I think there was a golden opportunity to totally dominate the market about 5 years ago or so if all of the commercial UNIX vendors would've been willing to bury their collective hatchets in Microsoft's back.
Agreed. Forget "free" for a moment - A big chunk of the Linux market simply comes from (first) being Unix, (second) having good PC hardware support, and (third) being reasonably priced.
What if Sun (or Novell, SCO, etc) had gotten their own 'cheap Unix with lotssa drivers' out the door a few years ago? They would probably own the PC server market instead of Microsoft.
(There was definately a huge opening about 5 years ago, where IT managers started to realized that they could run network applications off of cheaper PC Server hardware. Sounds like a perfect job for Unix, but at the time nobody was really interested in selling a x86 Unix at a reasonable price. NetWare didn't serve apps very well, OS/2 was already dying off, so Microsoft stepped up and took over the market.)
I believe that Win 9x installer is designed to crash while detecting certain old fashion devices. After the reboot, it checks the detection logs and makes an educated guess about your hardware.
In practice, this can be a disaster. However, I did see it work once with Win 95a and an old token ring card.
I think, there is a 'psychological difficulty' for first time installer: the installation procedure defaults to the 'DOS-looking' installation
The problem with the RedHat install is not that's text mode, but it's a really bad text mode program. The tab-space-enter interface is confusing in different places, and it's difficult to tell exactly is selected sometimes.
I'd much rather prefer the 'blue screen' interface of the NT installer, or yes, even MS-DOS 6.
First, I really don't understand why folks bother comparing Linux with Windows 9x in any respect. Windows 98 is a EOLed product that has been comprismised to hell for backwards compatiblity and supposedly lower overhead, and furthermore has no concept of security whatsoever, and that's *by design*.
Really, if you want to take on Microsoft, and have any crediblity, at least take on their better OS - NT 4 or Win2000 (and even then wait and see on 2000). Just forget what shipped on your mom's e-machine and look at what products have a comparible feature set.
Second, for server machines (and face it, that's Linux's strength), the ease of running the installer is really a non-issue. One supposedly has somewhat knowledgable people doing this. The critical ease-of-use factor here is configurablity : How easy is it to set up file and print sharing? How easy is it to get a web server up and running? I don't think that anyone would argue that Linux is better than WinNT in this regard. (Although, you could argue that Linux is better when supporting non-standard or secure configurations.)
I actually see this alot. Most people don't seem to grasp that a computer display is not supposed to work like a television set (bigger = pixels).
There's also a large number of people that really need corrective lenses that won't wear them and instead requisition a huge monitor. This could be a legal problem for a company if someone insists that they can't do their work without a 21" @ 800x600 (or even 640x480!)
Actually, I have to back this up. Last night I got a call from a Mac using friend having problems with her ISP.
After checking the obvious stuff, I thought we should try to ping the ISP router. Then I remembered that MacOS does not ship with a ping utility, so therefore none was installed. (And yes, I know about the freeware stuff, but it was too late!) Really a criminal act these days, because most people won't want to download a ping util until their connection is down.
Sun's super-slow online store (some advert) indicates that workstations start at $2520 -- In short not much more than business PC hardware (aka not your $600 Office Depot jobs).
Don't forget that a standard Gartner Group piece of wisdom is that an enterprise PC costs something like $10-15,000 per year to support. If the promise of lower support costs with UNIX are actually true, Sun comes out looking like a bargin.
One can imagine a future where a free software platform of Linux, KDE and/or Gnome, KOffice, etc. could actually be considered a competitive business desktop to Windows/Office for $500 cheaper. The big hitch is the inevitable in-house corporate applications written with VisualBasic, Delphi, VC, DBase, Lotus Notes, etc. Wine might be an answer, but obviously, the Delphi people are now in the best position to save some money on desktop software when the time comes.
Products like this, while not "free" are a critical piece of the free softwar puzzle simply because they open the door for migration.
Furthermore, my guess is that Linux support will appeal enough to IT managers that this move will increase Borland's Windows product sales, just so shops can hedge their long term bets against a Windows desktop.
Actually, it would seem to me that Motif/Lesstif would be the obvious choice (much to the dismay of Linux DE fans) because it would allow them to port the product to the profitable commercial Unix market more easily.
