom !
Squirrel!
That's all wrong.
The accounting department should be switched first (execs should always be last in line for any sort of forced migration like that). In addition, if your accounting department is sending around a bunch of excel spreadsheets your shop is amateur hour anyhow... *cough* L2ERP n00b *cough*
IBM is probably using their Lotus product internally so they are not tied to the Microsoft Office suite (but tied to their own proprietary stuff). So those retraining costs for them are nil because there is nothing to retrain for (well maybe for Visio).
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
Ubuntu is nowhere near ready for prime time, and I don't care what its' fans try and say.
Maybe, maybe not. Windows has never been stable or secure enough for large scale use or use on a public network; The fact botnets exist is proof of that. However windows is still used all over the place.
Replacing something bad with something less bad is still progress.
That's completely backwards on several levels...
1. Executives should ALWAYS be last in line for any forced migration like that... The right way to do it is:
A - deploy in test environment
B - staged rollout, starting with bottom teir employees in batches, gradually progressing up the organizational chart.
C - ???
D - Profit!!!
So obviously the accounting department would be transitioned first and that scenario would never occur if you have a halfway competent IT team. I feel sorry for your company you have any position of responsibility in the IT department.
2. Passing around excel spreadsheets is amateur hour... I grimace when I see companies with more than 20 employees do this sort of thing. There are plenty of nice financial projection suites that do out of the box stuff, if you want to do any sort of sophisticated prediction and modelling, use something like R which has robust mathematical and statistical capabilities and tons of finance modules available. If you have money and want to be professional, your financial department should be integrated into an ERP platform.
Microsoft office stopped being relevant after 2003. The whole reason office was such an immovable behemoth was backwards compatibility and the retraining curve for other office suites. As it stands now, openoffice is easier to migrate users to than office 2007/2010 and the whole docx/xlsx fiasco has caused a lot of headaches. Few people care about the added functionality in newer versions.
Ubuntu is not stable compared to other Linux flavors
This is blinging
Not to mention that if you go to a support site, you're bound to see people with problems.
I mean, it's not like I ever felt the urge to go to the Ubuntu forums to say how great my experience has been. (BTW, my experience after upgrading to the latest Karmic beta has been amazing. Those guys are really doing a great job!)
Have a full installation of Window's go bad on you to the point of a reinstall (no backups, like most people). Say over time you have installed quite a few shareware apps that you have grown to love. Now reinstall windows and go to Google and start searching for all your favorite apps again. You have to wade through tons of shareware sites, full of adds, and text designed to mislead you to what you are downloading. And sometimes when you go to download things, they put download buttons for other software close to the download button of what you want in order to trick you into downloading something else.
I usually try and download from the author's website, but there is so much crap out there now, that sometimes it is quite a job actually finding the real author's web site.
Now do the exact same scenario, only with Linux. Sudo Apt-get install xmoto, and 10 minutes later you are done.
Linux is the crappy download/warez site killa!
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Market capitalisation is a result of several factors - the perceived cool factor of a share being one of them, and the need to include them in certain types of fund being another. The point is that a perceived decline in value can collapse the bubble very fast, as shares start to be sold which triggers off removal from portfolios and small investors getting out.
All this is very basic finance 101 but is widely misunderstood. If you are in for the long term (which is the least risky way of making a profit) you need to look at the customer base and the value added. Apple has many customers for its newer products which are on phone company contracts, and it does not have the majority of the smartphone market. It has forced Nokia to look at its product range again, it has stimulated the development of Maemo, Moblin, Chrome and Ubuntu Netbook. The competition is coalescing around Linux with value added in the front ends. Apple has a strong installed base but its market cap is based on a belief that it is the wave of the future. A change in perception, a major provider coming out with a competitive iPhone replacement (Verizon/Pre?) could depress Apple shares overnight.
