> STOP IT!! NONE OF YOU KNOW WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN IN THE OS WARS!!!! Yep...I confessed that early on :-) > I'm writing a new OS right now in GW-BASIC in MS-DOS 3.3 that will 0wn > linux. More power to you. > Seriously, I hope Linux does well, but, who knows? Do you all think that > Windows is just going to be setting still and let Linux beat it's socks off? > While some may not like ole' Bill G. you must admit that he is a smart man. Yes...and my bet is that he's going to move Mickeysoft right out of the desktop software market. This will not be solely because of Linux of course but the open source/FSF phenomenon is picking up steam. We're seeing a lot of application software being developed under these models that is finding its way into even the Windows environment. The result is going to be a requirement to drop software prices considerably and market share is going to drop at the same time. Right now the hardware industry seems hell-bent on supporting this movement and are pumping lots of money into it. Look at existing realities rather than speculation. Microsoft has announced that they will likely produce only one more MS-Office upgrade before this product becomes an Internet-server distributed product. They're putting all their efforts into launching all their network plans and have obviously done little to improve Windows with this last release. And look at the price of this upgrade; it's half what the last one was. Bill's reacting, on that you are correct. But Windows IS sitting still right now and there are no signs of that changing. > Maybe he is not smart enough and Linux will rule. I very seriously doubt Bill Gates is a very wise businessman. He knows that to make money you have to create products that people will pay for. Manufacturing air is not good business as right now everyone gets it free. In the next few years this will be the case for desktop software. > that either OS will be remotely recognizable in 10 years. If that is the Now there's reality!!! "All of our products will be obsolete within 3 years. The only question for us is whether it will be us or our competition that makes it that way." --Bill Gates "Business @ the Speed of Thought". It's the changes to Linux that should be discussed here in my view, and how to encourage the development of a system such that the power users don't get frustrated by the simplification mechanisms while, at the same time, those simplification mechanisms can provide desktop alternatives for secretary pools and such. One of the reasons that I'm reluctant to become dependent upon things like DrakeConf is exactly this issue. Those interfaces are going to change quickly and often as the distro folks figure out how to best provide needed facility while protecting nonpower users from themselves and making the OS easy to use. It's the same reluctance that had me sitting at the commandline of my Windows 95 machine. Unfortunately, Microsoft removed my power to manipulate at that level. I'm hopeful that the Linux community will not allow that to happen to Linux. > case, then both Bill and Linus are a couple of morons and they won't matter > anyway, because some other OS will have come along and dominated them. Yep...I think one of the REAL powers of the distributed Linux community is that if it heads in the wrong direction it'll be easier for new alternatives to pop up. Cheers --- Larry