(How many Sun workstations have GTK or QT installed? My guess is not many.)
Well, remember who ZD's reader base is - primarily power users (of PCs) and people who manage departmental servers, etc.
A summary of the article might be:
Our reader base has been using NT and NetWare for years, and Unix has always been only for the guys in the datacenter. Vendors such as SCO and Novell have tried marketing Unix to our reader base but it hasn't worked, so we have never been interested before in writing about Unix. Now there's Linux which is actually economic and runs on our reader base's hardware. Some of them find it useful and it's appearing more and more on the departmental level, so we are going to write more stories about Linux and Unix. Meanwhile, Microsoft is trying to promote NT to the datacenter guys. To help with this they've bought a Unix layer for NT. Conculusion: None
Now, a historic observation, for what it may be worth: all UNIX emulation layers in the past have bit the dust. Only real kernels have survived.
My understanding of Interix is that it is not really an emulation layer (UNIX to Win32), but talks directly to the NT kernel (real enough?) independantly of the other subsystems. I have no idea how it would help you port to Win32 other than the convience of being able to run the POSIX app right there.
My guess is that they are aiming Interix at the higher-end "datacenter" version of 2000. This would allow shops with one or two older Unix network apps to running them on an NT box that's presumably capable of running other applications at the same time. (Of course, NT right now is pretty much 1+ box per application, so the product would need to get much better for this to be feasible.)
(Since everyone is making comparisons, and this one is the highest rated.)
Just to point something out, sendmail and Exchange aren't really comparable products. Sendmail is pretty much a pure SMTP MTA, where Exchange tries to be a complete groupware system, with X400-based mail.
I guess you could make a comparision between sendmail and the rather non-configurable Exchange Internet Mail Connector or with the simple IIS SMTP relay, but that's not really fair either. Most larger shops will use something like sendmail on the border or the backbone with Exchange or whatever else for internal mail only. Sendmail for NT makes sense even in Exchange enviorns because Microsoft really doesn't make a good straight-SMTP solution.
It should be noted that Apple (and others such as AT+T/Lucent) had to go through a very long FCC petition process to get a slice of spectrum allocated for wireless networking in the US. It should be no suprise that the bureaucracy just as cumbersome elsewhere.
One reference I found: http://x36.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=212899830&CONTE XT=938276998.1936523279&hitnum=28 (Note that I'm not sure if this is the same spectrum as IEEE 802.11/Airport)
A couple years ago I saw a map showing the 'density' of installed Internet bandwidth by location. At that time, the SF Bay Area was massively more dense than any other part of the world.
While things probably have leveled out today, where the bandwidth is installed is probably more interesting than the topographical center or where the traffic is going through.
what is PC Week? It is a magazine oriented towards Windows users.
Actually, it's a magazine for managers of PC networks, not "Windows users". Maybe you are thinking of "PC Magazine".
This means lots of Novell, NT, and Linux coverage. Those are pretty much the most popular PC server platforms right now. Most of the advertising in PC Week seems to be for network hardware and software. There are very few straight Windows user applications being advertised.
Of course, the #1 vendor for these folks is Microsoft, so there is a huge amount of MS coverage. (But contrary to Linux paranoia, not every PC network manager is a MS drone. Simply that most IT shops have a vested interest in MS's plans and legal problems.)
I don't think "privacy" is the issue here - what might be bothersome is the attitude that Linux support concerns have towards users who are confused because 'autorun' and 'double-clicking on the icon in gmc' didn't work.
Perhaps Microsoft's "usability study" wasn't of Linux or Linux games per se, but actually checking to see the quality of Linux tech support operations.
They get some guys who pretend to be clueless, make some calls and some mail list posts and see what kind of response they get. They can then tally up all of the RTFM responses, the support engineers who "almost peed my pants" with laughter (and then promptly posted to a Linux advocacy board), and compare those with the quality responses.
Unlike some hypothetical desktop-battle, this information can be effectively used by Microsoft in FUD tactics. "Our informal studies show that if you aren't proficient in Unix, the Linux tech support companies will just ignore you or laugh at you." This can go along way in scaring managers that are (rightfully) worried about the skill gap of their staff when it comes to Linux.
