1: Yes, but not because of lack of support. When Windows* needs 1GB of memory just to barely run, one'll expect people to want more than 2GB (maximum for normal 32 bit systems). Thus, people'll want 64 bit systems (just in time to avoid year 2038 bug).
2: They'll probably be already on 64 bit systems by the time Microsoft releases a new Windows (if they ever release one).
3: Probably no. But if Linux fail to be mainstream by the time, it must have a big intrinsical problem.
4: Probably no, since people don't hush to upgrade their OS by a long time now (since 95 I guess).
In short, that's a huge piece of non-news. Did you really expect next Windows to run on (currently being abandoned) 32 bit PCs?
* Going out of Windows is an option, but even then people will have uses for more memory.
Brazilian governemnt is changing to FOSS. A few thousand (sometimes even hundreds) machines at a time, so there is no story about 50K+ machies. But it's doing it for the biggest part of a decade now, and not going back.
"1. With enough gadgets, the collective LEDs provide just enough glow so that I can make out the darks shapes of furniture etc., so that I can get to the bathroom in the middle of the night without turning on the lights and waking my wife (believe me, you don't wanna wake my wife). "
My CPU (blue) LED alone is bright enough for reading a good book. Hey, have I told you how much I like good books?
"I am puzzled by the role of IBM in this, they are either the big enemy MS will be going against (after having neutralized the rest of the threats), OR they have secretly agreed to share the profits of the outcome (for example, the invalidation of the GPL). This or the next year they will finally show their true colors regarding this issue."
If history is worth anything, we know that Microsoft shares nothing. And that IBM can act very foolishly.
I live at a software patent free land. And I've never saw a 1 click buy on any shop but Amazon. It is a bad idea.
Prople are probably bothered because they elected that patent to represent all absurd software patents. It's a symbol, it's so obviously wrong that they can point at it and complain.
But with a WebOS (nice name) we can use that OS under an abstract layer, that will run a browser, that will run an OS, with another abstraction layer...
And if we put a browser on top of that, we'll be even able to surf the web!!!!
OSes are (or at least should be) very different beasts. That is not that an application shouldn't run on several OSes, it is that the same functionality should be divided on a different set of applications on each OS, communicating with each other and with the user on different ways (ok not too different for the user, but not the same either).
We have that weird idea that applications should run on several OSes, that we need just to use a virtual machine or a universal toolkit and everything will be fine. That idea is not quite right, and it is just near true because almost every computer nowadays runs some Unix variant or some Unix inspired* (like DOS and childs) system.
Maybe Unix is the best possible way to interface a computer, but I seriously doubt it. If everybody start thinking that they must write multiplataform systems, they'll need to write Unix software, and we'll get stuck with Unix.
* Even those systems use sligtly different software philosophies, dividing them on different parts that one can run on other systems, but have an 'alien' feeling.
"When WINE gets good enough, they'll get sued out of existence."
Only if it operates within the US (there are probably people for a lot of places working on it now, even US, so it'll have a hit). And only the forks created there.
If Dell sold a Windows replacement (Wine), and it didn't work well (as it wouldn't), the consumers would get mad at the right people, that are Dell. And, yes, it would hurt Linux too.
I just fail to see why they should be mad at Microsoft.
"Wine is a temporary fix to the bigger problem...it will always just be a temporary fix."
No... It has a big potential for becoming a permanent problem. Altough nowadays it is at the 'solutions' set.
Now, it is easy to compreehend Dell. It would be a hell to support end users trying to run stuff under Wine (that Dell suplied to them), so they really shouldn't want to distribute it. That is irrelevant news, I'll keep my concerns to use if Dell forces Wine out of Ubuntu repositories.
I do have a problem with Microsoft getting something for every PC sold with Linux. But, that said, it is a much better situation than every PC comming with Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
If you leave Windows out of the comparation. It may even be the less secure sane (not Windows) mainstream OS out there.
Here am I, answering to myself...
I was able to access TFA, and it is a mp3. But it has a link to the original article.
There is a cache link at the sumary... But it vanished too.
They'll probably delay to 2038... So nobody can complain about lack of 32 bit support, and MS can call it a feature.
