On Mar 3, 2010, at 10:17 AM, Mark Wallace wrote: > They are developing other products because I think that > they see that eventually Linux will pass both of their operating systems > and become the dominant desktop.
I'm sorry, I've been hearing the siren song of "Linux will be the killer desktop real soon now" for over a decade, and it's no closer to happening today than it was then, IMHO. Sure, for geeks it might be fine, and for very limited-use scenarios such as "browsing only", it might be fine. But at the end of the day, users want to play games, download tracks from iTunes, etc., etc., and that's just nowhere near being the case in the foreseeable future. The desktop exists to do "what the user wants to do", not "to mold the user's actions into something the computer can do". And that's really not the model any Linux desktop environment (that I've seen) has actually ever operated. > It's hard to charge for something when > people can get a better product for free (I used to teach in Catholic > School, I know.) If the product is better, sure, but anyone who really and truly believes "Linux desktops" are better than the other things that are out there -- for the common man -- is really just fooling themselves. Again, IMHO. _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium Mar 3 - Sahana and 7 Years of MHVLUG Celebration Apr 7 - Nagios May 5 - Android
