How to Kill Linux

[stiltman]

Interesting reading

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1768170,00.asp

[bazooka]

[Zisguy1]

If Microsoft actually produced an MS-Linux that was the standard Linux attached to the driver layer of Windows, giving users full Plug and Play (PnP) support of all their peripherals, nobody would buy any other Linux on the market.

Considering how long Dvorak has been around, he seems pretty clueless about Linux. If people were really looking for "plug & play drivers" as the be-all end-all they wouldn't run Linux in the first place... they'd run Windows. And if they wanted to pay for their OS they'd just buy Windows, not Windows integrated with Linux. Could you imagine the up-front cost of buying Windows combined with the long term costs of administrating & maintaining both Linux *and* Windows? It would be the most expensive OS of all time.

I remember IBM tried something like this with "OS/2 for Windows," except that OS/2 provided the driver support and Windows ran on top of it. It was basically a flop, the boxes just sat on store shelves.

[lumis]

i miss reading PC magazine. its been years.

"A while back, I got into a chat with a phone service guy ... he said the biggest problem with phone service in the San Francisco Bay area was squirrels eating through the wires."

you dont get that kind of insight anywhere else :P

[vitualis]

@ Zisguy1: I think that you are missing the point. Dvorak's arguement is on killing Linux from the perspective of it being a viable alternative for consumer.

Microsoft producing a "Linux" that solves some common fundamentals of Linux (i.e., driver support) may draw consumer support away from these "non-MS" operating systems, especially if their implementation is GOOD (and slightly non-compatibile with other Linux distributions).

Anyway, I made some comments here: https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1238491#1238491 (I didn't know about this thread).

Regards.

[Zisguy1]

@ Zisguy1: I think that you are missing the point. Dvorak's arguement is on killing Linux from the perspective of it being a viable alternative for consumer.

Do you honestly think Microsoft cares much about the consumer market? All the real money is in business... both workstations and servers. That's exactly where Linux happens to be making major inroads, particularly because businesses usually have a standardized set of hardware/software/peripherals and rarely change it.

BTW, the 'proper' approach is to plan your hardware around what your chosen OS will support, not vice-versa. Businesses do this all the time, as OS support/maintenance in a business environment costs far more than hardware does.

I saw the other thread... maybe it would help to look at things in a different light. If you're at all serious about Linux, download the hardware compatibility list for the Linux distro you like most, and put together your next PC with this in mind. After all, didn't you buy your current PC with Windows in mind?

P.S. I'm not a Linux fanboy... in fact, I don't use it. I've tried it, as well as OS/2 and FreeBSD but I too prefer Windows (if for nothing else because of all the Windows software I'm unwilling to give up). Just saying what I feel would be the right approach if you were really interested in giving Linux a go.

[vitualis]

All the real money is in business... both workstations and servers. That's exactly where Linux happens to be making major inroads, particularly because businesses usually have a standardized set of hardware/software/peripherals and rarely change it.

That is a closed minded approach. The "real" money may well be in business, but people are much more likely to choose Windows in the business setting if they are familiar with it and use it in the home as well. If (e.g.) a Linux distro or Mac OS X somehow magically takes 50% of the consumer market, people would be much more likely to use a non-MS OS in business as well.

I saw the other thread... maybe it would help to look at things in a different light. If you're at all serious about Linux, download the hardware compatibility list for the Linux distro you like most, and put together your next PC with this in mind. After all, didn't you buy your current PC with Windows in mind?

Well actually, no I didn't. I put together my current PC with the best absolute performance/price ratio with regards to my needs. I didn't need to get a hardware compatibility list with Windows because I was almost certain that everything would WORK. And it did.

Yes, you are right. If you want to use Linux, you need to choose your hardware carefully beforehand. However, this is really very limiting and it is also not how most people switch to Linux. Most of have a Windows PC and want to give Linux a spin. If obvious hardware incompatibilities crop up, even of common devices, it is an obvious failing.

Furthermore, Linux hardware support is still somewhat patchy. As I mentioned in my other thread, the onboard sound on my laptop works with Knoppix but not Kanotix. Both are distros based on Debian. Why?

Regards.