A lot of posters seem to miss the point of a browser from a commerical perspective.
Why are Netscape and Microsoft fighting so hard to give away their browsers? The point is forming a portal for the average Joe's out there, being the first page they see. When you start up a new install of IE, it takes you to MSN, and when you start up communicator it takes you to NetCenter.
This is why AOL is such a powerful force in eCommerce - they can shove their adverts in the face of 30 million naive users every time the poor things log on.
It's a fact that most beginners will stick with the first browser they see, the one that's preloaded on their computer, rather than taking the trouble to download something else. They don't know how to change the default home page. They're not sufficiently interested in computers to care. It's just like the way people (in the USA) who don't care about driving will buy a Ford or a Toyota with an automatic gearbox instead of a sports car with a 5 speed.
Even if MS have no plans of window manager domination, nor to offer Office (their one "killer" app) on Linux, there is no reason to deny themselves the chance to trya nd be the portal for 7m Linux users, as a potential source of revenue.
I'm no Microsoft fan, but I must admit the Unix version of MSIE5 is actually pretty good - the Solaris implementation is a lot less buggy than Communicator, for instance. It would take them less than 3 man months of work to make it notably better than Netscape's offering. Netscape are stuck between a rock and a hard place here - Microsoft can pour money into their browser effort, and Netscape have to play catchup on what is still their most important platform - Windows. This is why the Windows version of Netscape has better features than the Linux one, though it is slower;-)
It's arguably high time that Netscape put a bit more effort into their Linux port - on this platform, it is *their* browser that ships with the OS install, and that arguably offers them more potential than chasing the Windows download market.
Perhaps competition from the powers of darkness in Redmond on what has been up until now uncontested turf will cause Netscape to wake up. Competitive innovation is after all one of the things that keeps Linux healthy.
Personally, I will be sticking with Netscape for the forseeable future, but watching with interest.
I think what people miss are the heady days when there were lots of different systems they could get hot under the collar advocating. Now its all Intel, with the dark side from Redmond set to take over the whole planet. Lack of competition isn't just unhealthy, it's also no fun. Thank God for Linux and its kin!
Yes, I am one of the many Amiga -> Linux converts. Just got a new machine with RH6 and GNOME, and already I'm in love:)
I still have 2 of my Amy's (an original EHB 1000, and a 3000/040) and I still marvel at some of the stuff in AmigaOS. I even have FreeBSD on the latter. I think we have all forgotten just what a kickin' bit of kit it was, and how far other things have come in the meantime.
A real OS with pre-emptive multitasking. Extensible file system and library API. Core libraries in ROM; boots in seconds into a full desktop GUI - from floppy. Library and driver management still kicks the whatsit out of the Windows DLL and SYS files. I have 3 versions of AmigaOS on the SAME 49Mb hard drive partition, with room to spare for software.
PC's at the time had DOS, and the nearest thing to a GUI was GEM. The Mac had a comparable GUI, but no CLI.
Unparalleled GUI for its day - multiple screens in different video modes, cunning colour support, graphics co-pro's, variable bitplaning. Hardware scrolling for larger-than-monitor frame buffers.
Built in stereo sound. ChipRAM is brilliant in concept. Genlock capability. Hardware support for 2 mice (none in a PC back then) - remember 2 player Lemmings?
Plug and play hardware - that WORKED. In the mid 80's. PC's are *still* bogged down in the IRQ blues.
The A2000 and B2000 - a "proper" man size box. Expansion slots for both Zorro and AT bus. Bridgecards. All excellent.
Then the A3000 - true 32 bit system, built-in fast SCSI. Sensible form factor. When it came out, it was the fastest desktop machine on the market, bar none. For years, the fastest Mac you could buy at any price was an Amiga with an emulator board. They even did a Unix version, crock though it was.
Deluxe Paint - what can I say?! Dan's Xerox heritage shone through there. Photoshop and the GIMP are only now coming up to its level.
The community of shareware and PD - second to none. Windows and Linux still don't have that. Remember Fred Fish, and the ab20 ftp site?
And the games, we can't forget those. They were its greatest strength, and ultimately what held it back.
There were also many things that sucked, and were done wrong...
488 byte per sector filesystem - whose idea was THAT? And not having directory files - not good in an advocacy war:) At least FFS and then DCFFS saved us all from slow disc access.
