[ale] Acceptance of Linux on the desktop

[Greg]

I have found Win2k to be the best yet.  Really stable and device friendly.
NT's network features and most of 98's hardware stuff and easy-ness, though
due to no DOS (only emulation) I still have a Win98 partition for games.

I think for small businesses who have perhaps a program or two that requires
MS one could use Samba, an Open Source OS for servers, and a for clients an
anti-virus program that has mail features and is easily updatable goes a
long way to keeping costs down and keeping the same or greater
functionality.  WinForLin/vmware could also be seen as a solution.  Linux
has "embraced and extended" more than any other system since Apple figured
it would be a good thing to be able to read pc formats.  I think that this
is great for those business that only want minimal change and/or turned off
by militant Open Source rhetoric.

The eternal MS caused HW upgrades and prices are ridiculous.  A Pentium 200
MHz running a slender OS operating sytem covers the majority of solutions
for small to medium and even some large businesses.  I think that if times
got harder and if IT requirements stayed the same or grew, OS solutions
would be more attractive.  I thought that when the economy went south a year
and half ago coupled with the new MS licensing/lease-ware restrictions and
the BSA's gestapo tactics that Linux would explode, but I was wrong.

I agree that increased driver/device support is the single greatest driver
(sorry !) for increased home desktop presence.  The second would be using a
Linux desktop in businesses, as most folks know of IT via their work
environment.  Of this I think Linux is the best solution.  The BSD's are
still pretty geeky and are for more high ended users.  Apple is greedy,
closed, and has little business presence.  Sun ... well, .... Sun has missed
the boat by concentrating for too long on the high margin high end.  Yeah, I
think it is just a matter of time, or maybe it won't happen.  I dunno.

Greg

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ale-admin at ale.org [mailto:ale-admin at ale.org]On Behalf Of
> Christopher Ness
> Sent: Sunday, August 24, 2003 12:00 PM
> To: ale at ale.org
> Subject: Re: [ale] Acceptance of Linux on the desktop
>
>
> On Saturday 23 August 2003 03:11 pm, Jonathan Rickman wrote:
> > On Saturday 23 August 2003 14:40, Sean Kilpatrick wrote:
> > > I would possit that the single greatest bar to a
> > > more general acceptance of Linux on the desktop is
> > > the lack of manufacturer-supplied drivers.
> >
> > I disagree. Here's why.
> > I would argue that hardware  support was worse then for NT than
> it is for
> Linux now.
>
> Put XP right in there too. (even if it is NT at heart, it is the
> one all the
> Wintrolls brag on). When I gave up on ME and put XP on, I had to replace
> almost all of my peripherals and  _buy_  upgrades on any program I cared
> about. All totalled, over a thousand samolians just so I didn't
> have to keep
> fighting with what was unquestionably the worst OS that M$ ever
> came up with.
> And when I complained on a newsgroup, the Wintrolls told me I was
> just being
> cheep and whining.
>
> --
> Chris Ness
> mailto:cnessatearthlinkdotnet               All jobs are equally easy to
> http://home.earthlink.net/~cness           the person not doing the work.
> 			   			    Holt's Law
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Ale at ale.org
> http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>

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