21st Century Desktops, Linux or Windows, Does It Matter?
It is with considerable amusement I view the verbal skirmishes between the gathering Linux and Windoze factions, almost like watching differing Religious sects gather. There are obvious advantages to each O.S. and the philosophy’s behind their development, one system having the ability to accommodate the users needs with minimal to no CLI intervention, you don’t have to make any decisions, they have been made for you. The alternative OS family gives you infinite control of all aspects of the system, very good for some, very bad for others.
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Required reading : http://toastytech.com/guis/index.html Nathan, I have never met him but would like too, amazing chronological collection of computer history, Warning!!salty rants. visit his pages, lots of interesting facts, an insiders view of early development and IT/support woes.
If your O.S. does what you want it to do and you can tolerate the things it does that you don’t want it to do, I couldn’t be happier.
At this point almost no one remembers what we call a GUI had nothing to do with Bill Gates,
in 1974 Xerox introduced a hand full of demonstration ?Alto? systems with a fully functional GUI, multi button mouse and office suite. in the following years Amiga workbench, Amiga dos, tons of games and applications, the Amiga 3000 ran a 68000 @ 30 MHz, (32 buss ) it multi tasked flawlessly and rendered complex graphics at a speed that still leaves the uninitiated with sticky drawers.
There have been lots of contributers in technology, we owe a great deal to all of them, most have slipped silently to oblivion. Microsoft has and still conducts themselves in a heavy handed manner, encouraging proprietary formats for all types of data and inter-net content, has no one heard of W3C standards? Just like ?SAE?, ?ISO,? another set of standards assuring compatibility being completely ignored. This contributes to higher costs for everything from taxes to bread and milk, The consumers posterior can no longer withstand the insertion costs this lack of imagination promotes, remember the ?t? in html stands for TEXT, the free exchange of knowledge across platforms, not just M$ platforms. ?Tear Down The Wall? (Ronald Regan)
The open source cats seem to be the only people interested in where the raw computing horsepower is going, whats being done with it. With the advent of cheap mass storage code writing has become sloppy, when you know your work can be critiqued by an entire community you tend to stay on your toes, a closed environment encourages the mundane in the same way a lack of competition does.
Simply by numbers M$ isn’t going anywhere, wooden stake through the heart or not, if you buy a new packaged system ( PC ) it is a sale for M$, even if you format the drive on first power up you still bought it. The Linux-Unix pinheads ( me ) aren’t going away, too much of the cool stuff on the inter-net would go away with them and the Mac cats aren’t going anywhere, it’s a rock solid reliable performer with a clean fast GUI.
So what, does it really matter what the desktop of the 21st century is? In the whole overview I doubt it makes any difference at all.
And just to set the record straight about ?free? yeah, I first downloaded SuSe 10.0 for free, after deciding that it fulfilled my expectations, I went to ?Comp USA? and bought the Novell box with media and documentation, SuSe 11.0 just went on the 4th HD in July, I bought that Novell box too, we open source pinheads believe in supporting the people that support us, giving all of us the freedom of choice, a valuable commodity thats priceless and vanishing without attention.
But this choice is denied to most people that buy packaged systems and laptops, you pay and pay and are still told ?what you need? rather than asked ?what you want? just like dealing with the government.
In closing let me stress, this isn’t about whats the best system and desktop of all time, that is determined by what you do with the system. Its about having a choice, if Windoze is your answer great, just don’t force me to buy it or put some bloated, invasive, insecure mixture of a browser / OS onto my box, aint gonna happen. If I need to compromise my box to view your content, you obviously have no concern for your potential clients, a glaring example of how you and your organization does business. Failing to anticipate and meet your clients needs, clearly defining that your offering a content and business ?experience? I can easily do without, take that to the Bank!
