Linux-vs-Windows (was Re: Augury and reading ...)

[Fairlight]

Confusious (John Esak) say:
> Boy, you must type fast!  :-)

Yup.  Clocked out years ago at 114wpm at full burst, and it can only have
gotten better.  Sadly, I don't think I could break my father's 120wpm on a
Selectric or 80wpm on a manual.  There's something about the feedback that
throws my rhythm off.  I find it distracting.  Daisywheel typewriters are
the worst because they're -always- out of sync with you.

> Thanks for the OT...  I agree with what you said about Apple... it all makes
> sense. I think the Linux's trying for a share of the desktop will have to
> make running the Windows stuff fairly seamless and easy no matter what.

Well, it's getting there, if not there.  If Jay says WINE will run Office
2000 merrily, then I think we're probably close.  I remember when WINE
would actually run StarCraft, but still screw up the display on Quicken's
ledgers.  And VMWare is supposed to be even more viable.

> Either that or the big software houses will have to put out specific
> versions for each Linux... hopefully, this won't be a problem... or is
> everyone hopiong that SuSE will be the final one-and-only Linux... I mean,
> are people hoping for a single Linux that will "win" the final game?  I
> don't see it as too much of an obstacle to keep various platform specific
> stuff out on the net, that can be downloaded... but again, the easy part
> comes into play.

I don't see having only one dist as a necessity.  In fact, it would only
hurt the linux community and the computing community at large.  Things like
the Linux Standards Base...okay, that's fine.  But as far as zero
competition--then whoevever won would simply be the linux equivalent of M$.
That wouldn't sit well with the community in the first place--one has only
to look at the backlash against Red Hat even before they took RHL away.
People were uncomfortable with how big and dominant they were getting.
I don't think the situation would last longer than a month, if it would
ever occur at all.  I -would- like to see 120 dists whittle down by 100 or
so though.  We have far too many dists out there, some of which seem to
have been created, "Because they could."

Actually, if I hop on linuxnet these days and ask, hardly anyone there is
using SuSE.  They're mostly running Fedora Core, or a few other things.
But they're -developers-, so running FC is fine.  I still say anyone trying
to run it for -production- deserves to get bitten as hard as they eventually
might.  If you have a developer on staff or under retainer, it may be one
thing.  But the amount of people that flocked from RHL to FC is inordinate
in light of what FC really is--and isn't.  People seem to have looked at
which things had the word "free" plainly attached to them, and were the least
migratory from what they were previously running.  In the end, they'll find
out that free turns out to be very expensive in some cases.  But they were
warned, and if they chose to ignore those warnings they deserve whatever
comes to them when it hits the fan one day.  Wait for the first kernel that
doesn't play nicely--something like 2.4.15 was.  :)  Whether they're
firewalled will matter not a whit if the kernel starts nuking filesystems
arbitrarily.  (That's precisely what 2.4.15 did.)

mark->
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