Hah. People are choosing Linux because they are fleeing away from Microsoft. Not very many will be going back. Not to say that Linux may not lose some of those people, but if it does, chances are that *BSD, MacOS X or BeOS may be as likely a choices.
Unless you make a whole lot more than most of us around here (and many of us aren't that poorly paid mind you), then $250 (what you would have to pay for your OEM Windows 2000 plus either a motherboard/processor or a hard drive) is a lot more expensive than three hours worth of work. That figures out to about $83 an hour, which would be the equivalent of over $150,000 a year). Not to mention that it doesn't take zero time to install Windows 2000 either.
Windows 2000 just doesn't have much value proposition that I can see.
Actually the past couple of years, the NT market share has been basically flat, while Linux has been growing rapidly. While not great news if you are Novell or a proprietary UNIX vendor, the fact that UNIX and Netware userbases aren't shrinking in a market where they are severely challenged by both NT/2000 and Linux is not really bad news for them either. Many people have been and are continuing to predict the imminant collapse of Netware and proprietary UNIX and a mass exodus of those customers to NT/2000, and so far it looks like they are wrong.
Its also worth noting that in terms of mindshare and cooperativeness (common application software, for example), success of Linux is much more damaging to NT/2000 and Netware than it is to proprietary UNIX.
I'll be damned if I'm going to run linux until I _know_ that there are at least 4.5 million boxes running it.
Netcraft says that there are over 10 million servers running Apache on the publicly accessable internet. Those are machines that are running basically 24/7, not 'dual boot' machines or people's dialup boxes that are getting miscounted. Netcraft also says that over 1/3 of the Apache servers are running Linux as their OS. According to the Linux counter, less than 30% of Linux boxes are used as web servers.
Given those numbers, how could anyone reasonably believe that there aren't well more than 4.5 million Linux boxes running out there?
That suggests that Linux is now shipping more units for use as desktops than for servers.
That very well could be. Where I work we have recently installed Linux machines on the desktop of everyone in the development department and most of the people in the systems group. Linux on the desktop does outnumber the number of Linux servers we have now, by probably nearly two to one.
but the same was true of the Ford Pinto and the Dodge Caravan
Are you sure about that? Other than Iacocca, what major Ford people went to Dodge?
And everyone knows that the Dodge Caravan was in fact directly based on the K-cars (like the Plymouth Reliant). The K-cars in turn were loosely based on a stretched Omni/Horizon.
While you are right about NT not being based on VMS, that is probably a bad thing, not a good thing. VMS, as much as I never liked it, was a fairly reliable and stable performer. Its also not really fair to say that NT is directly an OS/2 derivative. It is more a reimplementation of the ideas in MicroVMS for the x86 with some influence from OS/2 and MS-DOS and the Windows GUI pasted on top. In fact, I think NT would have been a much better product had it been allowed to have grown its own UIs, as the Windows GUI is severely plagued with limitations based on its single-user limited tasking background, and the MS-DOS-like command line of NT is horribly archaic.
Exchange isn't even a reason to run NT anymore. HP's OpenMail is a replacement for Exchange that is open source, more cost effective, and runs on a better platforms, with a choice of platforms (Linux and many commercial UNIXes). And yes, Windows 9x and NT desktop users can use Outhouse... Errr... LookOut... Err Outlook as their mail client if they want. Although to be fair, it is really Outlook that is more responsible for the security problems with that system than Exchange.
but very few people who have used both actually think Linux is better or even close to being equal to Win2K.
Who are the people who have actually used both that think Linux isn't better than W2K? Nobody I know. Half the people I know who have tried W2K have 'downgraded' their Windows partitions to 98 or NT 4. At work we are greatly increasing the number and importance of Linux machines, while W2K isn't being used for any development use or any production servers. Price is the least important reason to choose Linux. On careful consideration (that's right, Linux use isn't a whim), it is winning in our environment because it works better and gives us more control over our future.
Frankly, I can't think of any desktop applications that Windows or MacOS have that make them any more compelling than Linux. While they may have more applications, and maybe even fancier applications, that isn't enough to make them compelling to me.
Ugh. This appears to be a case of the buttheads at Compaq using the same name for two totally unrelated products. What your post references is totally different than the machines we have where I work that carry the iPAQ nameplate. They have 500MHz Pentium III's in them and usually come preloaded with Windows 98, although Linux runs pretty well on them.
I am not sure how much power it consumes, however, the AC adapter (the unit uses 15V DC input) is rated at 45VA max, which would be approximately 35 watts. Since that also powers the docking station (floppy and CD-ROM) when that is plugged in, I would expect the main unit to draw considerably less than that, but I have no idea what that amount would actually be.
