The War Is Over, and Linux Has Won 593
xtaski writes "Dana Blankenhorn bluntly states a reality that many have known: 'The war is over and Linux won'. With Oracle and Microsoft putting Linux in the spotlight and positioning themselves to grow with Linux. 'A new report shows that 83% of companies expect to support new workloads on Linux against 23% for Windows. ... Over two-thirds of the respondents said they will increase their use of Linux in the next year, and almost no one said the opposite.'"
Pearl Harbor (Score:5, Insightful)
At best, Linux has won an opening skirmish. For most people, the internet is what runs on their desktop ( or laptop ). They have no more concern about the particulars of the server that their router connects to than they do about the particulars of the powerplant that their power cord connects to. They neither know nor care about server software
At worst, it is like the Japanese general ( admiral? ) who is alleged to have said after Pearl Harbor: "I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant." MS is obviously taking Linux seriously now, but most people still don't know what it is. Expect MS to engage in serious Linux FUD.
Anyway, congratulations to all the Linux coders.
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Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto [wikipedia.org]. He spent a significant amount of time in the US before the Japanese attacked. He felt that the pre-emptive strike was a mistake, and that it would only buy them about 6 months reprieve before the American war machine was fully geared up and ready. Thus his "I fear I have awakened a sleeping giant" comment.
He was right. Six months later, the U.S. turned the tide at the Battle of Miday. The Japanese Navy was nowhere near as resilient as the U.S. Navy, and their losses hurt them deeply. Combined with the incredible number of carriers the U.S. began to manufacture, the six month turning point was a deadly one for Japan.
Re: "Sleeping giant" (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Isoroku_Yama
rj
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Sorry to burst your bubble, but ease of install is a major non-issue.
First of all, most Linux distros are already easier to install than Windows, and after a recent eXPerience with a laptop with a SATA drive, which Win XP SP1 can't even see, and the laptop, of course, doesn't have a floppy drive - which is, as we all know, the only way one can load external drivers during a Windows inst
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The fact that I can't play games like Max Payne unless I want to shell out for Cedega (which does work quite well for the games it supports officially) has nothing to do with Linux "not being up to par with Windows" where games are concerned. It has to do with the copy protection that the publisher chose which it is a crime to reverse engineer. Once again, an artificial restriction made for business reasons. I had a laptop from work at one point that I had to install Windows drivers in an NDIS Wrapper to get WiFi support for Linux with. Again, not a limitation of Linux at all, and quite a clevelr solution, I might add... The problem was that for business reasons, Broadcom had decided that they didn't want to release any specs for their WiFi chip. Seeing a theme here?
In my case, Linux won enough for me to ditch EVERY Windows box I owned and run only Linux. If I need access to something in Windows (which is typically due to DRM issues), then I use virtualization. It's also been a lot cheaper for me since I can now have EVERY piece of software I want and I don't have to worry about licensing it for each machine I've got. The NLE video suite Cinelerra, is a perfect example. I *could* buy multiple copies of Premiere for the six machines I have here at home to do video editing. Or... I could just install as many copies of Cinelerra as I want on all 18 of my systems and use it's clustering features to have a nice little free renderfarm. But, my needs are a bit more advanced than most Windows users which is why I still think that having Windows around for the normal user is just fine. And, no that's not an elitist statement. I'm just saying that there aren't many people who have 18 systems at home, like to do video work and need/want a render farm.
I won't really go into what Linux offers over Windows unless pressed, because most of us here know the truth about what Linux can do that Windows can't.
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I do hope that you have at least worked with Windows since 97 or use it from time to time. Windows from 1997 Win95/Win98 is quite different from the NT based model of XP and Vista.
There are very few things you can do on Linux that you cannot do on a Windows system based on the NT architecture of today. From running in a GUI off mode to even not utilizing the Win32 subsystem and just using the BSD subsystem to write, compile and work with *nix based applications.
Your statement about capabilities is VERY true when comparing a *nix OS to the DOS model Windows of the 90s, but it fails when trying to make the same assertion about the NT and modern based Windows versions.
I don't want to pick on your post, but your comments would be like me saying I stopped using Mac at System 8.x and then defining my statements based on the limitations of the System 8 OS. And as most people know, the difference between a Mac running System 8 or 9 and a Mac running OSX is quite different, as OSX has very few architectural limitations. The same is true of modern Windows, there are very few architectural limitations.
I won't really go into what Linux offers over Windows unless pressed, because most of us here know the truth about what Linux can do that Windows can't.
In 1997 you could make a very long list of applicaitons and concepts in use on Linux that just were NOT possible on Win95/98, yet today there are almost no applications or concepts in use on Linux that are either available or in use on Windows.
