>-----Original Message-----
>From: Steven Kinch [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
>Sent: Sunday, December 03, 2000 4:20 AM
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: Re: [newbie] gates gets Linux
>
>
>On Sun, 03 Dec 2000, you wrote:
>
>> > In a message dated 12/1/00 4:54:26 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>>
>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>> > if MS
>> > ever decided to distribute a flavor of linux I believe they would give
>> > Mandrake, SuSE, RedHat, and etc. a very hard run for their money.
>
>I am sorry but I don't have the first clue what you are trying to say. Is
a
>MS distro going to be any better than what we have? My guess is that it
>would introduce to Linux a new concept like AUTOCRAAAASH EVERY FIVE MINUTES
>
No, my point is that a MS distro will most likely be more usable from a UI
point
of view, not neccessarily a sysadmin point of view (but probably that too),
than
any other distro out there for the average Joe user who doesn't care a
flying flip
about what's under the hood (and why should he?). If he can run IE and MS
Office on
a higher quality, more stable OS, it's reasonable to believe that Joe user
would
probably drop his WIN32 installation and install MS Linux because on the
surface he
couldn't tell the difference except that his "system" appeared to be running
better.
I know a couple of Windows folk would who do that. But not only would they
do it,
they freakin' pay for it too! I haven't paid a single cent to Mandrake for
any of
their hard work, I'm willing to wager that no *average* linux user has or
will probably
pay any significant amount (if any at all) of money to the vendor of his/her
favorite
distribution. But the average Window's knuckleheads probably would pay.
They'd pay for
both the OS or rather the Desktop (since you can't charge for the OS) and
the support.
>>
>> But, wouldnt we all just download it off the net for free instead of
buying
>> it in a store. I go out and buy the software to support the cause, I
>> wouldnt but a microsoft product if i could download it for free
>>
>Yes of course we would. Are you some sort of idiot?
>
Probably the "real" linux user would scoff at the distro and refuse to
download it
anyway. But we keep forgetting that we are not the average computer user.
We care at
both a technical and philosphical level about the OS we run. This is part
of the elitism
that I talked about in an ealier post. We have zero compassion for the
folks that
have weaker aptitudes for computers and technical savy. We'll there's a
huge market for
those folks and MS exploited it. We make these moral judgements on folks
with less technical
ability and refuse to contemplate or address their challenges while AOL and
MS slips in and
these poor, morally depraved users sell their souls to Baelzebub and Satan.
I know this is a bit extreme, but it's interesting that only 2 or 3
companies (of all the
vast linux community) out there ( HelixGnome, Eazel, KDE(?) ) are
addressesing needs of
the average user.