While I won't dispute that there might be a niche for the 486 machines where power consumption is extremely critical, I would think it is pretty small, especially when the price and performance of the Expresso is so much better.
The problem is it is more expensive than, and significantly less powerful than, but only slightly smaller than the SaintSong Expresso. The Expresso has also been around for at least a couple of months. I've seen both products, and the Expresso is much more of a polished product, as it comes in a nice walkman-ish package whereas the 486SX based box mentioned in this article is basically a bare board.
The problem with it is that it isn't really that much smaller than the much more powerful SaintSong Expresso. The Expresso is packaged into a nice little walkman-sized box, uses Socket 370 so you can put in Celerons or PIII's at 466 or 500MHz, standard SO-DIMMs so you can put up to 256M into it, and laptop style IDE drives so you can get it with up to an 18G drive. It uses the Intel i810 chipset with included SVGA video (including S-Video outs), integrated sound, UDB and PS2 style keyboard and mouse ports. I've seen one running Linux, and it works pretty well. One of the few bad things about it I can think of is that it doesn't include on-board Ethernet, so you have to use a UDB->Ethernet adapter. You can get a little 'docking station' for it that includes a floppy drive and either a CD-ROM drive or a DVD-ROM. Using the S-Video out, you can use it as a very compact DVD player.
All that, and it isn't significantly more expensive than the little 486SX machine. If memory serves, we paid around $2000 for an Expresso with 500MHz Celeron, 128M RAM, 18G hard drive and the CD-ROM docking station.
While I agree with your conclusions, I have to disagree with the following point.
6) GPL Restrictions: Sun doesn't get to include GNOME, Apache, or even pine w/ Solaris. The GPL forbids them from "selling" these programs as a part of their OS. However, lots of sysadmins install them after Solaris is up. They're just as vulnerable.
Actually, there is no such part of the GPL that forbids Sun from including GPL software in Solaris. The only thing would be they would have to provide the source code for those GPL programs on request. That would be a pretty easy thing for them to comply with, merely sell a 'source code' CD, and provide the source code on their FTP site.
If what you say was true, then companies like Red Hat, SuSE, Caldera, Mandrake, etc. wouldn't be able to sell their commercial Linux distros, as all of them include non-GPL software with them.
Also, you should note that Apache which is in your list is not GPL, it is covered by a BSD-like license which definitely is friendly to commercial bundling. It is also worth noting that Sun has said that they will start distributing Apache with Solaris media in the future (I don't remember right offhand, but it may already be in Solaris 8).
Linux will not be ready for the mainstream until you can hand it to a neophyte and they can succeed without having a friend or relative that is a guru that can field hundreds of questions.
By that logic, Windows isn't ready for the mainstream either, because you run into the same problem of not being able to hand it to a neophyte who doesn't know Windows without having a friend or relative who can field their questions. Linux isn't really that much more difficult to learn than Windows, it is just that there aren't as many people out there that know it yet. That is changing, but it will take time.
The question isn't whether Linux is ready for the mainstream, but whether the mainstream is ready for Linux.
Of course, Microsoft had to quit counting around 63,000 because they use 16 bit integers which would overflow or cause problems with their math functions...
We already have a 'free as in beer' music distribution system, and have had for a long time, its called radio. The record companies fought radio back in the early days, until they realized that radio airplay actually increases record sales rather than decreasing it. Perhaps if Napster wants to exist as a commercial entity and be supported by advertising as radio is, then they should work out a system whereby artists are paid royalties similar to the way that ASCAP and BMI work.
As for most musicians being able to make a living, it is already true that most can't do it through music. Signed artists are the lucky few. Most musicians make their money by 'stealing' from signed musicians by playing cover versions of well known songs in bars, at parties, etc w/o paying royalties. Napster probably won't significantly change that one way or the other. A few non-signed artists may actually benefit from being able to do an end-run around the record company's AR men.
You can't necessarily close down a pizza parlor if an employee might be running an illegal side business on the bosses' time. However, if the owner is the one running the illegal side business or sanctions such activity, then it might be a different story.
It definitely shouldn't be possible to shut down a pizza parlor if a few customers happen to be meeting there and conducting illegal business, which is much more close to the napster situation. Unfortunately the rules of common sense and logic are often thrown out the window when law enforcement officials are using the 'war on drugs' for political gain.
Napster isn't actually selling any unlicensed music. Napster employees aren't selling any unlicensed music. Napster customers are definitely trading in unlicensed music. A few customers are trading legal music as well.
Anyway, I never heard anything about any Home Team Pizza in Ames getting shut down for such a reason. Is this an actual case, or did you make that up?
