Thoughts?

[iphitus]

Well I just got this month's PC Authority magazine and found some interesting stuff in it regarding Linux.

 

The article which had some interesting comments in it was titled "Give Bill the boot" kept short in hope SCO doesn't see and sue me over IP

 

A few quotes:

 

"Another term often thrown around as a Success indication is 'market share' ..........

...............The thing that Makes Microsoft stand apart is you rarely hear their product managers throwing these terms around at all, and if they do, they mean very different things................................When we've spoken to Microsoft product managers there is nary a mention of the other office suites out there....................................and when they talk about market share thye put up a pie chart showing what proportion of users are using which version of Microsoft Office...................................But you know what really interesting thing that's been happening in the last few months?......................the product and marketing managers have actually been heard to utter the name of a competitor from time to time - often with a slightly questioning tone, a sideways glance and a raised eyebrow. And that competitor is Linux. .............................if they decide to tackle Linux head on, I fear for the well being of penguins

 

Thoughts?

 

James

[tyme]

if MS tries to tackle Linux it will die...(meaning of course MS!)

[bvc]

I wouldn't say that, but it is a joke. I like to compare it to (not to get political) America. Why free for so long? Because *cough* in the past, almost every household had some sort of gun sitting in the closet 8) . No one country could just waltz over here and take it. Same with Linux. It's people, not a company, and people that strongly believe in something can not be taken down or even be hurt because there's always someone ready to pickup the flag and carry on. A company on the other hand...

[sarah31]

au contrare. linux would be very very easy prey if MS through a full head on campaign.

[Guest Page 6]

Depends upon your interpretation of things. MS certainly controls the market, but did it "kill" the other systems? Not entirely. Even taking Unix/BSD/Linux out of the equation, there are millions of people still using their Macs, Acorns, Amigas, Atari Falcons / TTs / STs, even a huge number that still use their Apple, Atari and Commodore eight-bit machines and wouldn't consider anything else... each with a very active development community even now, twenty years after MS supposedly "won."

 

Sure, they can be considered fringe groups, but they're there.

[Pzatch]

I don't think M$ has a chance in the world of stopping Linux.

Linux has no real center. No target for M$ to shoot for.

No company to buy out.

No intellectual property to use to stop Linux development. The GPL lets the linux development teams just rewrite any questionable code.

Every time M$ makes even a mention of Linux the number of people that want to find out about linux grows. Just like in politics "even bad press is good".

Everytime M$ or any company (RIAA) makes a stab at restricting/monitoring your use of your computer, purchased software, or any other media or hardware. Linux looks better and better. Freedom is easy to see, its oppression thats hides behind something.

 

Heck even M$ employies are trying it out at home.

 

Linux is a river. You can just hold it up a little. But you can't stop it. It the end it always wins.

[aRTee]

Linux development (not code, but how it progresses in the marketplace) could severely be hampered by MS.

 

But like some guy on LinuxToday often says: competing with Linux is like nailing jello to a tree.

 

As a product, Linux is a moving target, better at responding to the requirements of it's users (for now) since the users are (close to) the developers.

 

On the other hand, progress in terms of marketshare could be slowed down by making it difficult to get linux. For instance, by not allowing vendors to sell preinstalled linux systems.

Hey, MS is already trying that!

HP is bucking the trend, if people are really buying their linux boxes, Dell and IBM will have to follow...

 

Personally, I think that MS is already trying as much as they can to damage linux' reputation.

 

On their roadmap they seem to go for xml, in Office 2003 they will certainly try to highjack the format and make sure their documents cannot be read by OOo.

It may backfire, if MSO2k3 can read swx files those are the ones I'll be sending.... and hopefully many others.

 

MS has said they will connect IE into the next version of windows, so no-one can run it without having windows.

This too is done to keep linux down, but possibly will backfire too;

with all apple and linux machines doing only safari (khtml), opera, mozilla and then some, and together being 10% of the market, websites will soon have to be compliant with W3C, instead of IE-only.

 

I think we will see radical changes within MS in 2005 or 2006 at the latest, sort of 'we repent, but now we're ready to play nice', just to survive in the FLOSS wave.

 

If they don't port MSOffice by 2005 (or at least, get it in the news then, so people will hold back from switching), they will lose the market to OOo.

 

Looking at linux today, with its 1-3% marketshare (depending on who you ask), it will only get larger. I hear of very few people 'defecting' back to windows; some try linux and don't find all they need, but those who are really converts (we get to talk to some of them here whenever they have problems and find their way here), don't go back.

So the marketshare will continue to grow.

 

FLOSS is getting more known, due to media exposure, and linux is the first big concrete thing when FLOSS is mentioned.

 

However, I don't think MS will have clearly lost their monopoly until linux has more than 10% marketshare, which may take until 2006/2007.

 

Until then (and possibly after) I will do what I can to promote linux/FLOSS.

[Ixthusdan]

I agree with bvc. Linux is out and on the loose. The reason it is a threat to ms is precisely because they cannot simply buy one or two people and put it to rest. Just like an armed population, ms cannot come in with all their guns and make big threats. People will shoot back!! :wink:

[phunni]

Whilst I love Linux I think only some knd of third party will ever be able to bring it into the mainstream - possibly by somehow killing MS

 

The fact is, most PC users don't even know what an operating system is - let alone care which one they use - again, most users probably don't realise that there are other serious office suites other than MS; if they did then they probably wouldn't care.