I know the instinct is to jump on the anti-FUD ramparts as soon as reports like this come out.
But take a deep breath. Microsoft is in the operating system business. I'm sure they've got legions of people doing "usablity studies" on MacOS 9, BeOS, OS/2 5, Solaris 7 and so on. Eventually reports get written, MS finds a few new features to steal, some contractors get easy money and everyone is happy.
Also, don't forget these guys are paranoid as hell. Why should they believe either Linus or the trade press when they say "Linux is not ready for the desktop", when they can afford their own usablity lab to make that determination for them.
Apple's been using IDE on lower-end models for at least three or four years.
Frankly, I think 'build-to-order' SCSI is a better option than Apple's old plan of producing one lower-end IDE model (Say PMac 4400) and a slightly faster higher-end SCSI model costing much more (PMac 7300).
Merky1 makes a critical point that shouldn't be ignored in the back-and-forth. Microsoft took a bunch of stuff that was in the base OS (or like digtal signing, should have been), and moved it from Windows to Internet Explorer.
For example, the CTL3D32.DLL has been a standard system DLL in Windows since the beginning of time. All of a sudden, all updated versions became part of IE. If you are a 3rd Party Windows developer, and you require some new functionality in CTRL3D32, your product has suddenly become dependant on Internet Explorer to run.
But here's the catch - In order to get a licence to include IE with your product, you had to jump through a bunch of hoops far more restrictive than the licence for Windows DLLs. For example, Microsoft required IE licencees to use IE-only content (ActiveX, DHTML) on their public websites, blocking out Netscape users. They also were requiring that the "Channel Bar" (basically banner ads on your desktop - revenue going to MS) be installed on any machine with IE.
My understanding is that many of these requirements have been dropped, but if that isn't predatory monopolistic behavior, I'm not sure what is.
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I think there was a golden opportunity to totally dominate the market about 5 years ago or so if all of the commercial UNIX vendors would've been willing to bury their collective hatchets in Microsoft's back.
Agreed. Forget "free" for a moment - A big chunk of the Linux market simply comes from (first) being Unix, (second) having good PC hardware support, and (third) being reasonably priced.
What if Sun (or Novell, SCO, etc) had gotten their own 'cheap Unix with lotssa drivers' out the door a few years ago? They would probably own the PC server market instead of Microsoft.
(There was definately a huge opening about 5 years ago, where IT managers started to realized that they could run network applications off of cheaper PC Server hardware. Sounds like a perfect job for Unix, but at the time nobody was really interested in selling a x86 Unix at a reasonable price. NetWare didn't serve apps very well, OS/2 was already dying off, so Microsoft stepped up and took over the market.)
I believe that Win 9x installer is designed to crash while detecting certain old fashion devices. After the reboot, it checks the detection logs and makes an educated guess about your hardware.
In practice, this can be a disaster. However, I did see it work once with Win 95a and an old token ring card.
I think, there is a 'psychological difficulty' for first time installer: the installation procedure defaults to the 'DOS-looking' installation
The problem with the RedHat install is not that's text mode, but it's a really bad text mode program. The tab-space-enter interface is confusing in different places, and it's difficult to tell exactly is selected sometimes.
I'd much rather prefer the 'blue screen' interface of the NT installer, or yes, even MS-DOS 6.
First, I really don't understand why folks bother comparing Linux with Windows 9x in any respect. Windows 98 is a EOLed product that has been comprismised to hell for backwards compatiblity and supposedly lower overhead, and furthermore has no concept of security whatsoever, and that's *by design*.
Really, if you want to take on Microsoft, and have any crediblity, at least take on their better OS - NT 4 or Win2000 (and even then wait and see on 2000). Just forget what shipped on your mom's e-machine and look at what products have a comparible feature set.
Second, for server machines (and face it, that's Linux's strength), the ease of running the installer is really a non-issue. One supposedly has somewhat knowledgable people doing this. The critical ease-of-use factor here is configurablity : How easy is it to set up file and print sharing? How easy is it to get a web server up and running? I don't think that anyone would argue that Linux is better than WinNT in this regard. (Although, you could argue that Linux is better when supporting non-standard or secure configurations.)
