On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Stephen D. Williams wrote:
--]I'm not whining about Netscape as a company, I'm whining about not
--]suffering in a monopoly as a user/programmer. Monopolies are bad,
--]sooner or later. I wouldn't want AOL to control the market either. An
--]open source controlled market however would be most stable; hence my
--]appreciation for Linux, Apache, Perl, Gcc, etc.
Yes, I sppreciate them and use them as well. Thing is there will always be
a dominat market place leader and there will always be the also rans.
There was a moment in my life when I realised that as much as I loved
Apple (this was back in 86) they were simply nevere going to be a market
leader for a number of reasons.
But thats OK. The market has always been an Empire<>Rebel environment.
Back in the early 80s it was Apple VS big Blue, now its everyone vs MS.
--]
--]What it comes down to is, among other things, this:
--]
--]A) personal experience that tells me that for my purposes Linux is much
--]better,
--]B) for other peoples purposes it can be, and is becoming, much better,
--]and
--]C) MS practices are intolerable in many ways,
--]D) Because of my own self-interests I want to boost what I think is
--]better.
Tis is probably one of the most honest set of reasons why people use
Linux, why I still have a Linux box running at home somewhere, and why
Linux users (versus tourists) should stop worrying about beating MS and
just live the way they set out to.
--]
--]It seems that these days there are many people who browse the web, do
--]email, and possibly use a word processor or spreadsheet, and possibly
--]play games. There are millions of users who's main use of their PC is
--]playing Solitare. Most of their other 'applications' are web services.
--]There are millions of mostly obsolete Windows apps that they will never
--]have an interest in running. For those people and anyone in a vertical
--]business environment, a Linux or Mac desktop is just as useful right
--]now.
Just as usefull? Yea. Practicle to expect old dogs to learn new tricks?
Nope. If anything is shown from the last decade of tech mixed with non
techs its that once they get a set way of doing htings, thats it, set in
stone, story over, finito. Occasionaly there will be ephinaies of
enlightenment, but these are exceptions to the rule of the lame. I cant
tell you how many people I work around who would love it, would prefer it,
if Word Perfect never upgraded from ver 5 and they still were running it
on win 3.11.
This mindset is not about doing whats right or better or effecient, its
about doing what they know, what they feel they are the masters of, and if
you distrub thier balance they get cranky.
--]
--]Could be, but I doubt it. I've been reading about the death of Unix in
--]trade rags for at least 15 years. It's now stronger than ever. As open
--]source and at the level it's at now, it's just not going to go away. As
--]I've said to my buddies at ailing .Coms: "Survival is 80% of success."
--]
I dont think it will die, I think the bubble of enthusiasm for lots of
folks will pop and they will realize they have installed on thier system a
robust powerfull OS that will strangle them just as soon as smile upon
them. Linux is still not a OS for the Drones. I have seen many cases
alrady where casual users (tourists) have had linux installed on thier
boxes and within months they are screaming for the MS tit.
I think cool OS's have a real place in things, but its not on my sister in
laws family pc.
A bit of advice i always go back to when dealing with this issue....
"In the land of the lepers the person with the most fingers is king"
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