So I will ask, give us even one example of something that Linux is capable of that Windows is not capable of doing.
I will even be kind enough to go first with a very basic example of something Windows can do that Linux cannot do at the core architectural level. Windows is based on the NT architecture, which is a hybrid kernel concept that allows it to host OS subsystems. This is also why the NT architecture has been called a client/server kernel concept. What this gives NT that Linux cannot do is the ability to natively run multiple OS subsystems concurrently that also can communicate with each other at the kernel level.
Win32 is an example of one subsystem in use on Windows and runs independantly of other subsystems like the *nix subsystem, OS/2, Win16, and Win64 subsystems to name a few examples. The subsystem OS architecture concept is not virtualization nor emulation, as each subsystem are true OSes acting independently with their own subsystem level kernels that sit on top of the NT architecture.
It is even rumored that MS has worked on a non BSD based *nix subsystem for Windows that is Linux based and would be able to run anything Linux could run with no virtualization or emulation and it would also have the ability to talk to the other subsystems, like the Win32 subsystem.
Ok, your turn...
What Linux can do and Windows cannot (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose you mean at a desktop computer, because otherwise one could go endlessly about all the embedded uses of Linux. Considering applications, I would say both systems are pretty much equivalent these days, I can't think of any application in either Linux or Windows that doesn't have an equivalent in the other system. Wait, I mean other than viruses, of course, that seems to be a category of "applications" where Linux is still very much behind...
The biggest advantage of Linux over Windows for me is ease of use, and that seems to be an intrinsic advantage, because Windows, as its name implies, is predominantly GUI oriented. A graphic interface is better for some jobs, a text interface is better for others, just like a spoon is better for eating soup and a fork is better for steak.
Try to automate any task in Windows, it's a real PITA. Programmers often end doing things through kludges like Excel macros for the lack of a good text-based interface. For instance, let's say you were sent a project that has dozens of directories with thousands of files in it. Let's say you want to rename all *.jpeg files to *.jpg. How would you do that in Windows? In VMS that would be a piece of cake, in a Unix system it's more complicated, for i in *.jpeg; do mv $i `echo $i | sed s/jpeg$/jpg/ - ` ; done or something like that would do it, but the easiest way to do it in Windows that I can think of would be a VB program.
Ironically, ease of installation, which is often cited by XP users as an advantage of Windows over Linux, seems to be one of the areas where Linux shines. I have created a standard system configuration script with twenty or so functions, one for each type of application. There are functions for DVD playing, scientific applications, office applications, graphics, development, electronic circuits design, etc. When I install a Linux system, I install the basic system and run my script, after uncommenting the function calls for the types of applications I want in that computer. Then it's just a matter of waiting until apt-get does its job. No need to insert CDs, no need to click anywhere, no need to run setup.exe, no need to mix and match all the *.DLL files each application expects.
I think both Linux and Windows have made progress in the last ten years, and one should always consider that. It's stupid to compare Kubuntu with Windows95, or XP with Yggdrasil Linux. But IMHO Linux has evolved much more, both because Windows was more mature ten years ago and because Linux has some intrinsic advantages. I think being an open and free system is an advantage in that people make it evolve towards what the users prefer, rather than what marketing decides. Another advantage is that Unix has an excellent basic conception. Windows evolved over DOS, a system whose basic conception was to make it run in the available hardware of 1981. The emphasis on GUI solutions, the lack of a good scripting system language, and the need to maintain compatibility with the DOS roots are limitations that make Windows inferior to Linux.
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Except perhaps the thousands of industry-specific programs that are written for Win32 because "that's what everyone has". Tool and mold shops have automation and cutter-path software that's virtually guaranteed to be Win32 as Irix and Sun have fallen out of popularity due to cost. Insurance companies hav
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I put my /home, /media and /games directories on a separate partition. I just had a major upgrade go horribly wrong after I failed to completely RTFM as I am prone to do with alcohol in my system late at night. Rather than muddle through fixing a non-booting system, I just reinstalled the OS. When I booted to the desktop, everything worked. All my settings were there, bookmarks, IM stuff, documents, all the games worked, etc. All I had to do was reinstall my media codecs and video drivers, and I had a full,
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NT can be embedded. Millions of devices use it that way. For starters, every single Xbox and Xbox 360, many cars (remember the MS-bashing article about some Lexus locking someone in when the Windows embedded car computer crashed?) So... that's that.