IBM, like Rolls-Royce, is rather invisible to the public. It has no real brand image. But, like Rolls-Royce, it has stackloads of bought in installed base who can't just replace their phone when the contract ends, or buy a new notebook computer.
I'm reminded of someone at Rolls-Royce commenting on their share price that "people don't take into account that if we never sold another product, starting tomorrow, we would still be around in 60 years servicing our installations. And many of our customers are Governments".
Apple may overtake IBM in the long term. But currently this is far from evident, and market cap is not a useful measurement.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
> > Using the wrong OS can get a company shut down and the officers
> > of the company put in jail.
> Ahhhh, the sweet sweet smell of Microsoft FUD.
What? I thought he was talking about the dangers of a BSA raid happening when a company isn't able to accurately keep track of Microsoft Windows licenses?
c.
Log in or piss off.
With all the ridicule that "Linux on the Desktop" has gotten over the years, I still feel that linux going mainstream is inevitable. I notice with a lot of things, I early-adopt and a surprising number of them go mainstream. Whether it is music, software, ways of doing things, interests, games... I often find that I get involved with something because something about it is really cool, or works really well (mostly because I obsessively research and try a lot of things). Several years later, I find that whatever it is I have ultimately decided on doing/using/enjoying has gone mainstream, or at least grown hugely. It seems to happen unnervingly often, to the point where I really should start to invest in these things when an opportunity presents itself - I'm sure on balance it would be financially rewarding for me to do so. Does anyone else here look back on their life and see the consistency with which they have backed such "winners"?
To bring it back to the topic, I notice this with Ubuntu - it really has a lot going for it. So much about it just does what I want and surprises me in a good way. The value proposition is hard to beat. If I was starting a business, I'd just put the foot down and say "use it or get another job". You'd lower your costs, increase your control, and by donating you'd have a good chance of getting features of immediate value to your business - something far less likely with something closed source, and also more likely to come with perpetual strings attached.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
and u r ignoring the costs of retraining when m$ changes word's menus, 4 example...never underestimate the mindlessness of micro$erfs;-)
$2K is the cost of deployment, helpdesk calls, user confusion, lost proficiency, annoyance factor and other various sundry of items.
$2K IMO is a low ball, especially since many companies are going to be coming from WinXP or Earlier (many still use Win2K and Win9X).
This means about 10+ hours (not at employee pay rates, but fully realized Employee cost rates) per machine/employee, plus the re-training syndrome due to "change".
So, remember you FANBOIs (including Fan boys and Fan girls), just because its the newest version of Windows, doesn't mean its easy. Its not for 80% of the embedded workforce using the machines. Change a menu or how its presented, or change a location or add new entry that replaces another (with same functionality but different name) or a different look of the interface... and the helpdesk lights up. I've seen it happen when we change to an updated widget that displays the EXACT SAME INFO in the same dialog, but now that it uses your "system color theme" rather than our color scheme... users get confused, they don't need/want change. They do the same job day in day out.
You'll have complaining at the drinking fountain or browsing while in queue... (lost time and productivity not withstanding)
Think a bit more broadly and you'll see the whole picture.
greg, REMEMBER ED CURRY!!!
True, but which OS has more issues that can be fixed without re-installing or running a virus scan?
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
Quasar?
http://linuxcanada.com/pos.shtml
Windows is not the answer.
Windows is the question.
The answer is "NO."
It means Lenovo is in the PC business and IBM is not.
"Coworker of mine wanted to use Ubuntu as the main OS on his work machine. Installed it, got it up and running at home. Then when he brought it in and popped it into the docking station, it wouldn't work (X didn't seem to work, I didn't troubleshoot and neither did he) and so he just got a copy of Windows 7 and installed it instead"
Curiously enough there are references to this on the Ubuntu mailing list
"Linux has been at it for 15 years and .. sound is still broken out of the box on Ubuntu .. Not exactly ready for prime time"
I'm watching streaming media right now and the sound plays no problem. I've never had problems getting sound working 'out of the box'. If Ubuntu is 'Not exactly ready for prime time', then why is IBM involving itself in a project with Canonical? IBM not exactly known for neglecting the purpose of making money.