So you are telling me that propaganda doesn't fuel pro-Microsoft sites or any other sites?
The biases of Slashdot are well known, and not a secret. Other sites often try to claim non-biased reporting, but in reality, everyone has their biases.
Well, lets be honest - MS Office is better than most other products, in terms of value
Have you seen the prices they are charging for it lately? Holy cow, have they ever increased the prices. You can buy WordPerfect Suite or Lotus SmartSuite for a tiny fraction of the price of MS Office. Both of those offer similar functionality, so how is MS Office better in terms of value? Even if it was marginally better (in my opinion, it is worse), is it two or three times better to justify being two or three times the price? Sorry, but value just isn't something that Microsoft is competing on. In terms of value, how is Microsoft going to compete with the new GPLed Star Office? Hard to beat the value of free.
and performance at any rate.
Actually, WordPerfect Suite and Lotus SmartSuite seem to run better on older machines than does MS-Office. Star Office is currently a bit on the slow side, but if they do to it what they claim they are going to, that problem should be history.
Just my 0.02$ worth, Ron.
You are entitled to your opinion. I completely disagree, however.
There are racists everywhere, I ran into plenty of them when I was in California. Heck, I saw a black guy and a gay guy start a fight right in the middle of the order line at Arby's when I lived in San Francisco.
There are plenty of rednecks where I live now (in the midwest). There are plenty of people in California that I find just as offensive (in different ways) than Rednecks.
Televangelism? I know how to get DirecTV, and I know how to turn the TV off when I want. The Klan? Last I checked they were just about everywhere. And although I find them distasteful, it is unlikely that they are going to bother a white boy like me. Rush Limbaugh listeners? You think its any different where I live now? Although the guy annoys me even when I agree with him (which is not all the time of course), he is mostly harmless. He is just a radio personality after all.
You really think that California is any better when it comes to wacky people, big corporations and special interests running things?
There is no place you can get away from such things, but at least the weather in Florida is nice. And yes, I do like hot, humid weather.
Slashdot Mirror
Hah. People are choosing Linux because they are fleeing away from Microsoft. Not very many will be going back. Not to say that Linux may not lose some of those people, but if it does, chances are that *BSD, MacOS X or BeOS may be as likely a choices.
Unless you make a whole lot more than most of us around here (and many of us aren't that poorly paid mind you), then $250 (what you would have to pay for your OEM Windows 2000 plus either a motherboard/processor or a hard drive) is a lot more expensive than three hours worth of work. That figures out to about $83 an hour, which would be the equivalent of over $150,000 a year). Not to mention that it doesn't take zero time to install Windows 2000 either.
Windows 2000 just doesn't have much value proposition that I can see.
Actually the past couple of years, the NT market share has been basically flat, while Linux has been growing rapidly. While not great news if you are Novell or a proprietary UNIX vendor, the fact that UNIX and Netware userbases aren't shrinking in a market where they are severely challenged by both NT/2000 and Linux is not really bad news for them either. Many people have been and are continuing to predict the imminant collapse of Netware and proprietary UNIX and a mass exodus of those customers to NT/2000, and so far it looks like they are wrong.
Its also worth noting that in terms of mindshare and cooperativeness (common application software, for example), success of Linux is much more damaging to NT/2000 and Netware than it is to proprietary UNIX.
I'll be damned if I'm going to run linux until I _know_ that there are at least 4.5 million boxes running it.
Netcraft says that there are over 10 million servers running Apache on the publicly accessable internet. Those are machines that are running basically 24/7, not 'dual boot' machines or people's dialup boxes that are getting miscounted. Netcraft also says that over 1/3 of the Apache servers are running Linux as their OS. According to the Linux counter, less than 30% of Linux boxes are used as web servers.
Given those numbers, how could anyone reasonably believe that there aren't well more than 4.5 million Linux boxes running out there?
And yes, I am probably just feeding the trolls...
That suggests that Linux is now shipping more units for use as desktops than for servers.
That very well could be. Where I work we have recently installed Linux machines on the desktop of everyone in the development department and most of the people in the systems group. Linux on the desktop does outnumber the number of Linux servers we have now, by probably nearly two to one.
but the same was true of the Ford Pinto and the Dodge Caravan
Are you sure about that? Other than Iacocca, what major Ford people went to Dodge?
And everyone knows that the Dodge Caravan was in fact directly based on the K-cars (like the Plymouth Reliant). The K-cars in turn were loosely based on a stretched Omni/Horizon.
