A story of how Microsoft went from 5% of the enterprise market to 90% in three years during 1996-1999. This story shows how they did it and reveals a little known fact that GNU/Linux has had the technology to challenge Microsoft for six years.
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Member since:2005-07-11
"Fact: There NEVER has been a challenge between UNIX/Linux and Microsoft regarding technology. PERIOD. *nix technology has always been far far superior to Windows."
I've experimented with Linux every so often over the past 9 years and have always felt a little disappointed about how much work was required to get what i considered basic functionality from this most touted and superior OS. Such as:
• It doesn’t work with my graphics card
• It doesn’t work with my sound card
• It doesn’t like my chipset revision
• Why do you need video capture anyways?
• Recompiling the kernel to install a driver is no biggie*!*
The problem with linux/oss advocates is that cannot accept – and act upon criticism.
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Edited 2005-11-13 21:17
Member since:2005-11-11
Member since:2005-07-06
You forgot the biggest gap in Linux and UNIX over all; therer are no mainstream ISV's willing to write and support software for the platform - lets take out Microsoft Office from the equation, be that'll never appear; even with that removed, there are STILL a large number of software titles that business require.
Custom written macros need to be converted over, large numbers of templates for business correspondance, accounting applications etc. etc.
The list goes on and on; so before we *start* caring about whether the latest widgy-didgy camera works, I think the higher concern should be getting those 'developers, developers, developers!' porting their software from Windows to UNIX; either in the form of a native port or at the very least, a win32 assisted port with the help of Mainsoft.
Member since:2005-07-02
Most of the stuff you mention has nothing to do with the Business desktop, so I'm afraid you're grossly off-topic.
That said, Linux:
*Works with the graphics card of all my PCs (NVidia, ATI + S3 integrated chipset)
*Works will all my sound cards (Soundblaster, ATI integrated chipset)
*Never had any problem with chipset revisions
*Can do video capture easily (even with an EyeToy PS2 camera - okay, it's pretty bad quality, but I already owned it...)
*You don't need to recompile the kernel to install a driver. That's why kernel modules exist... A good example is the driver for the EyeToy camera (OV519) - I had to compile the modules (it's pretty obscure), but that didn't take long. Then all I had to do was modprobe the module and it worked.
Linux and OSS advocates will accept criticism when it's warranted - the only problem is that in the vast majority of cases it's simply FUD being thrown around by anti-Linux posters.
P.S. Linux has improved tremendously over the past 9 years. I suggest you give it another spin...
Member since:2005-07-06
I don't hear you say that MacOS-X, is a bad OS just because it doesn't run on your hardware. If you bought hardware and and not checked that it run anything but windows, even though you also had Linux in mind, you can only blame yourself.
The amount of avilable hardware that actually runs flawlessly, and gets automagically detected, and configured by Linux is huge, so even if you didn't do your due dilligence and ask if it worked on Linux, you must have had really, really bad luck.
I must admit I have no experience of video capture, so that might, or might not, be an area where there is little support, as there are software for Linux that is supposed to use this kind of hardware, I guess some vender soupport it. I would suggest asking around in some Linux user group, or on support mailing lists for various Linux distros, they may have some idea of what hardware to use.
So far I havn't seen any modern PC I couldn't boot an Ubuntu or Knoppix live CD. The list of PC includes laptops from IBM, Fujitsu, HP. Perhaps you should tell us what you are using so others that intend to run Linux on it can be warned, and not buy it.
By the way, what actions do you want from the Linux community? In the majority of the cases where you actually don't have a driver for a certain piece of hardware is that the manefactuerer is uncooperative in giving the developers specifications they need to develop a driver.
Member since:2005-07-06
Oh great! Another one who EXACTLY knows how to do things, how things work, and what the truth is. Yet, this one (as article author) doesn't wonder why possessing the truth didn't help him takeover the market.
Most people don't know the truth.
Oh great! It reminds to me the story of a guy who knew the truth (him too! Did you tell him too or did he find the truth by himself??) and he had a great product whose fate was to takeover the whole market. He went around offering his product to everyone on this Earth, including cats and dogs but... they (ALL OF THEM) refused it! (blind people... godless ones!). I can't recall his name, though...
It's amazing how people can state they know the truth, what you must do, what you shouldn't... yet they cannot succeede. Weird, uh?
Someone (who's surely uneducated) might even say that your products aren't that good, after all! Go figure...
Member since:
2005-11-11
"This story shows how they did it and reveals a little known fact that GNU/Linux has had the technology to challenge Microsoft for six years."
This is what happens when you have people reporting on topics like this when they have NO understanding of what they are reporting about.
Fact: There NEVER has been a challenge between UNIX/Linux and Microsoft regarding technology. PERIOD. *nix technology has always been far far superior to Windows.
The challenge has always been marketing and big business.
When you are up against a company like Microsoft that will do ANYTHING to win, no matter how dirty or illegal, and lie and spread FUD to undermine their competitors and mislead the public, then you are faced with a REAL challenge.
Most people don't know the truth. And articles like this don't help.
Your best tool is education.