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Nick Petrely responds to Metcalfe
Aleatoric
writes "In his response to Bob Metcalfe's article, Nick
Petrely says he'll eat his column if Bob doesn't change his
mind about Linux within two years.
" Good column- describes the usual MS FUD tactics
and why it wont' work this time.
Quite frankly, I don't want Linux to smash Windows, or the MacOS. I want the various parties to concentrate on themselves, and interoperability. Linux isn't for everyone, neither is Windows, or the MacOS. Making progress on interoperability should be the real goal.
:)
;) everything I want it to, and does it responsively.
/dev/null, I don't war about OSes
After not using Windows for a long time, I decided to install Windows 2k Pro on one of my (linux) laptop partitions. I must say its rather refreshing to use Windows 2k, it's been very fast, abd stable for me. Nice UI, there aren't wizards everywhere (yet they still exist, damnit), and it seems responsive, I have had apps crash a few times, and none have taken down the OS itself. Internet Explorer doesn't constantly crash and disappear when I'm loading a page I didn't get to bookmark. No one can deny the Linux versions of Netscape are very shoddy pieces of work (this has nothing to do with Linux, it has to do with Netscape). When I just need to get stuff done with no BS, I find it refreshing to boot into Windows 2k and just get it done.
What do I think is lacking in Win2k? UNIX! Or rather everything great about it, the powerful scripting, the open programming interfaces, the level of control you have over your computer. To be honest, since Win2k is closed source, I do not know if my computer is sending Microsoft information I don't want it to, I don't know what's REALLY going on, when Microsoft tells my browser to download this nifty new component.
The built-in Encrypted File System in Win2k is 40-bit (upgradable to 128-bit) and shoddy. I don't trust that it's secure, because of the way the EFS works...automatically de/encrypting whenever someone with the right privileges clicks on it. And I could go on and on about this
Using Windows 2k, I am bluntly reminded of how much more work KDE and GNOME have to do, before they can even begin to truly compete with the Windows interface. The downside to such a great interface is bloat...Windows 2k is undoubtedly bloated outrageously, but on my 192mb PII 366 system its not reall noticed, it does (almost, its not UNIX after all
So instead of starting religious wars...{I mean Linux and Windows are JUST OSes after all, there are many more serious things to war about)...let's concentrate on interoperability, and getting our favourite OSes up to snuff. It would be a great world if all OSes could share data and services seamlessly with each other, without much tinkering. Instead of trying to drill the pipedream that KDE is as polished as the Windows UI, start helping the KDE project, give them coherent and useful suggestions.
It must be greatly disheartening for a KDE or GNOME developer to look out into the masses, and seeing users (people who arent even involved in the coding of the respective projects) bickering, and evangelizing their work...
Calm down, concentrate your efforts into improving free software, or on the Windows side, auditing security, etc. To quote a great meth addict/police beat toy: "Can't we all just get along?"
send flames to
Petreley's comment that Microsoft will try to refocus the argument to something it can win is right on the money. IMHO that's what this Mindcraft thing is about.
We'd do well to avoid raising a specific metric (like serving static web pages) to being somehow more important than all the other aspects of Linux. The advantage that MS (and any Cathedral) has is the ability to throw a lot of coordinated resources at a specific problem. If we buy into the idea that a certain contest defines which platform is better, Microsoft can make sure it wins that particular contest. Imagine: "Linux community devastated as Windows wins web server benchmark five years in a row."
The strength of Linux is thousands of people making incremental improvements in all sorts of areas. The distributions are making things easier to use. Researchers are working on distributed processing. The kernel hackers are working on SMP. Systems administrators everywhere are working on admin tools. It adds up to an operating system that evolves in a million different ways to meet the needs of real users.
That's not to say that we can't beat MS at serving static pages. As long as MS keeps trying to win all the battles they probably won't win any. But if they can succeed in narrowing the debate to "if Windows is better at X then Linux must suck" they WILL do whatever is needed to make Windows better at X.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Great closing line!