' IBM and Canonical are now announcing the launch of Linux and cloud-based desktop software in the U.S'
That one day blue and brown desktops will walk hand in hand....
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
I'll agree with that. The quality, features and price of Korean cars is becoming competitive. Having the major auto maker sitting on their butts, paying expensive workers doesn't help either. It's the Chinese auto industry that I'm curious about. They'll probably be very cheap but i doubt the quality will there for some time.
Hah, that's what I thought, too.
Hypotheticals don't cut it. I'd like to hear an example of a single feature in Office that is so critical as to make a spreadsheet not work at all, which isn't supported in Open Office.
The most common objections I hear to Open Office are that it doesn't look the same and that it doesn't have wizards. The more prevalent problems I encounter are people trying to open Office 2007 documents on Windows 2003. They usually don't want to spend a boatload of money just to be able to open documents from work while they're at home. I usually end up showing them how to open the documents at work and "save as...", though many of them have opted to just get OO because it gets the job done even if it's not as pretty.
I've actually been in that specific scenario, and it certainly didn't go like that.
For those that don't know, if you have an Enterprise Agreement with MS, you self report what you're using and can optionally buy software assurance on the SKU's you purchase. Software assurance allows you upgrade rights to the next best thing, or not, your choice. Depending on your agreement, once a year or every couple of years, MS comes around and asks you what you've installed new since the last time we spoke and put into production. You then indicate what that is and cut a check for the additional software, and optionally renew your software assurance on that. Mind you, this is totally self reporting. There are no BSA thugs, there is no magic thumb drive that executes a script against your infrastructure. It's all a pretty reasonable transaction.
My company makes heavy use of Microsoft Dynamics. And I know most of you don't know what that is, but when you get to a certain size, you need enterprise financial and accounting packages, inventory packages, and CRM packages. Dynamics is Microsoft's answer to this. I won't say they are fault free but nothing is, even were you to use SAP, Siebel, or IBM, or Oracle which also compete in this field. Usually we can work with MS and get these issues fixed as they come up. No one, period, makes enterprise financial packages for free. You either write it yourself, or you get a foundation platform and write your custom libraries on top of it. For the most part, I'd say we've been very happy with Dynamics and the abilities to tie our from scratch POS application we wrote into our financials with Dynamics. It works pretty darn well.
Most of the comments on /. appear to come from people with usually SOHO and at best SMB experience, but largely little enterprise experience. I think it truly skews the point of view about software. I come from Enterprise. Those Dynamics products and the MS SQL Server instances they run on are without a doubt, the most expensive part of the enterprise agreement. Windows client and server OS licenses as well as the Office licenses are cheap comparatively.
Now, we have to have the Dynamics products and the SQL server licenses. Those must be paid. But this being an economic recession and all that, we looked where we could save money. Because of how well OpenOffice had come along with 3.0, I and my team found exactly one spot where OpenOffice didn't work well enough for our needs, and that was Sharepoint integration that we, as a company, hardly used anyways.
We took that information to the CFO and CIO along with a true up bill for MS Office. The CFO and CIO took that to the CEO. We got a sign off from the CEO, so we took that back to MS to dicker. No dice, they called us on it.
Three weeks later we rolled OpenOffice to everyone in the company. We generated exactly one helpdesk ticket concerning the lack of Sharepoint integration. We did generate quite a number of HD tickets concerning training, but those tickets would have been generated using scalc or excel and were quickly discounted.
Of the remaining tickets, a significant number did concern failings in OpenOffice's ability to correctly render an MS Office document. Some of those were from our own internally generated documentation, but very few, and quickly purged. The rest were from our interactions with customers.
