[geeks] The Dog's Breakfast: Microsoft Windows Vista

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Charles Shannon Hendrix <shannon at widomaker.com>
>Date: 2007/05/06 Sun PM 06:14:41 CDT
>To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [geeks] The Dog's Breakfast: Microsoft Windows Vista

>Mike Meredith wrote:
>> On Sun, 6 May 2007 10:28:01 -0700, Mike Murphy wrote:
>>> I wonder if Vista may be
>>> the force that snaps usage to Linux. It wouldn't make me sad at all.
>> 
>> In another place where I hang out, there's been quite a few comments by
>> ordinary power users and even Microsofties that indicate a high level
>> of unhappiness about Vista* and comments roughly 90% in favour of
>> sticking with XP and 10% interested in making the great leap to Linux.
>
>One difference: eventually you won't be able to stay with XP.

XP has years of life left in it - witness the life of Win2K, which is still 
"alive" in many quarters...

>If Linux and UNIX in general can get increased hardware vendor support, in
>part as a reaction against Vista, then maybe in the future it becomes the 
one
>that "just works".

Linux/UNIX are to "flavorful" to garner any significant vendor support, IMHO 
- if a Linux driver is as easy/hard to write as an XP/Vista driver, they'll 
choose to write the driver for the platform that makes their product 
available to 90%+ of the market. To double the effort for an extra 5% seems 
hardly worth it...
 
>It also occurs to me that if ever Apple was going to release OSX for all PC
>systems, now would be the time.

I don't think it is in Apple's interest to make OS X for Intel generally 
available (i.e. shrinkwrap software in a store for any hardware). An argument 
could, I think, be made for OEM licenses to system manufacturers, but Apple 
would likely need to add some sort of "activation" mechanisim into the OS, 
and they would suffer as SOlaris X/86 did with woeful driver support for an 
extended period...

Lionel