While you are right about NT not being based on VMS, that is probably a bad thing, not a good thing. VMS, as much as I never liked it, was a fairly reliable and stable performer. Its also not really fair to say that NT is directly an OS/2 derivative. It is more a reimplementation of the ideas in MicroVMS for the x86 with some influence from OS/2 and MS-DOS and the Windows GUI pasted on top. In fact, I think NT would have been a much better product had it been allowed to have grown its own UIs, as the Windows GUI is severely plagued with limitations based on its single-user limited tasking background, and the MS-DOS-like command line of NT is horribly archaic.
Exchange isn't even a reason to run NT anymore. HP's OpenMail is a replacement for Exchange that is open source, more cost effective, and runs on a better platforms, with a choice of platforms (Linux and many commercial UNIXes). And yes, Windows 9x and NT desktop users can use Outhouse... Errr... LookOut... Err Outlook as their mail client if they want. Although to be fair, it is really Outlook that is more responsible for the security problems with that system than Exchange.
but very few people who have used both actually think Linux is better or even close to being equal to Win2K.
Who are the people who have actually used both that think Linux isn't better than W2K? Nobody I know. Half the people I know who have tried W2K have 'downgraded' their Windows partitions to 98 or NT 4. At work we are greatly increasing the number and importance of Linux machines, while W2K isn't being used for any development use or any production servers. Price is the least important reason to choose Linux. On careful consideration (that's right, Linux use isn't a whim), it is winning in our environment because it works better and gives us more control over our future.
Frankly, I can't think of any desktop applications that Windows or MacOS have that make them any more compelling than Linux. While they may have more applications, and maybe even fancier applications, that isn't enough to make them compelling to me.
Ugh. This appears to be a case of the buttheads at Compaq using the same name for two totally unrelated products. What your post references is totally different than the machines we have where I work that carry the iPAQ nameplate. They have 500MHz Pentium III's in them and usually come preloaded with Windows 98, although Linux runs pretty well on them.
I am not sure how much power it consumes, however, the AC adapter (the unit uses 15V DC input) is rated at 45VA max, which would be approximately 35 watts. Since that also powers the docking station (floppy and CD-ROM) when that is plugged in, I would expect the main unit to draw considerably less than that, but I have no idea what that amount would actually be.
While I won't dispute that there might be a niche for the 486 machines where power consumption is extremely critical, I would think it is pretty small, especially when the price and performance of the Expresso is so much better.
The problem is it is more expensive than, and significantly less powerful than, but only slightly smaller than the SaintSong Expresso. The Expresso has also been around for at least a couple of months. I've seen both products, and the Expresso is much more of a polished product, as it comes in a nice walkman-ish package whereas the 486SX based box mentioned in this article is basically a bare board.
http://www.saintsong.com.tw
The Compaq iPAQ is not a WinCE machine, it is a normal x86 based PC. WinCE runs on a totally different processor architecture.
Yes, I've seen one running Linux no less. Its a nice little box. You can find the manufacturer's page at:
http://www.saintsong.com.tw
Looks like the prices have come down a little since the one I've seen was purchased as well.
The problem with it is that it isn't really that much smaller than the much more powerful SaintSong Expresso. The Expresso is packaged into a nice little walkman-sized box, uses Socket 370 so you can put in Celerons or PIII's at 466 or 500MHz, standard SO-DIMMs so you can put up to 256M into it, and laptop style IDE drives so you can get it with up to an 18G drive. It uses the Intel i810 chipset with included SVGA video (including S-Video outs), integrated sound, UDB and PS2 style keyboard and mouse ports. I've seen one running Linux, and it works pretty well. One of the few bad things about it I can think of is that it doesn't include on-board Ethernet, so you have to use a UDB->Ethernet adapter. You can get a little 'docking station' for it that includes a floppy drive and either a CD-ROM drive or a DVD-ROM. Using the S-Video out, you can use it as a very compact DVD player.
All that, and it isn't significantly more expensive than the little 486SX machine. If memory serves, we paid around $2000 for an Expresso with 500MHz Celeron, 128M RAM, 18G hard drive and the CD-ROM docking station.
While I agree with your conclusions, I have to disagree with the following point.
6) GPL Restrictions: Sun doesn't get to include GNOME, Apache, or even pine w/ Solaris. The GPL forbids them from "selling" these programs as a part of their OS. However, lots of sysadmins install them after Solaris is up. They're just as vulnerable.
Actually, there is no such part of the GPL that forbids Sun from including GPL software in Solaris. The only thing would be they would have to provide the source code for those GPL programs on request. That would be a pretty easy thing for them to comply with, merely sell a 'source code' CD, and provide the source code on their FTP site.