The biggest advantage of Linux over Windows for me is ease of use, and that seems to be an intrinsic advantage, because Windows, as its name i
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Linux users always cite examples like, "select every third file whose name begins with D into a new directory FOOBAR, then select every fourth file from FOOBAR into the original directory translating their name to begin with W." Yes, that's easier to do on a CLI. And no, nobody, EVER, does anything like that. Ever. Stop making contrived moronic examples of how great the CLI is.
I do something very like that several times a day, on Linux. Namely, grid server management. I don't know how I'd manage a grid
Linux vs. windows (Score:3, Interesting)
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Are you sure about that? Assuming Windows XP still runs on i386/i486, those "subsystems" must be essentially the same as emu
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Arbitrarily decide that it *might* not be licenced properly and shut itself off asking you to call a 1-800 number to get it back on again. I migrated an entire production server farm over to Linux after my high availability system went down this way. Any OS that will voluntarily sabotage itself when it is not running into technical problems has no business being in a production environment.
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I use NoScript with only a few sites white-listed. Is that why I don't see memory issues?
I'm running on Linux. Is that why I don't see memory issues?
I do use Flash and Java, often heavily, so that can't be it.
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To get ANY work done on Windows I have to first, spend $1000 or more upgrading the box (Visual Studio, MS Office, Antivirus, etc). Now, since most everything on the planet is written for a autoconf toolchain, I need cygwin... but at that point I'm being about as silly as installing a linux box just to run MS Office under wine... I should have installed Linux in the first place, so let's forgo that step.
OK, so what do we not have... SSH. Sucks to be me. Sure, I can TS... assuming of course I bought the upgraded licensed version of windows that can actually do that. I can run a webserver... assuming I bought the upgrades. I can run a SQL server... assuming I bought the upgraded OS capable of doing such. I can run apache/mysql, true... but the integration of those apps on the windows platform is abysmal... they were written for Linux and if I'm going to go to the trouble of installing and using them, well, same argument as cygwin.
Sure. on both platforms I can install out of the box and check email. I can do that on a palm pilot.. that's not an honest comparison. Windows *can* do anything Linux can do... by emulating Linux and doing a piss poor job of it. The reverse is rarely the case except with video games or the occasional specialty application which dwarfs the cost of the OS anyway and you are best off running a dedicated workstation running windows for said app.
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$1000 is not an exaggeration... in fact it's probably low. While I can get Open Source or 3rd party dev tools, I'm still going to need visual studio for compiling/debugging if I am doing any serious MS-centric coding. I need the header files, I need the linked libraries, all that stuff. I could conceivably set it up with msys.. but that's a big hack. The VS lite version, like most "lite" versions of anything, is not going to cut it for productivity. I believe the going price for a decent VS package is close to a grand by itself, but I haven't personally purchased one recently. The next thing is office, although open office is pretty compelling here and integrates just fine. The big issue with open office, is although it can read most anything MS office spits out, the reverse is not true, so other users who shelled out hundred of dollars cannot read my stuff unless I cross save to MS formats, and then I lose formatting and such as the support for that is pretty fuzzy. So add in a couple other apps I might want and $1000 bucks or so is pretty conservative for a computer professional's standard workstation. A system admin's workstation can probably do it for half that, as they don't do the dev-tools thing.
So then.. having shelled out the dough, we step back and look what we have. SSH is the primary deficiency I see. The reason you don't know what it is is windows has no equivelent, but trust me, for administration purposes, it is *the* killer app and probably the most commonly used application used by a unix professional outside of the command line. What it is: "Secure Shell". It's simply an app that is #1 strongly encrypted and #2 gives you a command prompt on a foreign machine. Most any unix box will have it turned on, and most headless routers, switches, etc also have a port. The MS equivelent is Terminal Services, which gives you a full view of the desktop on the remote system. It's handy for some things, but most of the time I don't WANT the desktop of the other sytem... I just want a command line. I want to reboot the machine or look at a file or set a reg key and loading that full desktop is WAY overkill not to mention slow... prohibitively on low bandwidth lines. It's also ram hungry and takes alot of proc power. Many times I have not been able to reboot a misbehaving windows server through TS because transferring that whole desktop over TCP is just too big of a job for a machine caught in a tight loop or OOM... but a machine has to be *REALLY* hosed for SSH not to get through.
But that's enough about SSH
Now, don't get me wrong... I'm not anti-ms. I have in the past and will likely again worked FOR microsoft. I have been developing software for the MS platform for going on 15 years. There are niches that Windows fills well. To spout off that Linux has no advantages over Windows though is blatently false. Windows really falls short in the areas of price, speed, development resources, and most server uses. Linux falls short in laptop usage and *WAY* short on ease of configuration and set up.
