Nick McGrath, Microsoft's head of platform strategy, is at the spearhead of the software giant's attempts to head off the open source danger. Having helped launched both NT4 and XP into the UK, the 15-year Microsoft veteran now concentrates on combating the threat posed by organisations migrating to Linux. But, with an almost mockingly dismissive opinion of the opportunities brought about by Linux, McGrath is insistent that Microsoft is not losing ground. Instead he claims that Microsoft is winning key corporate and public sector deals on the critical battlegrounds of cost and security.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2006-01-10
Hmm, new? Udev, faster filesystems, Xen, customization (ok, that's been here for Linux for years). We are just talking about the kernel, right? If you want to talk various GUIs, then we can go for Indexing (Beagle), fully 3d accelerated desktops, 20-30 second boot time (Yes, with Ubuntu's new Upstart, my desktop boots extremely fast, and that is into fully usable GUI, which on a used Windows XP system (same computer) it takes a good full 2 minutes with all the anti-virus and firewall crap I have to have simply to protect my computer when it's just sitting online.)
The Suspend/Resume even in WinXP is broken. The reason isn't due to Linux, XP or Win98 or whatever, it's because ACPI is still not implemented properly in the hardware of a lot of laptops, so unless someone has coded proper drivers for all the variations, it's not going to work very well.
DRM is a horrible thing, and quite frankly most people should be appalled that Microsoft and various other companies are pushing this on us.
The fact that a guy I know had to re-download all 80 or so songs that he had legally purchased for his cell phone because his phone died. When he got a new phone, he took out his memory stick and put it in the new one, DRM reared it's ugly head and wouldn't let him play any of the songs. There is such a thing as fair use rights, and this just completely flushes them down the toilet.
Member since:2006-01-11
Udev? It's immature and a POS
Xen - not even close to VmWare
Beagle - don't make me laugh - they can't even index proprietary formats
3D desktops - Sun did the work first and now try Aqua on Vista
About your booting time - I call bull shit. My XP takes 10 secs and linux on the same box takes 47 secs. That's a crock and you know it.
Suspend/Resume works on XP - don't freaking lie about it. People don't design laptops to be incompatible with WIndows XP - that's patently false. ACPI problems are Linux's fault.
DRM is here to stay - unless you're a movie producer or a rockstar I don't see you creating any media for my personal consumption so I'm going to rely on the industry that does know how to and they are going for DRM and I respect their license - just as I would like them to respect GPLv2.
I did rm -rf /* recently - and I flushed my entire OS down the toilet - people do stupid things. Deal with it.
Member since:
2006-01-11
Tell me what NEW (and by new I mean earth shattering) features in Linux? The ONLY thing that's going on in linux is new drivers for devices that already have Windows support. They have run out of ideas in Linux.
Linux's suspend/resume is in shambles - heck even Win98 had a more stable suspend/resume than Linux. Let's forget the kernel and look at the user space - aka GNU/Linux - again, they cannot compete with Windows and Mac because all the content of the web is slowing being shackled into pay-per-view, for that you need codecs and licenses (DRM). Windows and MacOS.