If what you say was true, then companies like Red Hat, SuSE, Caldera, Mandrake, etc. wouldn't be able to sell their commercial Linux distros, as all of them include non-GPL software with them.
Also, you should note that Apache which is in your list is not GPL, it is covered by a BSD-like license which definitely is friendly to commercial bundling. It is also worth noting that Sun has said that they will start distributing Apache with Solaris media in the future (I don't remember right offhand, but it may already be in Solaris 8).
Linux will not be ready for the mainstream until you can hand it to a neophyte and they can succeed without having a friend or relative that is a guru that can field hundreds of questions.
By that logic, Windows isn't ready for the mainstream either, because you run into the same problem of not being able to hand it to a neophyte who doesn't know Windows without having a friend or relative who can field their questions. Linux isn't really that much more difficult to learn than Windows, it is just that there aren't as many people out there that know it yet. That is changing, but it will take time.
The question isn't whether Linux is ready for the mainstream, but whether the mainstream is ready for Linux.
Of course, Microsoft had to quit counting around 63,000 because they use 16 bit integers which would overflow or cause problems with their math functions...
We already have a 'free as in beer' music distribution system, and have had for a long time, its called radio. The record companies fought radio back in the early days, until they realized that radio airplay actually increases record sales rather than decreasing it. Perhaps if Napster wants to exist as a commercial entity and be supported by advertising as radio is, then they should work out a system whereby artists are paid royalties similar to the way that ASCAP and BMI work.
As for most musicians being able to make a living, it is already true that most can't do it through music. Signed artists are the lucky few. Most musicians make their money by 'stealing' from signed musicians by playing cover versions of well known songs in bars, at parties, etc w/o paying royalties. Napster probably won't significantly change that one way or the other. A few non-signed artists may actually benefit from being able to do an end-run around the record company's AR men.
You can't necessarily close down a pizza parlor if an employee might be running an illegal side business on the bosses' time. However, if the owner is the one running the illegal side business or sanctions such activity, then it might be a different story.
It definitely shouldn't be possible to shut down a pizza parlor if a few customers happen to be meeting there and conducting illegal business, which is much more close to the napster situation. Unfortunately the rules of common sense and logic are often thrown out the window when law enforcement officials are using the 'war on drugs' for political gain.
Napster isn't actually selling any unlicensed music. Napster employees aren't selling any unlicensed music. Napster customers are definitely trading in unlicensed music. A few customers are trading legal music as well.
Anyway, I never heard anything about any Home Team Pizza in Ames getting shut down for such a reason. Is this an actual case, or did you make that up?
Propoganda fuels this website.
So you are telling me that propaganda doesn't fuel pro-Microsoft sites or any other sites?
The biases of Slashdot are well known, and not a secret. Other sites often try to claim non-biased reporting, but in reality, everyone has their biases.
Well, lets be honest - MS Office is better than most other products, in terms of value
Have you seen the prices they are charging for it lately? Holy cow, have they ever increased the prices. You can buy WordPerfect Suite or Lotus SmartSuite for a tiny fraction of the price of MS Office. Both of those offer similar functionality, so how is MS Office better in terms of value? Even if it was marginally better (in my opinion, it is worse), is it two or three times better to justify being two or three times the price? Sorry, but value just isn't something that Microsoft is competing on. In terms of value, how is Microsoft going to compete with the new GPLed Star Office? Hard to beat the value of free.
and performance at any rate.
Actually, WordPerfect Suite and Lotus SmartSuite seem to run better on older machines than does MS-Office. Star Office is currently a bit on the slow side, but if they do to it what they claim they are going to, that problem should be history.
Just my 0.02$ worth, Ron.
You are entitled to your opinion. I completely disagree, however.
O.K., tell me how, then, that oil companies are making a nice profit selling oil at current world crude oil prices?
Inflation isn't uniform.
There are racists everywhere, I ran into plenty of them when I was in California. Heck, I saw a black guy and a gay guy start a fight right in the middle of the order line at Arby's when I lived in San Francisco.
There are plenty of rednecks where I live now (in the midwest). There are plenty of people in California that I find just as offensive (in different ways) than Rednecks.
Televangelism? I know how to get DirecTV, and I know how to turn the TV off when I want. The Klan? Last I checked they were just about everywhere. And although I find them distasteful, it is unlikely that they are going to bother a white boy like me. Rush Limbaugh listeners? You think its any different where I live now? Although the guy annoys me even when I agree with him (which is not all the time of course), he is mostly harmless. He is just a radio personality after all.
You really think that California is any better when it comes to wacky people, big corporations and special interests running things?
There is no place you can get away from such things, but at least the weather in Florida is nice. And yes, I do like hot, humid weather.