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Actually, your installation comments are correct in one regard, most people use what's already installed on the computer as it comes from the store. And that, very shortly, is going to be Vista.
And that, my friend, is where the balance lies. Any success Linux will have at the desktop level will have to come at the expense of Windows Vista. Or in othe
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First off, SATA is about 2 years old so it's about as late and great as the OS he's talking about. Second, it's not just that, it's also the difficulty providing it with the driver. A FLOPPY drive only? Come on!
I haven't used my floppy drive in YEARS, I don't even know if it still works. Virtually everything is on CD, DVD or USB mass storage device. Requiring a floppy is a lazy carryover.
And that, my f
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Yep. They were all off on maneuvers, about a day out of port. IIRC, the Japanese knew this, but they were mostly concerned with the battleships. The idea that a carrier could be a major force to be reckoned with was only realized because the U.S. was forced to fight the beginning of the war with only carriers. The results were so spectacular, that the carrier force became the backbone of the WWII fleets. Of cour
Wars are fought in the DND, MOD, DOD and Pentagon (Score:5, Informative)
There will be multiple "wars". Pearl Harbor (Score:5, Insightful)
Secondly, there are multiple market segments.
#1. The server segment. Linux looks to have this market locked up.
#2. The corporate/government desktop market. Pay attention to how Munich progresses. This is the next big market for Linux.
#3. The home (non-gamer) market. This isn't going to happen until you can buy Linux pre-loaded from the major OEM's. And that's not going to happen until Linux has the marketshare with the corporations/governments.
#4. Finally, the gamer market. This depends almost entirely upon the support of the hardware OEM's and game ISV's. If the newest video card doesn't come with Linux drivers, the gamers will buy the video card and run the OS that does have drivers. Look for this market to be the very, very last one that Linux will gain marketshare in.
Don't worry about whether Linux is taking over the gamer machines yet. Focus on getting Linux into corporation/government desktops. That will get the OEM's to start pre-loading it which will set the stage for the home user migration.
Re:There will be multiple "wars". (Score:2, Informative)
I'm not sure what the hell people are looking at when they say things like this. Take a look at Microsoft quarterly results. Their revenue and profits in their server OS and SQL products has been skyrocketing every quarter.
Re:There will be multiple "wars". (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux is winning this war, and will continue to win it.
Re:There will be multiple "wars". (Score:3, Informative)
You would think that government would be the first to jump on open source. Very few things seem as ridiculous to me as closed-source voting machines.
But then again, since money elects politicians, politicians cozy up to big business.
Re:There will be multiple "wars". (Score:5, Insightful)
#1 Server segment - Linux needs to interoperate with Microsoft before it can fully tackle the enterprise administration server market. Active Directory and Outlook are the 2 major players for Microsoft here, Linux needs to be compatible or companies will not fully make the switch. As you said, the desktop comes after the server market, so in order for the server market to succeed, all of those corporate desktops need to work with linux servers.
#2 Corporate/government desktop market - It will be a huge help if Munich succeeds. Applications are the key here, specifically office applications. Open Office is great, but it still has a long way to go in some areas before I would feel comfortable doing away with MSOffice entirely. A working Powerpoint replacement is a must, as is a fully featured Excel replacement. Writer is relatively solid for most uses. Open formats will be a key contributer to advances in office applications.
#3 The home (non-gamer) market - The only reason this will not happen before the corporate/government market is because the OEMs have much to gain by ignoring linux and a lot to lose by embracing it as long as MS has enough market dominance to throw their weight around. A solid web-browser, a decent office application, and a usable movie/music player are all that is truly needed by this market - and they all already exist. The only thing stopping is the OEMs not pre-loading linux in favor of MS.
#4 the gamer market - You hit the nail on the head on this one. Drivers Drivers Drivers. If #3 succeeds, game makers will naturally focus more on their linux customers, but only if they have compatible hardware.
Unfortunately most of us slashdotters want to jump straight to #3-4. That simply isn't going to happen until microsoft's influence is already weakened from some other area such as corporate or government use of linux.
Re:There will be multiple "wars". (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:There will be multiple "wars". (Score:2)
"Trickle Down" Geek-enomics.
The Geek sees himself as Libertarian. But his faith in top-down is Technocratic and authoritarian.
Geeks are always arguing about forks. But the one fork they never see is that of the home PC. It's an entirely different world now, with its own int
Re:There will be multiple "wars". (Score:2, Interesting)
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Re:There will be multiple "wars". (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not talkin cell phones and PDAs. I'm talkin things you use that you NEVER think about. What do you think runs all the slot machines in vegas? Keno machines at truck stops? Station pumps at EVERY BP gas station in the USA? Etc etc. That's a huge marketshare that's pretty much hidden from the public eye.