Initially we were screening the documents and having the HD convert the documents for them. That way we could analyze what documents were causing fails in OpenOffice. In corner cases we started putting OEM copies of MS Office that we'd previously taken off, back on certain users laptops. At four months out we built a terminal server farm with MS office on it and selectively allowed users to connect to it, provided there was a document rendering issue. At six months out we opened the gates for everyone in the company to that TS farm. Barring a few hold out users, just about everyone is now using that farm instead.
True up is just around the corner and we've already committed to buy MS Office.
I don't agree with some of the parent but he does make good points. Definitely not deserving of the troll mod he got. But then this is what happens if you say something against any linux
HAHAHA fire and accountant. You must be joking, he'll fire you, he will.
With problems. As I just stated in another post, oops here's the right post, I am willing to try KDE. Who knows, right now I don't, but I may like KDE more than Gnome.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
As do all OSes and other software.
I am sure that you or I could get it up and running in less than 30 minutes doing pretty much whatever we need it to.
Thanks for the confidence but I know Windows, and now OS X, more but there's plenty I'm not knowledgeable about with either one.
What about all the non-technical people? For them doing anything other than inserting an install CD, waiting for Auto-Play to start the installation wizard, is probably pretty difficult.
I agree however Linux is getting easier and easier to install and use software. A big problem is buying that game or productivity disk at the store. I haven't seen many stores, even chain stores, that carry much Mac software either. Many people's perception is that Microsoft is the software universe.
As for installing software in Linux, earlier I posted ClickNRun. With the client software installed, though not available for all Linux distros, all it takes to install software is access to that site and a click. Say Opera, just click on the Install button. CNR will download and install Opera. It's just as easy to uninstall software.
Given all that I can only conclude that IBM is not really targeting the whole market but a small portion of it. The poster I replied to stated this was a way to shut Microsoft out the market completely, and I just don't see how it would have that effect.
I totally agree. I've seen different theories why IBM is teaming with Ubuntu, but most are wrong. One poster said it was to sell hardware, but IBM sold the PC hardware part to a Chinese company, Levono. IBM is moving away from hardware to become a services business, they've been working on that for years. Company X wants a computer system, IBM will analyze their needs and put together a system, hardware AND software. Another company needs software to do X and IBM will put a package together.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
What happened to the much hyped Munich desktop conversion from windows? About 5 years ago?
I find it amusing that all the holier than thou/I'm smarter than you Linux supporters posting in this thread have no idea that IBM doesn't sell desktops or laptops anymore. And they haven't for years.
Why must you take what I said in the worst possible light? Let me make this plain: The fact that there are many, many forums dedicated to solving the many, many problems with Windows does not let Ubuntu off the hook. But it does reduce your argument of "the Ubuntu support forum is full of Ubuntu problems, therefore Ubuntu isn't ready for primetime" to a pile of smoldering ash.
Unless, of course, you think that none of the operating systems available today are ready for primetime.
I don't know how it is now, but I checked into a Dell netbook with Ubuntu pre-installed. It costs the same as getting a Windows license with the machine.
That's BS! Not what you say but Dell selling netbooks with Ubuntu for the same price as netbooks with Windows. With the same configurations, maybe there's a difference in them, the Ubuntu netbook should be cheaper. Wait,... Dell shows mini netbooks, what's that?, with Windows XP Home Edition or Ubuntu Linux for the same price. Now if XP doesn't require Activation, I'd get one with XP. Actually I'd try to get both.
On another page though Dell shows a netbook with either Ubuntu or XP or Vista. With Ubuntu installed it's $30 cheaper.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
What is it with you Americans and your toxic aversion to sensible healthcare?
It's like you're *proud* of letting your poor rot, or something. Like you think money is intrinsically moral and only very bad people are poor. Hasn't the crash showed that idea to be false?
I wouldn't mind so much except that your models tend to get exported to the rest of the world. We in NZ went through the 'privatise all healthcare' wave in the 1990s when we swung hard right. It was not pretty and it hurt us badly.