I actually see this alot. Most people don't seem to grasp that a computer display is not supposed to work like a television set (bigger = pixels).
There's also a large number of people that really need corrective lenses that won't wear them and instead requisition a huge monitor. This could be a legal problem for a company if someone insists that they can't do their work without a 21" @ 800x600 (or even 640x480!)
Actually, I have to back this up. Last night I got a call from a Mac using friend having problems with her ISP.
After checking the obvious stuff, I thought we should try to ping the ISP router. Then I remembered that MacOS does not ship with a ping utility, so therefore none was installed. (And yes, I know about the freeware stuff, but it was too late!) Really a criminal act these days, because most people won't want to download a ping util until their connection is down.
Sun's super-slow online store (some advert) indicates that workstations start at $2520 -- In short not much more than business PC hardware (aka not your $600 Office Depot jobs).
Don't forget that a standard Gartner Group piece of wisdom is that an enterprise PC costs something like $10-15,000 per year to support. If the promise of lower support costs with UNIX are actually true, Sun comes out looking like a bargin.
If they really wanted to help they could release all the source for Wabi 2.2 and 3beta to WINE.
Wasn't the Windows source in Wabi licenced from Microsoft? If so, a source release would be impossible.
I think you hit the nail on the head.
One can imagine a future where a free software platform of Linux, KDE and/or Gnome, KOffice, etc. could actually be considered a competitive business desktop to Windows/Office for $500 cheaper. The big hitch is the inevitable in-house corporate applications written with VisualBasic, Delphi, VC, DBase, Lotus Notes, etc. Wine might be an answer, but obviously, the Delphi people are now in the best position to save some money on desktop software when the time comes.
Products like this, while not "free" are a critical piece of the free softwar puzzle simply because they open the door for migration.
Furthermore, my guess is that Linux support will appeal enough to IT managers that this move will increase Borland's Windows product sales, just so shops can hedge their long term bets against a Windows desktop.
Lets not forget Motif, either.
Actually, it would seem to me that Motif/Lesstif would be the obvious choice (much to the dismay of Linux DE fans) because it would allow them to port the product to the profitable commercial Unix market more easily.
(How many Sun workstations have GTK or QT installed? My guess is not many.)
Well, remember who ZD's reader base is - primarily power users (of PCs) and people who manage departmental servers, etc.
A summary of the article might be:
Our reader base has been using NT and NetWare for years, and Unix has always been only for the guys in the datacenter.
Vendors such as SCO and Novell have tried marketing Unix to our reader base but it hasn't worked, so we have never been interested before in writing about Unix.
Now there's Linux which is actually economic and runs on our reader base's hardware. Some of them find it useful and it's appearing more and more on the departmental level, so we are going to write more stories about Linux and Unix.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is trying to promote NT to the datacenter guys. To help with this they've bought a Unix layer for NT.
Conculusion: None
All in all a typical ZD article.
? The documentation makes it clear that it's POSIX.1 only.
Now, a historic observation, for what it may be worth: all UNIX emulation layers in the past have bit the dust. Only real kernels have survived.
My understanding of Interix is that it is not really an emulation layer (UNIX to Win32), but talks directly to the NT kernel (real enough?) independantly of the other subsystems. I have no idea how it would help you port to Win32 other than the convience of being able to run the POSIX app right there.
My guess is that they are aiming Interix at the higher-end "datacenter" version of 2000. This would allow shops with one or two older Unix network apps to running them on an NT box that's presumably capable of running other applications at the same time. (Of course, NT right now is pretty much 1+ box per application, so the product would need to get much better for this to be feasible.)
(Since everyone is making comparisons, and this one is the highest rated.)
Just to point something out, sendmail and Exchange aren't really comparable products. Sendmail is pretty much a pure SMTP MTA, where Exchange tries to be a complete groupware system, with X400-based mail.
I guess you could make a comparision between sendmail and the rather non-configurable Exchange Internet Mail Connector or with the simple IIS SMTP relay, but that's not really fair either. Most larger shops will use something like sendmail on the border or the backbone with Exchange or whatever else for internal mail only. Sendmail for NT makes sense even in Exchange enviorns because Microsoft really doesn't make a good straight-SMTP solution.