Linux has already gotten what it's gonna get. Don't expect it to
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In fact, every x86-based server shipped by a certain major vendor, even those destined to run Windows, also comes with Linux: the bootable CD that includes standalone hardware diagnostics and configuration programs, etc, is based on Debian.
As far as double-digit market shares -- Linux already has that of the computer/OS market as a whole. Desktop/laptop PCs are a small
Not Linux (Score:3, Informative)
While you could claim *NIX has a lot of the embedded market since QNX is POSIX complaint and VxWorks is at least in some ways it's not Linux by a long shot.
The embedde
Re:There will be multiple "wars". Pearl Harbor (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:There will be multiple "wars".Pearl Harbor (Score:4, Insightful)
However I see no game companies going to develop Linux game after Linux game. After all games are a market where money makes the decisions, and Linux users are used to have software but not pay for it.
(Having said that ugly generalization, I believe I'm just going to install Heavy Gear 2 for Linux as I really like that game and the Windows version doesn't work in my XP)
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Do you think Linux games would be pirated more than Windows games?
Or, more precisely,do you think a Linux counterpart of a game would be more pirated than the Windows version?
I'm afraid that you're very much mistaken if you think that, and this is why I find this statement of yours misleading.
Yes, Linux users like the fact that their OS is free. But to many (not the most; I don't have such il
Re:There will be multiple "wars". (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, how I wish this were true.... But it's not.
Every day, dozens of servers are deployed running Microsoft Exchange. These servers spread through data centers like a plague, leaving behind Active Directories and MS SQL Server databases. Users start using the non-interoperable features of the windows server and it causes DHCP, DNS, and eventually FTP and Web servers to go to windows 'because it's easier'. Somewhere in there a CIO, who only knows about software with a multi-million dollar marketing budget, figures out that it is cheaper to buy a bulk license than to buy individual Microsoft licenses. His trade magazine said he would get audited if he didn't anyway. Then the administrators are forced to use the products for every task to maximize ROI, while the CIO walks around the office spouting inaccuracies about Linux, like it's "famous inability to handle timezones" and other such trash, in order to seem smart. Before you know, while there may be a couple of Linux boxes in the company, for the first time ever Windows Server is dominating every rack in these companies datacenters where there user to be commercial UNIX. Linux's main role? Providing a stable kernel for the virtual machines that allow Microsoft multiple license fees for a single piece of hardware.
You just can't compete with that marketing budget. Not when people with no technical knowledge make the purchasing decisions. Not only is Microsoft encouraging you to buy their own products, but the thousands of other tech companies that bring in billions of dollars of revenue each year by selling products that make Microsoft's broken bloated trash usable are encouraging you to buy Microsoft so that you'll need their software to fix them. In 5 years, Microsoft will have the same stranglehold on the server market that they have on the desktop today. Ironically, they may blow the desktop market with Vista.
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The desktop has always been the war. Linus wanted a free desktop from the beginning... linux got popular on servers and so people jumped on that. Linux developers got Microsoft's attention and now its time to worry.
Re:Pearl Harbor (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: Pearl (Score:2)
I think you're right about Linux winning only the battle.
And companies would have to be crazy to not exploit Linux for its strengths, since it is free after all.
Re: Pearl Harbor (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Perl Harbour (Score:3, Insightful)
Every time windows vs. linux is mentioned people quote this thing like it was a rule of battle or something. It isn't. Sometimes they fight you and you lose.
Slashdot missed the memo (Score:4, Insightful)
But than again, it's becoming an old song: 'Haven't they heard we've won the war, what do they keep on fighting for?'
We fight for the little guy! (Score:2, Funny)
I'm going to go get a me a clippy t-shirt!
Screw you Linu$!
It's not the marketshare, but hardware drivers (Score:3, Insightful)
To my mind, the war will be won when computer equipment manufacturers make their hardware available for Linux as much as they do for the market leader. I want to be able to buy the latest and greatest LCD projector mouse with built
The real question is (Score:5, Funny)
Free software has won. (Score:2)
Re:Free software has won. (Score:5, Insightful)
And as far as who prefers which operating system I think you're also mistaken. I'm stuck hacking away at a bash prompt for a very large chunk of my day five days a week trying to deploy servers while maintaining other servers. I do not prefer Linux for home use as it doesn't offer me anything more than Windows or Mac OSX (except maybe security in the case of Windows). I personally have a Windows machine for gaming and a Powerbook laptop for just general dicking around.
In either case I think you've grossly over generalized a lot of people.
