From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@www.aeiveos.com)
Date: Thu Dec 23 1999 - 10:09:55 MST
On Thu, 23 Dec 1999, Harvey Newstrom wrote:
> > Robert J. Bradbury writes:
> >
> > > It will be interesting to watch the Linux vendors. They seem to
> > > be riding a wave with a limited time frame (from when people
> > > become aware of a product up to the point where the market is
> > > saturated)
>
> Sun Microsystems just announced that customers now have the option of
> ordering servers with Linux instead of Sun's Solaris unix.
>
I really think this is the way to go.
I have installed Linux a couple of times and Windows many many times,
The Linux market seems limited to all the computer people who want to
tinker with their system (are computers & Linux the "automobiles"
of the 90's and 00's?); all the people who are price sensitive
(Russia, China, etc.) and people who simply dislike Microsoft.
But I cannot see why John Q. Public would really want to purchase and
install Linux. The system supports many fewer devices that Microsoft.
As Eugene points out, it slowly evolves into the mainstream of computing
but tends to be behind the times because Windows is still the largest
market and people will write the drivers for new devices for Windows
before Linux. Can you imagine a non-technical person trying to
configure an X server for a new video card & monitor? Its a joke.
I think the only way the public can deal with Linux is to get it
preconfigured for your hardware which probably means buying it
from the hardware supplier.
So, Red Hat & others may invest in making it much better (i.e.
professionally engineered) and much easier for the average
user to use. The real benefit they may provide however is
putting enough competition into the operating system field that they
force Microsoft to open the source code (or perhaps the Justice
department will do that).
Then we could find out if there really is a trap door for the
NSA to get onto your computer system... :-)
Robert
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