It would be nice to think that America finally started caring for its weakest. Want moral influence in the world? That's one way.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
All this is very basic finance 101 but is widely misunderstood.
This is very basic finance 101 and is widely understood: if your retirement fund doesn't see returns, you will never be able to retire because inflation eats your early contributions.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
You forget good sir, for a consultancy like IBM that is just additional income. As the old saying goes "If you're not part of the solution there is money to be made in prolonging the problem".
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
If they use Excel for high end functions I would suggest they get software made for that purpose anyways. High end functions and excel have no place in a modern work environment. And if you absolutely have to make a case that your business needs it, at least have the functions in real code that will continue to work long after Microsoft changes the way Excel works.
Viewtouch is a piece of garbage. There is lots of crappy, crappy POS software for *nix, but none that is actually functional. Viewtouch isn't even a complete product. You are uninformed.
I don't respond to AC's.
Seriously dude(ette)? LDAP can deploy software remotely based on group membership? Linux systems can be configured to use LDAP remotely after being connected to the network, without needing to remote shell into them first? LDAP can -- without extra configuration -- allow or block access to network shares, applications, and directory structures? Without assistance from any other systems? Wow, it sure has grown up in the six days since I was last using it for something.
Directory services (ie, ldap) are one only component of AD. You might want to learn about the rest before hurling more insults...
You ARE the incompetent admin
Thank you, please play again.
Watch out, he'll call you a 'fanboi' next. Or a shill. Those are good counter-arguments around here, right?
Using the wrong OS can get a company shut down
You're right: the London Stock Exchange had a near-death experience using Windows for its trading platform. They had to temporarily shut down when it seized up. That's why they decided to change to a faster and cheaper Linux-based trading platform.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
prefer it
Citation needed.
I bet people stay with Windows because they don't know of an alternative, they think they need it, or because they would rather work with the devil they know than the one they don't know. People ask what Linux is. Or if Macs can run Windows, asked why they need Windows and they can't give an answer other than "because my software needs it". Ask them what they want to do, specific tasks not applications and if they don't stammer or hum you might get write. There are word processors that let you do that on Linux and Macs in OS X. They need a spread sheet to do calculations, same there. The same applies to everything MS Office does. The London Stock Exchange Rejects .NET For Open Source. For every proprietary app that runs only in Windows, except in-house software, I bet there's software available that can do it on Linux and or OS X.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
If I had any mod points, I'd give you a "+1 Educational for Dumb Americans" /leaving this country before the implosion
I wonder how IBM arrived at the result of $2000. Because I'm pretty sure that out of the 150k people that I work with that 3/4 of them will take months to adjust to Linux and be completely pissed off the entire time. At an internal rate of $100-$150 per person per hour... uh... lol, right.
And upgrading to Window 7 will not have any of those costs?
This is what most of the company uses: Outlook, Word, Excel, Powerpoint. Project. File shares. Blackberry/Phone. Online web conferences. PDF. That's about it.
Almost all of the task these programs do Ubuntu has the software that can do it as well. Outlook? Even when I used Windows I used Eudora then switched to Thunderbird, which I also use on my Linux PC and Mac. Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Project? I'm not sure about Project but Open Office, which I also used with Windows, does the rest of these.
And don't give me crap about open office solutions. It took most of these people 10 or 20 years to just get by with Office, you really think they are going to want to essentially re-learn everything?
And users don't have to go through crap when Office is upgraded? BS!
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
paragraphs would jump from one page to another; three ways to anchor an image, all wrong; table of contents is way too complex and not matching the pagination of the hour. I'm sure there were other issues also. That was pre-2.x OpenOffice, something like 1.4.x,
And early production versions of MS Office worked perfectly? Or are you using a double standard?
But reliability-wise MS Office is probably still better.
The MS product I have used that was the most reliable was Windows NT4 Workstation, which I still have. However because it's installed on a PC with a DEC Alpha CPU I haven't used it much. It is the only version of Windows that has not crashed on me, and that includes XP. Heck the first tyme I used XP the PC froze while booting up.