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Organic Foods? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm happy there are more linux servers. And once it becomes a viable desktop solution for a normal user, it'll be a boon for its security. As it is now, it's not a flexible, easy to manage, easy to use desktop OS. But keep trying!
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Well, the inorganic food didn't sell so well. No one wanted the brass steaks. The nickel cauliflowers (always fresh!) are still on the shelves. We even had to refund the titanium chicken wings...
Just like Vietnam. (Score:5, Funny)
deja vu (Score:5, Funny)
*ducks*
Wow in wonderfull Microsoft style (Score:4, Funny)
Hahahaha.... thank you IBM for fudding the Microsoft way. Down Microsoft DOWN! I have a boat load of nails for your new coffin.
Triumphalism? (Score:5, Insightful)
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(Or something like that, was the quote I saw yesterday in the slashdot fortune at the bottom.)
Eih... (Score:3, Funny)
Architect: "Loser. My printer is so much better than yours, because it is a plotter and can print HUGE banners!"
Writer: "Loser. Well my printer was cheaper, and the ink is much cheaper!"
Graphic Designer: "Sellout! My printer can print on photo-quality paper and at a higher resolution!"
Although the jokes the wars create are quite funny.
More crap (Score:3, Interesting)
Speak for Yourself, Re:More crap (Score:2, Interesting)
Linux won't kill Windows in the next decade and vice versa. No one is winning but rather both sides are in a pissing contest they refuse to admit is worthless.
That sounds even handed but it's whack. The pissing is vastly one sided. No one in the Free Software world has done anything to "fight" other than state the obvious shortcomings of non free software. Microsoft, on the other hand, has spent billions calling free software a "communist" "cancer", and extended all of the tools they used to destroy
Server side vs. Client side (Score:3, Insightful)
On the desktop, the best Product is MAC OS X, with both Windows and Linux running distant second. For some reason desktop customers do not seem to care about usability too much. But what the hell, OS X is pretty close to Linux anyways, with regard to what software runns.
But if Linux is the server OS of the future, it means it will stay and grow. Desktop OSes can be changed pretty fast. Server OSes cannot. MS allways wanted to dominate the server market. Guess they just never managed to create a good enough product. Or have long enough product lifetimes.
My personal reason for running Linux and not OS X is that I wanted a workstation OS (read Unix-like OS) longe before OS X came along. Windows? Well, most games only run on Windows. Any other reason to use it? I don't see any. It is not even cheaper or easier to use if you know what you are doing...
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You know what the average person does? 1) Click on the icon that "loads the internet", 2) click on the icon that "loads email" (possibly the same as icon #1) and 3) click on the icon that loads some type of word processor. And that's about it, with maybe an instant messenger.
Some more advanced users such a teenagers or college kids will play with music, edit photos, etc.
The hardest thing for the average person would be to load drivers, where at least for XP is generally as easy as popping in a CD
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I'm not sure how true this is.
A member of the worship band I play in was at my house yesterday, and sat down at a machine to show me something. It was one of the sunflower iMacs. He'd never used a Mac before, so I had to show him where the browser was, but other than that, he was fine with it.
After about twenty minutes of poking around the 'Net, w
As Gandh once said... (Score:3, Insightful)
1991-96
"...then they laugh at you..."
1997-2000
"...then they attack you..."
2001-06
"...then you win."
2007?
(all years are approximate)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)
You can compare anything to anything. That's the beauty of C style type casting, really!
Linux has lost (Score:2, Interesting)
Meh, real men run UNIX anyway.
Seriously, I think some of the Linux distributions are putting themselves in jeopardy by aligning themselves with corporate interests and for accepting and distributing binary blobs from vendors. Corporations are simply using the Linux community as a way of off-loading their development costs.
The "war" is far from over (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux may win a war versus Microsoft on the server, but that is not where Microsoft is most powerful. Microsoft is still the 800 pound king gorilla of the desktop, and Linux still has a way to go before it unseats Microsoft. Heck, OS X has been out for over five years. Many users who have used both OS X and Windows claim that OS X is superior, and many have switched. However, OS X has barely pinched Microsoft, and Microsoft still enjoys 93% or so marketshare on the desktop (5% goes to Mac, and the rest of that is Linux, BSD, and other OSes).
