The computing power and graphics capabilities delivered by the Amiga and Atari in particular went rings around the PC for a lower price for a long time.
Yeah, but Commodore screwed it up. (Marketing, internal problems, etc.) And because Amiga was a closed, proprietary platform, it died with Commodore.
If Amiga were an open platform, it would not have died and IMO would have even had a not so bad chance in making inroads in the corporate market.
what kills linux (for the newcomer) is the overabundance of choice! Abiword, Kword, OpenOffice, StarOffice, Applix (if they are still around). Pick one!
The real reason why the PC took off is because it's an open hardware platform and hundreds of companies could offer stuff (either better/cheaper parts of extensions/new parts) for it.
But I agree, Windows-usability had absolutely nothing to do with it.
The whole PC was never designed as 32-Bit workstation. Windows was never designed as a multi-user operating system (and it shows, BTW)
Anyway, all the *technical* prerequesites are there and are well tested.
What we need is: More games, more drivers and more Linux-preinstalled machines.
More Linux penetration in the business sector will make the latter 2 available also for home users. Games will follow as soon as desktop-usage increases.
First, we have to get the userbase THEN we can expect native ports. And Wine is a means to get the userbase.
It works like this:
Stage 1: Some game works in Wine, but the game company does not care about it.
Stage 2: Game works in Wine and the game company cooperates to make it work well in wine (AFAIK Sims and now Kohan fall into that category already)
Stage 3: The game company releases quasi-native ports using winelib. Which means that there is no practical difference between that and a native port.
Stage 4: A real native port.
Now, let's analyze: Wine can produce games with winelib that are de-facto as good as native ones and the best thing is: THEY CAN BE RELEASED AT THE SAME TIME. (As soon as Wine is good enough).
So winelib will make it possible for game companies to RELEASE their games Linux-compatible without much finanzial investment (ideally it should be a recompile, of course nothing is ideal, but you get the idea).
As the userbase of Linux grows, game companies might find it better not to use the Win32API on Linux (aka Wine) and use Linux' APIs directly.
Wine is the single most important project for desktop-Linux. Without Wine, Linux will have a very hard time succeeding on the desktop.
When I look at the crossover products, I can say that apps on Wine *can be* rock-solid, reliable and performant. And Wine will get better and cover more and more of the Win32API until the whole thing is covered (they just need Win98 compatibility, which is a fixed target). And when we finally reach the stage when we can install and run almost any Win32 app without hassle on Linux, there is no reason to run Windows anymore.
I think Linux marketshare in the USA will increase impressively as soon as people realize that there are other distributions much better for the desktop than RedHat.
PS2 had to recoup the huge research and development costs, but the hardware was never sold at a loss.
Come on, the only thing that keeps the XBox alive is a) massive infusion of cash by Microsoft and b) hardcore-gamers that jerk off by having the latest-greatest.
I've got news for you, the XBox won't be newer than the latest Playstation forever.
When the PS3 hits the market, there will be not a single reason to buy a XBox anymore
b: No, XBox is the only platform losing money. PS2-hardware is sold at a profit and only 1-2 games are needed to make up for Gamecube hardware losses (which is realistic) but the XBox will never sell the needed 15-20 games per unit that is needed to get to break-even.
And when you look at XBox-live costing an additional 2 billion $, you would need (at 50$/year) about 40 million subscriber years to reach break even, which is ridiculous.
People are forced to use platforms all the time, be it Windows because they want to play some game or be it PHP because most webhosters don't support ASP.
The more important a platform becomes, the more people are forced to use it.
I think mandating open-source is a step too far, but the governement should mandate multi-vendor platforms. If there is only one vendor selling a Win32-OS, it should not be used.
Just like you should be able to choose from compatible hardware vendors like HP, IBM, Dell, etc. you should be able to choose from compatible software-makers like SuSE, Mandrake, Gentoo, Debian or even BSD (which is Linux compatible).
Unfortunately the home user won't read the article. He will read advertisement ads that promise him a computer that will make "Windows XP even more secure".
The home user bought Office 2000 because of the helpful little paperclip. He will buy this.
Wrong, the home user did not buy Office 2000. If they have it at all, they pirated it.
And that's Palladium's problem. Currently, the home user is used to pirate software/music/movies and if anything tries to stop him doing it, he will refuse to use it.
There will be a market for non-Palladium systems (to be more specific, there will be no market for Palladium systems) so companies will produce for that market. If AMD and Intel are relly so stupid to refuse to make any non-Palladium chips anymore, be ready for VIA and Transmeta chips that will be bought if there is no other chance to watch "insecure" content on the PC.
Come on, this has been tried before (DivX-hardware player) it just does not work.
MS Word always has a format incompatible with the previous version. Why? Because designing a binary format that is extensible and flexible is not something you can do on a weekend. With XML this becomes easier.
Eeek. Wrong.
Because a compatible format would not force-upgrade users.
The point is that finally I can use OO to work on files that were created on KOffice and vice versa.
We need an open standard format that more than one project agrees on. This currently does not exist for wordprocessing and spreadsheets, unfortunately.
What amazes me most about Windlots is that they really think Microsoft has the best solution to every computing problem in existance.
What will MSDN help you designing Unix/Linux software for servers and mainframes?
No, despite what Microsoft has told you, a huge mega-cluster of 32Bit Windows boxes is rarely cheaper than a single server or a small cluster of real servers.
Why is it that on every Mozilla/Netscape thread hundreds of Bill Gates loving trolls come out of the woodwork (the same kind that sais that downloading anything is hard) and proposes tens of questionable freeware programs just to mimic Mozilla's default featureset?