As for Open Office, well the native Mac version, NeoOffice, I have had only one problem. When I downloaded a Word 2007 document NeoOffice could not open it. I mentioned that to someone else and they said to upgrade it, so I did. After the upgrade I had no problem opening the Word document.
Should there be a Law?
Calc is the Hyundai of spreadsheets. Works fine for ma and pa, but it sucks for anything significantly complicated.
As someone above posted, if you have to do complicated spreadsheets why not use Mathematica or Matlab? Financial calculations can be pretty complicated yet with a quick Google I found this: Documentation/How Tos/Calc: Derivation of Financial Formulas.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
1. Executives should ALWAYS be last in line for any forced migration like that... The right way to do it is:
...
...
B - staged rollout, starting with bottom teir employees in batches, gradually progressing up the organizational chart.
So obviously the accounting department would be transitioned first
You, and most others may not think of the accounting department as being important but they are vary important, and they should not be the testers of new systems.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
MS is anti-Linux otherwise they'd shut up and stop spreading FUD. If they were pro Linux MS would release Office for Linux.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Ubuntu is nowhere near ready for prime time
Ubuntu is already being used by businesses.
Go and spend 24 hours or so on Ubuntu's forums before you try and tell me it is stable.
Because I plan on installing Ubuntu on my Mac I have spent more than 100 hours in the the Ubuntu forums, photo.net, and elsewhere. In all this tyme I haven't run into any complaints about Ubuntu not being stable. I have however run into incompatibilities, and the fixes for them. Then again maybe it's just because of what I'm looking for, how to install Ubuntu on my Mac. I've been researching how to before I do it so I can make a plan which includes any problems that may come up.
Instead of Windows, they went with OS/2, which bombed, at least in mainstream terms.
It wasn't IBM's bomb. IBM and MS was working on OS/2 together when MS pulled out and did Windows instead.
Ubuntu is the proverbial dog with fleas, of Linux distributions.
Then why has Ubuntu been the most popular Linux distro this past year? Of course that link is just for those who visit Distro Watch. Starry Hope asks Ubuntu: Still Popular? Using metrics from various sites it concludes Ubuntu is still popular.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Sounds like a problem with that poorly written enterprise app, not Windows 7
Some applications naturally require lots of RAM and CPU cycles. It doesn't have to be some half-baked internally developed Java interface to Oracle (though those are popular, and I use one myself at work now and then.) Look at most high-end engineering applications - the whole line of Autodesk products, SolidWorks, PTC/CoCreate, FloWorks, Ansys, CST or Ansoft, and you will see that they *require* about 4 GB of RAM to perform reasonably well. Some need much more.
I am often amused that so many people honestly believe that in an enterprise people only need Outlook, IE and Office. That is maybe true for a secretary. But secretaries are assistants, they do not produce the final product themselves. In my field of work engineers do that. Most people in my department at work are engineers; we have two secretaries for 30 people (they do contracts and accounting.) Those two secretaries, besides the usual Office, run that Oracle thing. But everyone else runs Xilinx tools (average compile time several hours,) ModelSim (I shouldn't probably mention average simulation time - a full simulation would take days,) Genesys and ADS for analog design, and so on and so forth. These high-end engineering applications not only need resources, they also cost lots of money and they are not replaceable by something else. They are practically single source solutions. For example, CST - theoretically Ansoft is a competitor, but in reality it isn't (too far behind.) In Xilinx world you may splurge on Synplify Pro and reduce 1% of your implementation time to 0.9% - but the bulk of time is spent in Xilinx proprietary tools like map and par, and nobody knows how to code those because they implement Xilinx's secrets.
