I wanted to comment on Lawrence's mail at first.. but I think I have more
to say if I comment on both.
Displacing Microsoft has never been on our aggenda... This world is big
enough for the both of us (and of coz big enuf for a lot of other OSes
too) The same way as there are many cars/TVs/movies.
I agree with Lawrence's claim that Linux is still under development, that
was the whole point of it isn't it ? I mean, just because a product is
complete, it doesn't mean development must ever stop ! To excel beyond
one's self !
I went thru a period of self-evaluation on my views on the current "OS
War" At times I feel, Linux is being pushed too hard. The normal end user
is not ready yet for Linux. Yes, Gnome/KDE makes the interface so much
easier to use. And with linuxconf/YaST, configuring linux has never been
easier.
But I feel the key to it all is not to modify/enhance the software, but to
modify/enhance the user. My first experience with Linux was in the days of
Slackware and Ydgrssil (Typo!) and configuration was by hand. Tough, but
it was always enriching and I learnt a lot from it. And this is what I
want to spread to others, the learning and appreciation of a good
Operating System.
By adding layers (linuxconf) and layers (gnome) and layers (who knows?) we
will just end up like Microsoft Windows. Sooner or later, they will have
this option "Hide Technical Messages <Y/M/N>" in the kernel configuration.
Some of you may say... nah, this will not happen. But realise now that
there is "holy crusade" is over... there is tresure involved now ! And
with tresure, comes greed and the devil himself. (Somehow, I feel this
happened to Bill Gates with MS-DOS - Working OS, Add Graphics, Add
Control Panel, Add Explorer, Tadah!)
Linux may be "free", no one can buy over it. But seriously, without
Calderra, RedHat, SuSE, there would be little Linux (For the common people
at least) And these are the companies that can be bought over !
I'm a avid Linux Advocate. Have been and always will be.
But we cannot afford to push it too far and kill ourselves in the
process. There has been soo much hype about linux, and seriously the hype
has casued disappointment in some users.
There has always been wide claims and anti-myths about how Linux has i's
own graphics editor (GIMP), word processing (WP8, StarOffice), ICQ/IRC
Chat software, etc... But then, no one said these are the only few
software in the market. And given a choice of MS+Photoshop an Linux+Gimp,
I chose Photoshop, and so would many professionals.
The market is expanding, with SGI coming in to the linux frenzy. Maybe
Adobe, and even Microsoft may join in. But notice that these are the
companies that will NOT be open sourced, and with huge bulky codes, it
will just give more problems to linux users. And they dun have much of a
choice.. it would be back to M$ or stay with "adapted" software.
It's an open market, with freedom of choice as many would say. The
linux-server market is safe, as it does not suffer from the market/demands
of the end-user. (Put it bluntly, it's still Geekdom) But the end-user
would soon have to put up with the endless stacks of controls, layers and
simplfications.
(Tongue in cheek)
"Our sacred space has been invaded. We must protect our holy grail"
ahahahaa...
The future is grim and looks uphill. but hell, so was 1.2.6. *grin*
*cheeros*
Elvin
Sidenote: This mail may be long, but trust me. I got more to say.. someday
I'll write something up and put it on my personel web page...
Disclaimer: The above are my personel view points. I'm open to discussion
and "education", but not too opened to flames (if any should go directly
to ME)
-
On Mon, 30 Aug 1999, Harish Pillay 9v1hp wrote:
> > I began to evaluate Linux out of curiosity. So far I had evaluated
> > Debian, Caldera, RedHat, Slackware, SuSE, and Mandrake.
> > All these distros have their good and bad points. I hope someday there
> > will be an acceptable standard set for Linux. Unless
> > this is done there will be some confusion for users as these programs
> > differ from one another and are still under development. One good point
> > ,however, is that people will be discouraged to write virii or trojan
> > programs for them. Still thinking of replacing Microsoft Windows with
> > Linux? Perish the thought ... it will take sometime before one can hope
> > to achieve this. At the moment Linux is no threat to Microsoft Windows
> > at all. It is just another "computer toy" for programmers to play with.
> > These are my personal opinions, of course. Meantime have fun with Linux!
>
> Thanks for your comments. It is indeed useful for someone to state the
> preceding and draw their own conclusions. Displacing Microsoft is not the
> intent of Linux. We use computers to achieve some task. It is rather
> secondary what the operating system is. It is the applications that count.
>
> In the case of Microsoft, they cover the two aspects - OS and apps. Their
> applications are, in general, well built, but sadly, that cannot be said of
> their operating systems. It has to be granted to MS that what they are
> trying to do is to keep backward compatibility as much as possible (though
> it is questionable) and in that process, they have not been able to build
> an operating system that is robust.
>
> Back in the days when there was the MS OS/2, there was something called the
> Chernobyl Box in the system. The Chernobyl Box was the DOS box. It was
> called Chernobyl Box because when DOS was being fired, the OS/2 box went
> from ring 3 based stability to ring 0 based instability. In the Intel 286
> world where OS/2 got it's start, running a realmode DOS application was
> achieved not by a virtual 86 on-chip emulation, but by fooling the system
> to think that it was a DOS-only machine.
>
> OS/2 went on from that to being a solid operating system when it began running
> on 386 and better machines only to be later killed off by IBM's mismanagement.
> For the record, I think OS/2 is far superior to Windows. It had threads,
> monitors etc etc way before any desktop OS.
>
> Windows got it's start from running on a 8088 (win1.0), and then with two
> versions - Windows 286 and Windows 386 - the latter tried to capitalize on the
> advantages of the 386 platform. Windows 386 evolved into Windows 3.0 to 3.1
> to 95 to 98. In parallel to this MS, with Dave Cutler of Digital/VMS lineage,
> did try to build a new OS (released as Win NT 3.5). It promised all the good
> things of VMS and would incorporate newer techniques and technologies.
>
> However the product management of nt and 9x have not been stirling in terms of
> making the product robust and crash proof. It is not acceptable that an
> application can take down an OS. When MS, at the DOJ trial, said that removing
> the IE stuff from the 9x series could make the OS unstable was an "admission"
> of the poor system design.
>
> Therein lies the Archilee's heel of MS' operating systems. MS OS product
> management allows for incorporation of application specific functionality
> within the OS. In Linux, that would amount to Netscape specific features
> in the kernel. Does that make sense?
>
> The evolution of the software industry in the last 30 or so years has taken
> on a path that suited it's goals at that current time. In today's world where
> you can have commoditized CPUs that can do just about anything, we have to
> reevaluate the software industry to see if the model it has had continues to
> make sense.
>
> Linux is the most obvious challenger to the status quo. If you feel that the
> status quo should remain, you are free to follow that. No one is compelling
> you to adopt Linux. If one day Microsoft does operating systems correctly,
> we will see zero or low incidences of crashes and then one of the side effects
> of Linux would have been achieved.
>
> I have gone on and on. I will stop here.
>
> Later,
> --
> Harish Pillay, 9v1hp [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Singapore *** Ask me about Linux *** http://home.pacific.net.sg/~harish
> -
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