> >If UNIX had been available for $50 instead of >$1000 back 20 years ago I doubt that MS would have succeeded in the marketplace. >
This topic is probably more appropriate on Slashdot than on this Yahoo group, but.... Windows preeminence on the desktop has nothing to do with the operating system itself, or it's cost 20 years back. Windows command of the desktop stems directly from Microsoft's overwhelming dominance in applications such as word, powerpoint, and outlook. Microsoft achieved this application dominance by essentially giving away office with Windows, and thus making office ubiquitous. Word wasn't, and still isn't, the best word processor on the market. Rather, it bought market share until it drove several superior competing products out of the market. Heck, I didn't WANT to give up using Ami Pro (my word processing software of choice 12 years ago) -- I *had* to because all the business people with whom I communicated used Word... And Word was, afterall, available darn close to free (if not completely free) on Windows. Today, yeah... You COULD use Star Office -- it's ALMSOT fully compatible with Word and it's not half bad. But "almost fully compatible" won't typically cut it in the business world. And Linux *still* doesn't have a decent email/productivity application that rivals Outlook. Back to ham radio, I think the move from 32-bit computing to 64-bit computing is more likely trigger a move by hobbyist, small, independent, and community-based devs to Linux. This is because of Microsoft's ill-conceived security policies (in place for 64-bit Windows Vista and later) that requires things like drivers to be digitally signed using a certificate issued by a recognized certification authority. Acquiring such a certiciation from Verisign (one of the recognized authorities), for example, costs $500/year -- nothing for a large corporation, but a chunk of change for somebody who writes code in their spare time and gives it away to the ham radio community. If the smaller devs move to Linux, that means a lot of innovation will also move. It's already quite common in the industry to have bleeding edge software developed first on Linux and later ported to Windows. Things are changing. Will Linux be the answer? Only time will tell. de Peter K1PGV