It should be noted that Apple (and others such as AT+T/Lucent) had to go through a very long FCC petition process to get a slice of spectrum allocated for wireless networking in the US. It should be no suprise that the bureaucracy just as cumbersome elsewhere.
E XT=938276998.1936523279&hitnum=28
One reference I found:
http://x36.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=212899830&CONT
(Note that I'm not sure if this is the same spectrum as IEEE 802.11/Airport)
Check the online PC Week archives at:
http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/filters/past/
no thread
A couple years ago I saw a map showing the 'density' of installed Internet bandwidth by location. At that time, the SF Bay Area was massively more dense than any other part of the world.
While things probably have leveled out today, where the bandwidth is installed is probably more interesting than the topographical center or where the traffic is going through.
what is PC Week? It is a magazine oriented towards Windows users.
Actually, it's a magazine for managers of PC networks, not "Windows users". Maybe you are thinking of "PC Magazine".
This means lots of Novell, NT, and Linux coverage. Those are pretty much the most popular PC server platforms right now. Most of the advertising in PC Week seems to be for network hardware and software. There are very few straight Windows user applications being advertised.
Of course, the #1 vendor for these folks is Microsoft, so there is a huge amount of MS coverage. (But contrary to Linux paranoia, not every PC network manager is a MS drone. Simply that most IT shops have a vested interest in MS's plans and legal problems.)
I don't think "privacy" is the issue here - what might be bothersome is the attitude that Linux support concerns have towards users who are confused because 'autorun' and 'double-clicking on the icon in gmc' didn't work.
Perhaps Microsoft's "usability study" wasn't of Linux or Linux games per se, but actually checking to see the quality of Linux tech support operations.
They get some guys who pretend to be clueless, make some calls and some mail list posts and see what kind of response they get. They can then tally up all of the RTFM responses, the support engineers who "almost peed my pants" with laughter (and then promptly posted to a Linux advocacy board), and compare those with the quality responses.
Unlike some hypothetical desktop-battle, this information can be effectively used by Microsoft in FUD tactics. "Our informal studies show that if you aren't proficient in Unix, the Linux tech support companies will just ignore you or laugh at you." This can go along way in scaring managers that are (rightfully) worried about the skill gap of their staff when it comes to Linux.
I know the instinct is to jump on the anti-FUD ramparts as soon as reports like this come out.
But take a deep breath. Microsoft is in the operating system business. I'm sure they've got legions of people doing "usablity studies" on MacOS 9, BeOS, OS/2 5, Solaris 7 and so on. Eventually reports get written, MS finds a few new features to steal, some contractors get easy money and everyone is happy.
Also, don't forget these guys are paranoid as hell. Why should they believe either Linus or the trade press when they say "Linux is not ready for the desktop", when they can afford their own usablity lab to make that determination for them.
Apple's been using IDE on lower-end models for at least three or four years.
Frankly, I think 'build-to-order' SCSI is a better option than Apple's old plan of producing one lower-end IDE model (Say PMac 4400) and a slightly faster higher-end SCSI model costing much more (PMac 7300).
I described the original IE 4.0 policy. Microsoft loosened up later on.
Merky1 makes a critical point that shouldn't be ignored in the back-and-forth. Microsoft took a bunch of stuff that was in the base OS (or like digtal signing, should have been), and moved it from Windows to Internet Explorer.
For example, the CTL3D32.DLL has been a standard system DLL in Windows since the beginning of time. All of a sudden, all updated versions became part of IE. If you are a 3rd Party Windows developer, and you require some new functionality in CTRL3D32, your product has suddenly become dependant on Internet Explorer to run.
But here's the catch - In order to get a licence to include IE with your product, you had to jump through a bunch of hoops far more restrictive than the licence for Windows DLLs. For example, Microsoft required IE licencees to use IE-only content (ActiveX, DHTML) on their public websites, blocking out Netscape users. They also were requiring that the "Channel Bar" (basically banner ads on your desktop - revenue going to MS) be installed on any machine with IE.
My understanding is that many of these requirements have been dropped, but if that isn't predatory monopolistic behavior, I'm not sure what is.