 

Only people who are interested in their computers as hobbies as opposed to tools/games machines would are likely to consider a switch away from windows.

 

We all know Linux is a superior OS, but since when has the best product always been the most popular (anyone remember betamax videos? - or what about minidiscs, CDs are still are much more widely used format)

[Guest JaseP]

What will make Linux win is not the technical superiority (which it has), not the cheap price (which it has), but the groundswell of users, the grass roots nature of the Linux movement which will eventually point out to users why it is superior in this term or that...

 

M$ can't stop that. There is no way they can compete with the helpful neighbor who installs Linux and shows the other neighbor how stable it is, or how low-cost. What M$ can do is lower the price of Windoze, or give it away. But when you compare free with free, it comes up to what you like better. M$ can't afford to give everything away forever. They have two areas where they are profitable, OSes and office apps. That's it. X-box is an economic loser. So are their embeded technologies (can't beat free when developing an embeded technology).

 

In shear marketing and economics, Linux will be the winner.

[johnnyv]

Really the only way MS could possibly get rid of linux is through getting laws passed that would make it illegal.

 

Giving away windows and office is not an option for MS as their shareholders would not allow it.

[aRTee]

O/T

Phunny, sorry to disagree, I'll have cd's any day over minidisc or any other lossy compression medium. They are merely more practical, but the quality is less..

As for betamax, the superior video system was VCC aka Video2000 which had stripeless slow motion and fastforward/backward etc. But they (Philips) didn't want any pornography on their tapes. We all know what happened next..

 

On topic:

What's going to help linux development is the embedded use and high power-system use, just look at the conglomerate of big companies (Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba, Sharp, Philips,.. forgot the sixth one) who have joined in developing linux for embedded devices. Motorola who are going to base all mobile phones on linux.

There, people won't know it's even running linux. But the system will take advantage of those developments.

 

Why these companies push it? Because they are all sh!t scared of MS, don't want to become an MS lapdog.

 

The fact that linux is FLOSS makes it easy for them to use.

 

As for the desktop, we'll just have to keep helping others until critical mass is achieved, where we can go out and buy any type of hardware compatible with linux; there may be some incompatible harware in any class, but not at lower prices like today.

[polemicz]

I doubt that MS can do in Linux. It is inconceivable that I would ever go back to Windows as my main system. More to the point is whether Linux will ever be able to replace Windows on the desktop with home users and businesses. In that regard I think MS is, for now, pretty secure. The volume of software available for the home user on Windows makes Windows the easy choice. That is why Apple continues to find application areas it can use to sell new systems. To date Linux has no real financial applications software (Moneydance & Gnucash are poor cousins to Quicken and MS Money), games are possible on Linux, but not something your standard teen can get up and use, etc, etc. Over time, plenty of time, things will change and MS will find its monopoly melting away. As I see it MS has a lot to lose over time, but Linux has nothing to lose.

 

I don't know how many of you remember the monolpoly IBM had, back in the days when no one ever got fired for buying IBM. The game changed and it will continue to change. MS will try to control the game and its changes through its perversion of standards. That is how it will hold on to the business world. Remember that MS Office is their cash cow. Windows is the tax they extract on PC buyers (how many of us have paid it even though we use Linux?), the tax will continue as long as home buyers want all the Windows software goodies for their home entertainment, etc.

 

But Windows monopoly will go away in due time.

[iphitus]

The fact is, most PC users don't even know what an operating system is - let alone care which one they use - again, most users probably don't realise that there are other serious office suites other than MS; if they did then they probably wouldn't care.

 

I know someone that thought linux was a desktop theme for Windex

[Gowator]

First off consumers ...

I agree, most people don't know what an operating system is beyond buying a 'designed for WinXX' product but that might also start to change. I don't know why but I always end up thinking about cars ...

Technically most people don't understand the internal combustion engine ... its really not that difficult they just don't bother to learn it.

 

The might not understand the difference between diesel and petrol either exept it comes from different pumps... (Now Im drifting into a more European perpecctive so folks in the americas bear with me)

However when the saleman tells them the service interval is 20,000 miles not 10,000 and it get 70mpg not 30 mpg then they start to care.

The still don't understand the differences in technology but they understand their monthly bills.

 

Now people might not understand the technical differences between Linux and windows nor will most of them ever care. HOWEVER they will care about their monthly bills for leased software, forced upgrades etc.

What it needs is the saleman saying, Yes this product with Linux is actually cheaper to buy but that isn't the most important part..... the important part is most of your utility software is free and your upgrades are free.. ... etc

 

Now the technical arguament ....

OK so Im a linux fan but linux itself isn't important, its what it stands for.

FreeBSD ... is reportedly making a comeback after a cash injection from Apple and its looking very nice.

The point is Linux was and is an ideal .. its very nice but it will have its time but that doesn't matter so long as it changes something.

Linux is alive, its growing, maturing and generally turning into a nice citizen in the world of OS's. Its had responsible parenting, even if a few uncles and Aunts have disagreed over a few points such as which Church it should go to.

 

Anyway, this is the strengh of Linux....M$ has no target ... what Im trying to say is it can't get rid of an idea .... that idea will always persist.

Even if for some bizare reason M$ can halt linux then something else will take up the torch becuase its an ideal not a product.