The 3000's graphics were too little, too late. They stayed with TV standards too long. The flicker fixer was a horrid kludge. Why couldn't the 3000 write straight to the fixer's expensive static RAM buffer and give 800x600x4096?
What was all that with the softkick 3000? Give us a break! Dual boot was handy for poorly coded software though. Before I upgraded mine with the 2.04 ROMs to support the '040, I munged it around to get it to load the 1.4 Beta Workbench - wierd man, very wierd. Augustus John icons. Glad it never saw the light of day.
Half speed drives for 1.44/1.76 Mb formats - a nasty bodge. Ever tried to BUY one? Impossible to get. Mine cost a fortune to import from the USA. Chinon must have made a mint.
AGA - again, too little too late. Tied down by hardware compatibility for the games market. Should have had 24 bit colour at 0124x768, and a blitter with a (simple) 3D transform engine.
CDTV had potential, as did CD32, if they'd been marketed right. But they weren't.
The 500Plus - a bodge, and poorly marketed. That acursed ECS chipset again. I had a 68030 in mine which made it livable, but had to give it up for the more sensible A3k.
The 4000/030 - an overpriced joke. Where was the damn MMU??? No OS support for memory protection and virtual memory - a big mistake there.
Lack of decent and timely networking support - $hundreds for a 10-Base2 card. PARnet was great though - still have my homemade A1000 cable. Xetec's SCSI LAN was hairy but very fast:)
If you still have an A500 in your cupboard, dust it off and plug it in to that TV, have a quick game of Menace, or Xenon 2, or Shadow of the Beast. Shed a quiet tear. You have a ground breaking piece of computer history in your hands. Never let it go.
Re:Something I never got about Sun/Solaris...
on
Linux 2.3.0
·
· Score: 1
The last version of the BSD based SunOS was 4.x, so the firt Solaris became 5.x and they've stuck with it, using second level version numbers for major releases, and keeping Solaris 2 = SunOS 5
I guess the code for the uname line was built long before the Solaris marketing name came up, and so much code (install scripts etc.) relies on it now that they're relcutant to change it.
The naming of Solaris 2.7 as "Solaris 7" is pure marketing spin
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of posters seem to miss the point of a browser from a commerical perspective.
;-)
Why are Netscape and Microsoft fighting so hard to give away their browsers? The point is forming a portal for the average Joe's out there, being the first page they see. When you start up a new install of IE, it takes you to MSN, and when you start up communicator it takes you to NetCenter.
This is why AOL is such a powerful force in eCommerce - they can shove their adverts in the face of 30 million naive users every time the poor things log on.
It's a fact that most beginners will stick with the first browser they see, the one that's preloaded on their computer, rather than taking the trouble to download something else. They don't know how to change the default home page. They're not sufficiently interested in computers to care. It's just like the way people (in the USA) who don't care about driving will buy a Ford or a Toyota with an automatic gearbox instead of a sports car with a 5 speed.
Even if MS have no plans of window manager domination, nor to offer Office (their one "killer" app) on Linux, there is no reason to deny themselves the chance to trya nd be the portal for 7m Linux users, as a potential source of revenue.
I'm no Microsoft fan, but I must admit the Unix version of MSIE5 is actually pretty good - the Solaris implementation is a lot less buggy than Communicator, for instance. It would take them less than 3 man months of work to make it notably better than Netscape's offering. Netscape are stuck between a rock and a hard place here - Microsoft can pour money into their browser effort, and Netscape have to play catchup on what is still their most important platform - Windows. This is why the Windows version of Netscape has better features than the Linux one, though it is slower
It's arguably high time that Netscape put a bit more effort into their Linux port - on this platform, it is *their* browser that ships with the OS install, and that arguably offers them more potential than chasing the Windows download market.
Perhaps competition from the powers of darkness in Redmond on what has been up until now uncontested turf will cause Netscape to wake up. Competitive innovation is after all one of the things that keeps Linux healthy.
Personally, I will be sticking with Netscape for the forseeable future, but watching with interest.
Actually, Disney makes most of its merchandising revenue from the "Winnie the Pooh" characters - they now outsell Mickey 10 to 1.
I think what people miss are the heady days when there were lots of different systems they could get hot under the collar advocating. Now its all Intel, with the dark side from Redmond set to take over the whole planet. Lack of competition isn't just unhealthy, it's also no fun. Thank God for Linux and its kin!
