How Microsoft is loosing to GNU/Linux September 1, 2006
Posted by rjdohnert in Tech News.trackback
Danijel Orsolic has written the opinion peice where he thinks that Linux is winning the batte against Microsoft Windows. He claims that WGA and the increasing expense of Windows is “helping” Linux win this “war”.
My Thoughts; While I very much dislike WGA and the cost of Windows I pretty much disagree with the guy. Linux is not winning any new converts and those that actually look at it usually get frustrated at the lack of well developed, quality applications. Windows is usually considered part of the new computer so the customer doesnt see the additional costs nor do they care much, WGA is transparent enough to the point its non-obtrusive and those that actually do care were using Linux before. Not a really interesting article. Seems like a zealot piece at the most.
The Tech Journal 
Agreed. I don’t think that Linux can beat Windows next 10 years, althought my opinion is that Linux is better (or *BSD, *Solaris) than Windows. This is not technical question ..
Yeah I agree, Linux applications really are not as good yet as Windows apps. And as Erik said, this is not a technical question, its a question of what people will use and for mo0st consumers Windows works well enough and even with WGA its not really a hassle
I love this blog. The author is so keen and has an amazing sense of everything in the computer industry. He should be hired by any company who wants to raise their awareness of issues customers face. The author of the tech journal always shoots from the heart.
While you’re entitled to your opinion certain events speak for themselves.
People are getting annoyed by WGA and they are switching to GNU/Linux as a consequence. Improved quality of Ubuntu DID make alot of new switchers too and Novell does look very polished.
And even all this said, I didn’t say that this is the year when GNU/Linux will suddenly dominate. I said that this is the year when the more apparent growth at Microsoft’s expense has begun. There has never been so much talk about GNU/Linux (just look at Ubuntu) and so much activity in both the community and corporate worlds as there is this year, and I don’t see a reason for this to decline in years to come.
It is a slow process, but it happens and it happens to the detriment of Microsoft. And funny as it may be, Microsoft itself is apparently helping out by annoying their users away.
Call me a zealot if you will, but it seems you still found it worthy of a comment on your blog, did you? 😉 Why I wonder, if it’s such an uninteresting expression of zealotry. 😛
I agree with rj. The Linux desktop distributions these days need a lot more work and a lot more quality. Libervisco the Novell desktop does not look very polished and has enourmous problems look at the Tech Journals previous articles on the difficulties and problems with SUSE.
Ok fellas, this is the point. Libervisco, customers who buy a new system dont give a crap about WGA or any of the issues you brought up. Mere mortal consumers just want a desktop that works and does what they want. Do you know how many people actually upgrade their PC software? Its not many. Windows Vista will not change that, most consumers will only hear about Vista when they buy a new PC. The average lifespan of PC’s is 5 years, maybe 7 if you are lucky. Now if they dont want to upgrade their existing systems, what makes you think they want to put a new OS on their computers? The adoption of Linux on the server is high, adoption of it on the desktop is rather stale and slow and its unlikely to pick up just because Novell has a desktop offering. Business desktops? Beasts of a whole different nature, corporate PC’s are very tightly controlled and its highly unlikely people do on their work PC’s what they do on their home PC’s. no multimedia, very few games, surfing the web is kept to a minimal so yes, in that environment Linux can work. But find me a professional 3D Graphics artis, anyone who works with Video and audio who use Linux and if they do, Wine is ussually installed with the apps they use. Ubuntu is of high quality, in fact thats what I am using now but, the experience is far from seamless and what an average consumer is used to. It still takes awhile to get codecs and drivers working. The default music format is MP3, the average video files are of proprietary format and most consumers you pass out your live cd’s to are going to try it, but when their music, videos and other stuff do not work how many are going to install it as their default OS? How many are going to go back to what they know just works?
Ubuntu is not ready. I think it takes still couple of more years.
Codecs are indeed a problem, but they are working with it (just
check Ubuntu specs).
https://features.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/edgy/+specs
People are still too used to Windows. It takes a long time to
even consider switch to other OS. Make guess is that ~30%
of people who has computer even knows that there exist
other OSs than Windows :).
“Make guess is that ~30%…” -> “My guess is that ~30%”
Ubuntu Edgy Eft Knot2 released:
“The Ubuntu developers are moving very quickly to bring you the
absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source Community
has to offer. The Edgy Eft Knot 2 is the second alpha release of Ubuntu
6.10, and with this new alpha release comes a whole host of excellent
new features. Improvements have been made all around such as
faster system boot up times, faster GNOME start up times,
improvements to the user interface, a shiny new optimized kernel,
GNOME 2.16 RC 1, OpenOffice.org 2.0.3, Firefox 2.0b1 and much, much
more.”
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/edgy/knot-2/
This is the year of linux on the desktop!
Just like last year and the year before that and the year before that and the year before that and the……..
Linux is never going to get anywere until the community stop fantasizing and face reality.