Why not just use Mozilla in the first place? Why do people go through long pains just to run a Microsoft product but don't give other products even a try?
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Yeah, but Commodore screwed it up. (Marketing, internal problems, etc.) And because Amiga was a closed, proprietary platform, it died with Commodore.
If Amiga were an open platform, it would not have died and IMO would have even had a not so bad chance in making inroads in the corporate market.
Well, I guess the customers would just pay a little more so they don't go broke.
OK, Telstra picks one.
Problem solved.
What was your point again?
But I agree, Windows-usability had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Anyway, all the *technical* prerequesites are there and are well tested.
What we need is: More games, more drivers and more Linux-preinstalled machines.
More Linux penetration in the business sector will make the latter 2 available also for home users. Games will follow as soon as desktop-usage increases.
Or did you just repeat whatever your local Microsoft-representative told you?
The way I see it the game is included in the 30$ bucks and if you already have the game you can play it with Wine. Correct me when I'm wrong.
First, we have to get the userbase THEN we can expect native ports. And Wine is a means to get the userbase.
It works like this:
Stage 1: Some game works in Wine, but the game company does not care about it.
Stage 2: Game works in Wine and the game company cooperates to make it work well in wine (AFAIK Sims and now Kohan fall into that category already)
Stage 3: The game company releases quasi-native ports using winelib. Which means that there is no practical difference between that and a native port.
Stage 4: A real native port.
Now, let's analyze: Wine can produce games with winelib that are de-facto as good as native ones and the best thing is: THEY CAN BE RELEASED AT THE SAME TIME. (As soon as Wine is good enough).
So winelib will make it possible for game companies to RELEASE their games Linux-compatible without much finanzial investment (ideally it should be a recompile, of course nothing is ideal, but you get the idea).
As the userbase of Linux grows, game companies might find it better not to use the Win32API on Linux (aka Wine) and use Linux' APIs directly.
Wine is the single most important project for desktop-Linux. Without Wine, Linux will have a very hard time succeeding on the desktop.
When I look at the crossover products, I can say that apps on Wine *can be* rock-solid, reliable and performant. And Wine will get better and cover more and more of the Win32API until the whole thing is covered (they just need Win98 compatibility, which is a fixed target). And when we finally reach the stage when we can install and run almost any Win32 app without hassle on Linux, there is no reason to run Windows anymore.
I think Linux marketshare in the USA will increase impressively as soon as people realize that there are other distributions much better for the desktop than RedHat.
Well, in a real democracy, you need the majority, getting "most" is not enough.
Come on, the only thing that keeps the XBox alive is a) massive infusion of cash by Microsoft and b) hardcore-gamers that jerk off by having the latest-greatest.
I've got news for you, the XBox won't be newer than the latest Playstation forever.
When the PS3 hits the market, there will be not a single reason to buy a XBox anymore
And this will kill it.
And when you look at XBox-live costing an additional 2 billion $, you would need (at 50$/year) about 40 million subscriber years to reach break even, which is ridiculous.
Lose 150$ per console which they will never get back. Lose 2 billion on XBox live which they never will get back.
They created the XBOX to tap into the video game market and make money.
Well, why is it the only platform on the market that is losing money, then?
That's the whole point. Microsoft has good reasons to keep some things a secret and we all have good reasons to keep some things secret.
Why should we have to disclose everything and not Microsoft?
Well and the same will happen to Palladium-PCs.
People are forced to use platforms all the time, be it Windows because they want to play some game or be it PHP because most webhosters don't support ASP.
The more important a platform becomes, the more people are forced to use it.
I think mandating open-source is a step too far, but the governement should mandate multi-vendor platforms. If there is only one vendor selling a Win32-OS, it should not be used.
Just like you should be able to choose from compatible hardware vendors like HP, IBM, Dell, etc. you should be able to choose from compatible software-makers like SuSE, Mandrake, Gentoo, Debian or even BSD (which is Linux compatible).
Please stop the FUD. The majority of computers is very well compatible with Linux.
The home user bought Office 2000 because of the helpful little paperclip. He will buy this.
Wrong, the home user did not buy Office 2000. If they have it at all, they pirated it.
And that's Palladium's problem. Currently, the home user is used to pirate software/music/movies and if anything tries to stop him doing it, he will refuse to use it.
There will be a market for non-Palladium systems (to be more specific, there will be no market for Palladium systems) so companies will produce for that market. If AMD and Intel are relly so stupid to refuse to make any non-Palladium chips anymore, be ready for VIA and Transmeta chips that will be bought if there is no other chance to watch "insecure" content on the PC.
Come on, this has been tried before (DivX-hardware player) it just does not work.
Palladium-lovers usually tell us: "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear from Palladium".
Well, if Micrososft has nothing to hide, why do they keep Palladium a secret?
Eeek. Wrong.
Because a compatible format would not force-upgrade users.
We need an open standard format that more than one project agrees on. This currently does not exist for wordprocessing and spreadsheets, unfortunately.
So all of the sudden, support is no issue for Winlots anymore?
You probably could fix up a Windows-machine with cygwin to do some simple Unix-development, but setting that up is quite time-consuming and expensive.
What will MSDN help you designing Unix/Linux software for servers and mainframes?
No, despite what Microsoft has told you, a huge mega-cluster of 32Bit Windows boxes is rarely cheaper than a single server or a small cluster of real servers.
There are only 2 OSes that can do what they need which is develop Unix-software and run Openoffice:
Linux (or BSD via Linux compatibility) and Solaris. And Linux is clearly cheaper.
Everything else (including Windows) does not even enter the game.
Why not just use Mozilla in the first place? Why do people go through long pains just to run a Microsoft product but don't give other products even a try?