The reason why Windows still hasn't been unseated is that too many people have software that is Windows-only. Businesses still rely on in-house Windows programs that were created by some programmer many years ago who is long gone, and cannot afford porting it to another operating system. Sometimes you'll see a business run an old Windows 3.1 or even DOS application since there is no replacement, and since it is good enough for them to not worry about porting it or creating a clone of it. Engineers aren't dropping AutoCAD anytime soon, and AutoCAD is Windows only. Engineers, being well known for their pragmatism, stick to Windows. Graphics artists on both the PC and the Macintosh who rely on Photoshop, Quark Express, and Dreamweaver are not going to move to Ubuntu and use the GIMP, Scribus, and nvu (yes, those open source products are good, but their commercial competitors are very good and are worth the $$$ that you pay for them; they end up saving you $$$ with their features and ease of use). And developers who want some food on their table better know something about Win32, .NET, and other Windows technologies. In most non-CS fields, you cannot avoid Windows in the professional world, and Windows has became a fact of life in many careers.
So, what is the open source community going to do about this? A great operating system with all of the bells and whistles isn't enough for most people. Once again, OS X is considered the best operating system by many people, but some applications haven't been ported yet (or won't be ported), which doesn't leave OS X as an option for those people. The open source community needs to start polishing up their offerings and get started on some new stuff (an AutoCAD replacement will get engineers off of Windows, for example). GIMP can use some improvement. OpenOffice should be more modular and faster. Dia needs to start looking like OmniGraffle or Visio. There needs to be some sort of OSS equivalent to Visual Basic (what I mean by that is ease of developing GUI applications). I recommend the same with other Linux applications.
Remember, the key to operating system adoption is applications. Look at MS-DOS, for example (back in its heyday). It was hard to use (compared to the Apple Macintosh at the time), very rudimentary (compared to other OSes in the 80s like Unix, NeXTSTEP, and VMS), and can only run one application at a time. But it ran Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect, and it ran all of the other applications that business users wanted. Home users wanted the computers that business users had, so they got that too. Ditto for Windows 3.1. NeXTSTEP knocks the socks off of Windows 3.1. But who had the applications?
Your OS can be the easiest to use OS in the world. It can have microkernels with the best scheduling and load-balancing algorithms that exist. It can utilize all of the systems research published in the ACM and IEEE journals within the past two years. It can be so secure that it would be the envy of Homeland Security and would make Symantec and McAffe angry (they can't sell protection for it). It can even have a mass advertising campaign with beautiful angelic models praising the product. But if it cannot run the applications that they want, then it is just a waste of hard drive space and time as far as they are concerned.
It will be over when "Aunt Tilly" uses Linux (Score:2)
And why can't she use it today instead of Windows?
Because, just for one example, today the Smithsonian launched an online exhibition called Earth from Space [si.edu] which uses a version of Flash not available (yet) on Linux.
And because when she buys a wireless card she has to learn about something called "ndiswrapper".
And because asking a little old lady to get root so she can edit
No, Linux on the desk
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As for Earth From Space, check out: http://www.adobe.com/go/fp9_update_b1_installer_l
Just visited the site, works great for me in linux.
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Slashdot geeks know we can get a beta version of Flash for Linux, but Aunt Tilly won't find it when she follows the "download missing plugin" link that she'll see in her browser. The point here is that web designers are not yet taking Linux into consideration.
Ubuntu
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Strangely, when I bought a wireless USB dongle a few weeks ago, I did not have to learn anything. Ubuntu figured out that it needed to use ndiswrapper, and wlan0 showed up all on its own. The only configuring I had to do was the WEP key. At the next KCLUG [kclug.org] meeting, I noticed that someone had their wireless show up as eth1. I commented on the fact that mine was wlan0, at which point I was informed that was an i
Does "Aunt Tilly" make a difference? (Score:5, Interesting)
Aunt Tilly is an interesting statistic, nothing more. Look at what she does -- she browses the web, uses wireless. Apparently she needs to edit sudoers for some bullshit reason -- but I think it's bullshit for you to even bring it up; an ordinary Linux user does NOT have to do anything with sudoers, and in fact, I've touched the file maybe once, and I do far more with my box than Aunt Tilly ever will.
But regardless, look at what she doesn't do.
She doesn't spend between $50 and $500 a month on new games.
She doesn't make decisions about what new software a multi-million-dollar company is buying and deploying on hundreds of desktops.
She doesn't develop software... period, not to mention software that is so intricately bound to some quirk in the Windows API that she causes headaches for Microsoft itself when they try to fix their OS.
She, as so many people have made so perfectly clear, doesn't care what OS she runs, so long as it works. Thus, if Linux were taking over in a big way, she might buy an Ubuntu machine and not even know it. She certainly wouldn't be having these "Aunt Tilly" issues you so colourfully describe if Linux came preloaded on her computer and already set for her wireless card.
