Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 11th Aug 2009 10:26 UTC, submitted by Moulinneuf
Technologizer has an interesting article about why Windows Vista failed, and it provides 16 reasons why this is the case. A few of those reasons reveal a certain lack of understanding, but a more pressing issue is that while listing these reasons individually is interesting, Vista's failure in the marketplace can be explained in a much more compact fashion.
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Member since:
2005-11-05
Lemur2 wrote: "Excuse me, but you have GOT to be kidding, surely?
Install Windows 7 from the install CD. Then install Kubuntu Karmic (KDE 4.3) side-by-side (perhaps dual boot) on the same machine. Then try and do stuff with that machine."
No I'm not kidding. I've used Linux as my daily desktop for nearly eight years and so I think I'm able to form a view that isn't entirely kneejerk.
People forget that open source applications are plentiful on Windows, too. In fact the more well-known ones - Open Office, Firefox - seem to put more into getting things right on Windows that they do on Linux these days. If you then throw in stuff like Google's many applications, Gimp, Pidgin, Vlc, Filezilla, Putty and Thunderbird, among others, you can have a very capable machine whose underlying OS happens to be Windows 7 - even if all those apps aren't pure open source, but then they aren't when run under Wine on Linux either.
The only rational position to take towards operating systems is that of an Angry Agnostic, imho. These are very complex systems, as is IT generally, as is the world. No one can possibly predict what will happen next, let alone in ten years' time. No one can work out what unintended consequences will produce - often the most influential determinant of all. Texting on phones is the prime example. When it first turned up, no one realized how important it would turn out to be.
Therefore I think it is best to keep an open mind, use what is best at the time and be prepared to change if necessary. I realize these views are probably a little challenging for the black-and-white brigade on here with their fingers hovering over the mod buttons much like a disapproving suburban curtain-twitcher, but that's just not my problem. One example: system-wide colour management and photographic tools. These are important to me and Windows 7 at the moment provides the superior platform. Tomorrow it might not, but today it does.
FWIW, the KDE 4.3 I was referring to is KDE 4.3 on Ubuntu so presumably Kubuntu packages. Since this seems to have buggered up my Ubuntu install nicely, with frozen dialogue boxes every time I open a gtk app, I am most likely swapping over to the latest SuSE 11.2 KDE 4.3 milestone. This should also allow me to synchronize my Google calendars, something that KDE 4.3 on Ubuntu 9.04 isn't able to do.
Edited 2009-08-12 13:37 UTC