So to summarize, maybe an old PC with 512 MB RAM and 1 GHz CPU would be somewhat adequate for order entry at your local car mechanic's office. Once in a while he walks into the office, slightly wipes his oily hands sometimes, punches client's name with one finger and the details show up on the screen. He types "repl oil, flt" and presses F10, the order is printed and that concludes his painful interaction with the computer. So for such applications sure, give him an old PC and he'd be happy as a clam. But if you are a worker who really uses the computer, slow PC is a bottleneck. Businesses can't afford to give employees slow PCs because that would lower their efficiency. The incremental cost of a modern PC (typically rental) is miniscule compared to the employee's salary.
And early production versions of MS Office worked perfectly? Or are you using a double standard?
In 1993-1995 I recall using (at work) a fairly early, pre-Office version of the Word. It had the fountain pen on the splash screen. I don't remember exactly what was the release name, but I suspect it was Word 6.0 (1993.) It worked quite well. This is why it pushed competing products (WordPerfect, AmiPro etc.) out of the way. Microsoft bundled it with Excel and called it "Office" some time in 1995, IIRC, and put some serious development into it also, as you know.
But the earliest version of MS Word that I ever saw was a monochrome Windows 3.0 application ("Word for Windows".) It was quite crude, but it was on par with the computer itself. Today MS WordPad is probably a good equivalent of it, only better. Even that, ridiculously simple by modern standards, Word worked.
StarOffice (which I tried) was a strange thing. On one hand, it had excellent functionality that Word never had to begin with. On the other hand, it was too complex for most users. Add a few bugs, and the recipe for disaster is ready. I was in fact ordered by my boss to convert a bunch of StarOffice documents to Word just so we could release the damned documentation - each time you opened it in StarOffice it paginated it in a new, unique way, and all our illustrations were horribly reshuffled. Believe me, not many were amused. Once I converted the documents to Word the problems stopped. You can attribute it to Word having more development years under its belt, but from business POV StarOffice was simply not ready for business use. It may be free, but what of that if it costs us $100 per each file open in time wasted to "fix" the formatting? You see why MS Word, being priced at a few hundred dollars, quickly appeared to be a great solution to our problems?
There is no such thing as "the Linux Desktop Environment".
In 1993-1995 I recall using (at work) a fairly early, pre-Office version of the Word. It had the fountain pen on the splash screen. I don't remember exactly what was the release name, but I suspect it was Word 6.0 (1993.) It worked quite well. This is why it pushed competing products (WordPerfect, AmiPro etc.) out of the way
Did Word push compeating product out because it was better or because it came bundled with PCs? I bet it's the later. Many people buying computers want it to come with software such as an office suite bundled, they don't want to buy software separately then install it. The exceptions would be specialized software and games. But the only suite most OEMs will offer bundled is MS Office. Actually I bet if I look the only suite the major OEMs will bundle with Windows PCs is MS Office.
MS WordPad
On Windows I preferred TextPad. Then again within it I could compile and run Java programs, preview html, PERL, and other things. With WordPad the commandline or another program was needed.
StarOffice (which I tried) was a strange thing. On one hand, it had excellent functionality that Word never had to begin with. On the other hand, it was too complex for most users. Add a few bugs, and the recipe for disaster is ready.
What I hated, yes hated, about StarOffice was it took over the whole desktop. I tried it then went back to Word 97. After Open Office replaced it I waited a few months before trying it, and it did what I wanted without getting in the way.
You see why MS Word, being priced at a few hundred dollars, quickly appeared to be a great solution to our problems?
WordPerfect didn't have those problems, and for a while it was the most widely used office suite.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Did Word push compeating product out because it was better or because it came bundled with PCs? I bet it's the later.
Not really. Microsoft bundled MS DOS and Windows 3.x with PCs, but never, to my knowledge and memory, bundled Word 6.0 or Excel. It started happening, I think, only after Office 97 was built and MS's OEM sales machine spun up. Until then PC manufacturers didn't care about the software; I don't even remember if they installed any OS on the HDD or not. The reason is that software was cheap (MS Windows 3.x was priced at $50) and the hardware was expensive (a few thousand dollars.)