If "Earth from Space" doesn't work on her computer, and Linux has sufficient marketshare, she'll complain to the Smithsonian, not to her OS. The Smithsonian would be forced to use actual web standards, not made-up proprietary ones.
She doesn't impact, in any real way, the success or failure of Linux, other than perhaps word-of-mouth, and whether she tolerates websites going down or her credit card information being stolen.
The people who would need to use Linux are: gamers, business executives, IT people, and software developers, not necessarily in that order. These people are the only people who will actually make a conscious decision one way or the other, and they're certainly in a way to make other key people sweat.
For instance, let's say a large company suddenly decides to go pure-Linux, but they've been buying from Dell. They switch to someone else. As one company after another does this, Dell will either be forced to start selling computers without an OS (and at an actual, legitimate discount from the Windows ones), or even start preloading Linux, or they'll lose business and someone else will fill the gap. With enough companies doing this, it becomes viable for an OEM to decide it's cheaper to support their few home users by preloading Linux and supporting that than to deal with Microsoft. Home users will be faced with a choice -- actually spend $250+ on an OS, or switch. My feeling is, Aunt Tilly, given the choice, won't want to spend $250 on something she doesn't care about anyway. Many of them may even notice how nicely their work computers run, and will take Linux home with them.
Another scenario: Gamers, who have long built their own systems or ordered ludicrously expensive ones from the likes of Alienware, discover Linux -- cheaper for the custom-built, and available in a shiny case from a game-specific OEM, already pre-configured and tuned (so none of your "ndiswrapper" complaints). They start running so many games under Cedega that game developers decide it's cheaper to support Linux directly, with cross-platform games, than to keep dealing with the nightmare that is Cedega and actual Windows support. Eventually, games no longer run under Windows, and gamers either dual-boot or switch completely. Anyone who cares about that demographic starts developing Linux versions at least, if not exclusively, for all their major apps, so eventually, non-gamers start to switch, going to their gamer friends for technical help.
Finally: Software developers discover Linux. Be it some killer language or some killer tool, or simply the fact that Linux provides none of the hassle of Windows, and really isn't lacking anything -- even today -- that a software developer would want for his job, they start to switch. They start
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In that case, it's over - at least for approximations of Aunt Tilly suitably close to my in-laws. I built a little Kubuntu box for them and they love it. It works with their printer and digital camera, and they can browse every website they want to.
The key is that Linux was pre-installed (by me in this case). As long as Aunt Tilly doesn't have to install it herself, it's every bit as user friendly as Windows.
Yipee! (Score:4, Funny)
Perhaps they should take the hint (Score:2)
Red vs. Blue (Score:2, Insightful)
Microsoft: I'm no stranger to sarcasm sir.
You stupid imature gits... (Score:2, Insightful)
Nobody "won" anything. (Score:2, Insightful)
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Obligatory (Score:4, Funny)
Linux FUD against Microsoft (Score:2)
Lest we forget... (Score:5, Interesting)
this can't be serious (Score:4, Insightful)
MS is now just starting to dabble in Linux's foothold, affordable HPC computing. Lets be honest here, the lack of MS support is what gave linux the biggest door into the server market in the first place. Do you guys honestly think that Longhorn server is going to loose MS market share? Since Windows NT 3.51 MS has consistently put out server software that was significantly superior to the previous version, and MANY people are pretty happy with 2003.
Or do any of you think they are going to start losing server share to Apple? I mean I won't even talk about how apple xserve share is hardly measureable in the server world...
All that aside, here is my real question; Why is this an acceptable post? Regardless of your side, nobody really believes the "war" is over and "linux has won". Isn't this the definition of "trolling"? Why is ok to troll when its anti-ms? Its bad enough people troll in the a thread, but to start a new thread by trolling? What the he**?
The war is over, virtualization won (Score:4, Interesting)
WHO is winning? (Score:4, Interesting)
None of these reports is faultless, and they measure different things from what the parent article measures. But there seems to be no crisis for Microsoft for the time being.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Don't forget... (Score:5, Funny)
Man, you had me confused for a minute. I sat here for a minute wondering what the Playstation 3 had to do with this!
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You want to buy music online? The only way to buy it legally is in DRM'd form. And, of course, the codecs require a license, and the l
Re:The truth isn't that FOSS has won... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I'd call any business with a market cap of 287 billion dollars a failure. Wish I could fail that way.
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Yeah, I'd call any business with a market cap of 287 billion dollars a failure. Wish I could fail that way.
That's what I used to say about AT&T, back when they had 1.2 million employees. It took 22 years for it to become nothing more than a name, but even back then it was clear it wasn't going to survive. The same is now true of Microsoft.
Thats not what it means (Score:2)
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