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> I don't want to add more fuel to the fire (I realized I am preaching to > the converted here; of which I am one). My point (in case you missed it) > was not to negate the efforts and progress Linux has made over the > years; but rather to illustrate a simple reality (which seems to have > escaped most everyone): Windows is the number one desktop OS. Linux is > not. Windows is supported by most--if not all--OEMs; Linux is not. A So? A tank and station wagon are very different vehicles serving different needs. Linux is not Windows. Get over it. I am not bothered by Linux's position in the Desktop arena. While it would be nice to see this percentage grow, I do not believe the goal should be to "beat windows". Linux/OSS is where it is at by making good software, not by focusing on market share. > blind monkey can install, and use windows productively. With Linux, on > the other hand, such monkey would need to be a bit smarter than the > average Congo gorilla(which all of us on this list are). Yes, we are and Not true. Fedora, Mandriva, Knoppix, there are a lot of distros that work better out of the box than Windows. Windows XP is rather long in the tooth, and out of the box driver support is not there anymore. Some hardware may give you more grief than when running windows, but then the reverse is true. As an example, I just purchased an RME Hammerfall card. On my linux distro (64studio) the card was detected and usable *ON BOOT*. No installation of drivers, no rebooting, it just worked. On Windows the hardware install alone took 3 reboots, never mind the reboots and instability that resulted from hacking away at Windows to get low latency performance that I need. Even with the combined software in Windows costing more than $3,000.00, most of it does not work well together. In short it sucks. The point is that we can look at this from our little slice and derive vastly different ideas. For me linux installs more quickly and easily and meets my needs far better than windows. I think comparing the two OSs is largely irrelevant, for the same reasons comparing a tank and a station wagon is irrelevant, especially if one *needs* a station wagon and not a tank. I am more bothered by OSX taking an open source project, forking another open source project, then closing the project when they (Apple) got what they wanted. RIP Darwin. F*$#& you Apple! > will continue to make progress to make Linux easier to use to the > average user; but even then we will need the support of "Aristocratic > Society" to become a "mainstream", desktop OS. > No philosopher is more often mis-understood nor misquoted than Nietzsche. I happen to find value in some of what he says, however I do not think him to be terribly relevant to this discussion. > Also, the reason Linux has gained such respect and popularity as a > server OS is simply because Most Systems Administrators (even the > Windows ones) have a greater understanding of computer systems than the > average users (and in most cases do have a say in the kind of network > hardware/software that it is used in their environment) and can more > easily grasp the advantages of using Linux over Windows in a server > environment. You can argue all you want about the effects of disruptive > technology and the power of grass-root movements; but not until either > the average users becomes more computer literate or the OEMs throw their > support behind Linux 'en masse' will Linux become all that it was meant to. > I have to disagree, most average users are not competent with Windows, why should we expect them to be any different when we change the platform? The kinds of things I see in an average week will not be solved by swapping out the users OS. Also, how many "average" computer users install their OS? Next to none, they pay people like us to do it for them. Most of the "power" users I know do not "like" linux. These are the people reinstalling Windows on the "average users" computer. Most computers come preinstalled with an OS, so really I do not think it matters how easy it is to install, the converts need to be the OEMs and the "power" users. I have no illusions regarding the challenges here. This will be harder work than building a technologically superior product. Does anyone want to subsidize the OEMs with Marketing money like Microsoft? Does anyone have the pockets to do so? Since the answer is no we need to be OK with the market share the way it is. Like at the Firefox vs IE stats. As good as Firefox is, and as "easy" as it is to install (on any platform), it will not top IE in popularity in the near future, and it likely never will. So what are we to do? I am not sure that anything is broken to fix. - From KDE and the freedesktop.org, to kernel developement, to DBs, web browsers, and just about any app that you can think of, things are good now, and are looking better ever day. Even Gnome is getting better, though the bar there is not all that high ;) I think that there is a lot of wasted effort in the Linux vs Windows debate. Microsoft is wasting a lot of time and money in going after key linux strongholds (clustering is one example) when its own house is not in order (Vista is not much more than XP SP3 right now, though it has a UI that grinds my new laptop to the ground). Does it make sense for us to make the same mistakes? -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFERRdnwRXgH3rKGfMRAt8LAJ4mQsj7+sLeXo4pNW/oeFuiMRNB5ACfTyBi NDns6/0OkU9TcUCrhxumYtM= =3TZV -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [email protected] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) **Please remove these lines when replying