That's still a much better situation than now, that the systems can handle 2^31 bytes of memory, but Windows reserves the highter 2^30.
1: Yes, but not because of lack of support. When Windows* needs 1GB of memory just to barely run, one'll expect people to want more than 2GB (maximum for normal 32 bit systems). Thus, people'll want 64 bit systems (just in time to avoid year 2038 bug).
2: They'll probably be already on 64 bit systems by the time Microsoft releases a new Windows (if they ever release one).
3: Probably no. But if Linux fail to be mainstream by the time, it must have a big intrinsical problem.
4: Probably no, since people don't hush to upgrade their OS by a long time now (since 95 I guess).
In short, that's a huge piece of non-news. Did you really expect next Windows to run on (currently being abandoned) 32 bit PCs?
* Going out of Windows is an option, but even then people will have uses for more memory.
By year it is a near well behaved exponential. The problem with the first graph is that vista took a long time to be released.
That's BS. Emacs just require a few GBs of RAM (luckly Linux supports much more than 2GB on 64 bit machines) on any reasonably modern processor.
Unless you installed it on Vista...
Brazilian governemnt is changing to FOSS. A few thousand (sometimes even hundreds) machines at a time, so there is no story about 50K+ machies. But it's doing it for the biggest part of a decade now, and not going back.
My CPU (blue) LED alone is bright enough for reading a good book. Hey, have I told you how much I like good books?
If history is worth anything, we know that Microsoft shares nothing. And that IBM can act very foolishly.
I live at a software patent free land. And I've never saw a 1 click buy on any shop but Amazon. It is a bad idea.
Prople are probably bothered because they elected that patent to represent all absurd software patents. It's a symbol, it's so obviously wrong that they can point at it and complain.
But with a WebOS (nice name) we can use that OS under an abstract layer, that will run a browser, that will run an OS, with another abstraction layer...
And if we put a browser on top of that, we'll be even able to surf the web!!!!
I bet she would have argued with the passenger, telling she was not able to stop right now.
But one can't argue with a computer, that's why most people simply obey.
OSes are (or at least should be) very different beasts. That is not that an application shouldn't run on several OSes, it is that the same functionality should be divided on a different set of applications on each OS, communicating with each other and with the user on different ways (ok not too different for the user, but not the same either).
We have that weird idea that applications should run on several OSes, that we need just to use a virtual machine or a universal toolkit and everything will be fine. That idea is not quite right, and it is just near true because almost every computer nowadays runs some Unix variant or some Unix inspired* (like DOS and childs) system.
Maybe Unix is the best possible way to interface a computer, but I seriously doubt it. If everybody start thinking that they must write multiplataform systems, they'll need to write Unix software, and we'll get stuck with Unix.
* Even those systems use sligtly different software philosophies, dividing them on different parts that one can run on other systems, but have an 'alien' feeling.
Only if it operates within the US (there are probably people for a lot of places working on it now, even US, so it'll have a hit). And only the forks created there.
If Dell sold a Windows replacement (Wine), and it didn't work well (as it wouldn't), the consumers would get mad at the right people, that are Dell. And, yes, it would hurt Linux too.
I just fail to see why they should be mad at Microsoft.
No... It has a big potential for becoming a permanent problem. Altough nowadays it is at the 'solutions' set.
Now, it is easy to compreehend Dell. It would be a hell to support end users trying to run stuff under Wine (that Dell suplied to them), so they really shouldn't want to distribute it. That is irrelevant news, I'll keep my concerns to use if Dell forces Wine out of Ubuntu repositories.
How sad for Nintendo, that they'll have to inovate again to continue leading the market at next generations.
I always tought it would come out of some other computer's /dev/random...
Well, the laws concerning global destruction/environment damage should only be there it they benefit most people too.
We have certificates to solve DNS poisoning.
<flame>Kedit is lame... They'll probably use Kate when describing KDE!</flame>
Now you can complete it with Gnome editors, because I don't them.
I do have a problem with Microsoft getting something for every PC sold with Linux. But, that said, it is a much better situation than every PC comming with Windows.
Nuf said.