:)
:) At least FFS and then DCFFS saved us all from slow disc access.
:)
Yes, I am one of the many Amiga -> Linux converts. Just got a new machine with RH6 and GNOME, and already I'm in love
I still have 2 of my Amy's (an original EHB 1000, and a 3000/040) and I still marvel at some of the stuff in AmigaOS. I even have FreeBSD on the latter. I think we have all forgotten just what a kickin' bit of kit it was, and how far other things have come in the meantime.
A real OS with pre-emptive multitasking. Extensible file system and library API. Core libraries in ROM; boots in seconds into a full desktop GUI - from floppy. Library and driver management still kicks the whatsit out of the Windows DLL and SYS files. I have 3 versions of AmigaOS on the SAME 49Mb hard drive partition, with room to spare for software.
PC's at the time had DOS, and the nearest thing to a GUI was GEM. The Mac had a comparable GUI, but no CLI.
Unparalleled GUI for its day - multiple screens in different video modes, cunning colour support, graphics co-pro's, variable bitplaning. Hardware scrolling for larger-than-monitor frame buffers.
Built in stereo sound. ChipRAM is brilliant in concept. Genlock capability. Hardware support for 2 mice (none in a PC back then) - remember 2 player Lemmings?
Plug and play hardware - that WORKED. In the mid 80's. PC's are *still* bogged down in the IRQ blues.
The A2000 and B2000 - a "proper" man size box. Expansion slots for both Zorro and AT bus. Bridgecards. All excellent.
Then the A3000 - true 32 bit system, built-in fast SCSI. Sensible form factor. When it came out, it was the fastest desktop machine on the market, bar none. For years, the fastest Mac you could buy at any price was an Amiga with an emulator board. They even did a Unix version, crock though it was.
Deluxe Paint - what can I say?! Dan's Xerox heritage shone through there. Photoshop and the GIMP are only now coming up to its level.
The community of shareware and PD - second to none. Windows and Linux still don't have that. Remember Fred Fish, and the ab20 ftp site?
And the games, we can't forget those. They were its greatest strength, and ultimately what held it back.
There were also many things that sucked, and were done wrong...
488 byte per sector filesystem - whose idea was THAT? And not having directory files - not good in an advocacy war
The 3000's graphics were too little, too late. They stayed with TV standards too long. The flicker fixer was a horrid kludge. Why couldn't the 3000 write straight to the fixer's expensive static RAM buffer and give 800x600x4096?
What was all that with the softkick 3000? Give us a break! Dual boot was handy for poorly coded software though. Before I upgraded mine with the 2.04 ROMs to support the '040, I munged it around to get it to load the 1.4 Beta Workbench - wierd man, very wierd. Augustus John icons. Glad it never saw the light of day.
Half speed drives for 1.44/1.76 Mb formats - a nasty bodge. Ever tried to BUY one? Impossible to get. Mine cost a fortune to import from the USA. Chinon must have made a mint.
AGA - again, too little too late. Tied down by hardware compatibility for the games market. Should have had 24 bit colour at 0124x768, and a blitter with a (simple) 3D transform engine.
CDTV had potential, as did CD32, if they'd been marketed right. But they weren't.
The 500Plus - a bodge, and poorly marketed. That acursed ECS chipset again. I had a 68030 in mine which made it livable, but had to give it up for the more sensible A3k.
The 4000/030 - an overpriced joke. Where was the damn MMU??? No OS support for memory protection and virtual memory - a big mistake there.
Lack of decent and timely networking support - $hundreds for a 10-Base2 card. PARnet was great though - still have my homemade A1000 cable. Xetec's SCSI LAN was hairy but very fast
If you still have an A500 in your cupboard, dust it off and plug it in to that TV, have a quick game of Menace, or Xenon 2, or Shadow of the Beast. Shed a quiet tear. You have a ground breaking piece of computer history in your hands. Never let it go.
The last version of the BSD based SunOS was 4.x, so the firt Solaris became 5.x and they've stuck with it, using second level version numbers for major releases, and keeping Solaris 2 = SunOS 5
I guess the code for the uname line was built long before the Solaris marketing name came up, and so much code (install scripts etc.) relies on it now that they're relcutant to change it.
The naming of Solaris 2.7 as "Solaris 7" is pure marketing spin