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Originally posted by SPoT:
Ok, while I totally agree with you here, lets look at it in a buisness sence. Windows isnt free. It was created(Stolen/ whatever) by Microsoft. Produced, distributed, released by one company. All the risks for developing it where on their shoulders. Peoples salarys, and stock earnings are
all gambling on its outcome. Free OS's dont have that problem. Im talking buisness here...
Hmmm .... at my company we primarily (practically only, except for a few exceptions) use open source software, I recieve my paycheck every month, as like a lot of other people working professionaly with open source/linux. Your point is?
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Linux, for example, is a Unix clone. It is all based on that software, but just different enough to avoid copywrite laws. The OS is free, but what about he guys who wrote Unix? Where are thier profits? where are their earnings to grow on? They took the risk, and the Linux crowd is standing on the shoulders of giants.
The guys who wrote unix got payed for it by Bell labs (afaik), Linus Torvalds started linux as a univeristy/college project, on average students don't get paid for their work. Linus is now probably employed by some company who benefits from the development of linux (don't quote me on this though, I have no idea where Linus works or what his job his). The unix "guys" still make money of all the proprietry unix implementations which are still heavily used in resource intensive corporate/research environments. And over the years linux has evolved so much that you can hardly compare it to unix anymore.
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I would like to see Linux gain alot of ground, not because it is free, but because it is written better. But, the simple fact is that Linux doesnt have the ease of use for the computer idiot. And with the lack of support for Linux and easy to use apps, Linux is dead in the water. The general public doesnt care what is happening in their OS, they want to boot up and run. Linux cant offer that right now. "Special" installation and configuration is required. Forget it.
ok here is an example of the average SuSE linux installation :
clickety clickety click , click, click , click reboot click click done (with (if supported) all hardware recognised and working, no need to download and install video card/sound card/ modem/ printer and whatnot drivers) with all desktop programs (mail clients, browsers, office apps) already installed, from one handy dvd (no cd switching)
as for a real world example :
my crappy compaq pressario with integrated video was a bitch to get working on win9x (I spent 3 days searching the internet for the Trident Cyberblade integrated video drivers in 640x480x16 colors because of some unhappiness between VIA and Trident)
When I installed SuSE on that box it just recognized all my hardware, no problems at all.
(technically I could have used the compaq recovery cd's but that also installs loads of crap which I never need nor would ever use)
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Believe me, I see all of your points, but I see it from the eyes of peoples PC's I fix every other day. They got no clue, nor the desire to have one. The average user is a PC idiot. Microsoft makes it easy. Not better, but easy.
A linux system, once installed, should never need fixing, especially when operated by a novice user because they can't screw anything up (it's not like they know how to log in as root and type rm -rf /)
Installation of software is a breeze (and far more easier then under windows, because you don't have to reboot 3 times just to install a program)
There are also linux distributions especially geared at windows users (redmond linux is one though they changed names lately and I can't remember, there is also no free download, it's very cheap however)
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I dont know if you realize how advanced you are compared to the average PC user.....
It's not how "advanced" someone is, it's their willingness and ability to learn new things, furthermore when someone does reach the "advanced" stage they will find out that is a lot easier to get their pc running the way they want it with linux then it is with windows (somehow win xp's crappy irq steering springs to mind which shares my irq 9 with 6 devices including my geforce 3, (which totally sucks speed wise), my sound card and 2 NIC's)
There is only one thing people need to know when migrating a novice user from windows to linux and that is RTFM!!!!!
my 2 euro cents