In fact, early PCs (pre-1995) were built by a large number of companies (many of them dead by now) and Microsoft did not have much of weight until Windows 95. Those were the years when competition was actually alive.
Wikipedia says that Word won because it was better. I used WordPerfect myself at that time, and I must say that WP was not as slick as Word. It gave you the "reveal codes" window where you could fix any formatting issues, but in Word it was easier to just format what you want however you want and not worry about "coding your document." In any case, it hardly matters what I think because the market thought that Word is better than already established Word Perfect and some other wordprocessors. In my opinion Word was just a little better than WordPerfect, but if asked to choose I would flip a coin. Both did the job well. But Microsoft had one thing going for them - consistency and persistence. Word is still with us; WordPerfect, on the other hand, not so much. Wikipedia explains when it went downhill:
Actually I bet if I look the only suite the major OEMs will bundle with Windows PCs is MS Office.
No, actually there is another office suite called Microsoft Works, it is bundled for free with almost everything. It uses its own unique data formats, and I never used it. The complete Office is never bundled like that simply because it's expensive, and most people that buy computers at Fry's don't need MS Office anyway. It is common, though, to find trial versions of Office; that may count for something. I personally, working with computers and electronics for quite some time, don't have MS Office on my home laptop - I have OpenOffice. If my parents had a computer they wouldn't need Office. I believe businesses are the major consumer of Office licenses; maybe students come second (but at huge discount.) Entrepreneurs and business owners come after them, and they are already at a fraction of a percent, and they often need one seat for their whole business.
On Windows I preferred
Did Word push compeating product out because it was better or because it came bundled with PCs? I bet it's the later.
Not really. Microsoft bundled MS DOS and Windows 3.x with PCs, but never, to my knowledge and memory, bundled Word 6.0 or Excel. It started happening, I think, only after Office 97 was built and MS's OEM sales machine spun up.
After spending about 1/2 hour searching I didn't find a reference to when MS started offering application bundles with hardware and I don't know when they did.
Until then PC manufacturers didn't care about the software; I don't even remember if they installed any OS on the HDD or not.
DOS did come installed on new PCs. Compaq, IBM, and Zenith (yes Zenith used to make PCs. Apparently they still do in India, they're sold all over the world except Canada and the US), along with other OEMs sold PCs with the OS already installed.
Wikipedia says that Word won because it was better. I used WordPerfect myself at that time, and I must say that WP was not as slick as Word.
Back then I don't recall what I was using, but I started with MacWrite. DOS didn't have anything like it.
Word is still with us; WordPerfect, on the other hand, not so much
It only has a small market but WordPerfect is still with us, In April 2008 Corel released their "WordPerfect Office X4 office suite containing the new X4 version of WordPerfect which includes support for PDF, OpenDocument and Office Open XML."
Actually I bet if I look the only suite the major OEMs will bundle with Windows PCs is MS Office.
No, actually there is another office suite called Microsoft Works
Okay, I phrased it wrong. Perhaps I would of been closer if I said OEMs would only bundle MS office suits, I hadn't thought of MS Works.
most people that buy computers at Fry's don't need MS Office anyway
There is no Fry's near me, that I know of, but stores around here that sell PCs sell they with bundles. Fry's has general electronics too doesn't it? The place I loved going to, when I lived near there, was Skycraft Parts and Surplus. If you're a hobbyist and want to build something electrical or electronic if they didn't have the part you'd have to order it. And it wasn't just electrical and electronic parts but military surplus as well, even backpacks, empty ammo boxes, and tents as well as marine equipment.
It is common, though, to find trial versions of Office
Yea, my Mac came with a trial-ware version of MS Office, 2007 I think.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
You'd let your CFO talk to you like that???? Hey, CFO, how about two in the chest abd one in the head?? Ok,ok, I'm fine with Linux and Open office!
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil