... and then to link one of those buttons to "init 6" or "init 0".
You make my point for me... sure it's easy for YOU to use, since you can write scripts and use setuid bits and all that, but right now distros are NOT at that level! There are hundreds of other little details besides crazy shutdown procedures that are not at all suitable for a normal user.
Sure it can be easy to use once a geek sets it up for you, but last time I checked none of the distros came packaged with a geek. Someday linux will be there, but not today and probably not for another year or so.
Err... Be ? RedHat, SuSE & other Linux distributors ?
Lets face it, Linux distributions are not ready for the mass market desktop. Certainly geeks use linux quite effectively, but 90% of the market doesn't want to remember that the way to shutdown the computer is to start a terminal, type shutdown -h now, then enter the root password. they just want an off button, and linux distro's aren't at that level of use yet.
Since Apple makes money by selling hardware and has always done that, this scenario is less than probable. See what happened to Mac clones two years ago.
This is true. However why did Apple spend any time at all making any part of MacOS X portable? Apple has a great desktop workstation product, but they may be looking to the likes of Compaq to provide higher end server class hardware. This way they make money on the desktop hardware, and money on the OS sales on hardware they don't sell anyway. It's possible.
For some tasks, it's just the opposite : I don't want a GUI on my firewall, for instance.
I agree that a gui is a waste on certain kinds of machines. But most people DO want a gui on their firewall and everything else. Lots of administrators are "too busy" to learn the 10,000 command line switches to ipchains, so they would spend money on a product that lets them click and drool. Witness the success of Checkpoint firewalls.
This guy is definitely in full speculation mode, but it's not totally unfounded.
Stop thinking of the X-box as some kind of PC. It is not--just because it uses components that are familiar to PC game developers does not mean that it is a "PC Jr."
Xbox is supposed to have a psychotically fast bus architecture and a graphics system to match. This means that mhz of the cpu aren't so important... just like how the PS2's graphics can blow away PCs with 3x more mhz.
Think of it like a closed-arch console, not a PC when you try to decide if it will succeed or not.
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You make my point for me... sure it's easy for YOU to use, since you can write scripts and use setuid bits and all that, but right now distros are NOT at that level! There are hundreds of other little details besides crazy shutdown procedures that are not at all suitable for a normal user.
Sure it can be easy to use once a geek sets it up for you, but last time I checked none of the distros came packaged with a geek. Someday linux will be there, but not today and probably not for another year or so.
Lets face it, Linux distributions are not ready for the mass market desktop. Certainly geeks use linux quite effectively, but 90% of the market doesn't want to remember that the way to shutdown the computer is to start a terminal, type shutdown -h now, then enter the root password. they just want an off button, and linux distro's aren't at that level of use yet.
Since Apple makes money by selling hardware and has always done that, this scenario is less than probable. See what happened to Mac clones two years ago.
This is true. However why did Apple spend any time at all making any part of MacOS X portable? Apple has a great desktop workstation product, but they may be looking to the likes of Compaq to provide higher end server class hardware. This way they make money on the desktop hardware, and money on the OS sales on hardware they don't sell anyway. It's possible.
For some tasks, it's just the opposite : I don't want a GUI on my firewall, for instance.
I agree that a gui is a waste on certain kinds of machines. But most people DO want a gui on their firewall and everything else. Lots of administrators are "too busy" to learn the 10,000 command line switches to ipchains, so they would spend money on a product that lets them click and drool. Witness the success of Checkpoint firewalls.
This guy is definitely in full speculation mode, but it's not totally unfounded.
Stop thinking of the X-box as some kind of PC.
It is not--just because it uses components that
are familiar to PC game developers does not mean
that it is a "PC Jr."
Xbox is supposed to have a psychotically
fast bus architecture and a graphics system
to match. This means that mhz of the cpu aren't
so important... just like how the PS2's graphics
can blow away PCs with 3x more mhz.
Think of it like a closed-arch console, not a PC
when you try to decide if it will succeed or not.