OEM vs Retail XP Pro

[David Maynard]

Never adopted any early Apple products (to pricey). But was a prowd
owner of a Commodore 64.

I'm still relatively amazed at the richness of a full color display..and
while I have my own beefs with MS (and particularly with some of their
marketing to technically uninformed customers), I have grown fond of
bringing a printer/camera/scanner/wireless USB ethernet adapter/you name
it home and having it working within minutes.

If Suse 9.2 had supported wireless Internet out of the box, there's a
very high probability that the Windows partition on that machine would
have disappeared within the week.

www.wlinux-wlan.com has information that suggests if I am willing to
back down to 802.11b, there is some potential for support of a wireless
USB adapter. All I have to do is follow the instructions as presented
in 13 --count 'em 13-- pages of instructions.


Of course, without Internet connectivity, the Suse box is undeniably the
most secure machine in my house

Hehe. I like a person who can see even the thinnest of silver linings to
the darkest clouds

 

[David Maynard]

John Doe wrote:




I think it _can_ happen, but then again, it seems as if Linux purists are
trying to NOT make it happen. They run people off in newsgroups that are
absolutely clueless, and they complain about distros like SuSE that
actually try and make Linux better for the mainstream user.

I also think SuSE (Novell) and Mandrake (now Mandriva) in particular, can do
a lot more than they are doing to make it more paletteable to the average
desktop user. Unfortunately, some tools still seem rather crude to many
users that come from a more polished desktop user experience like Windows.
It doesn't seem that they've made great strides in those particular areas
in quite awhile. While there has been strides to get WiFi working, and
other things, things like setting your monitor resolution and refresh rate
are still crude. Sax2 seems to be the best so far, but even that seems
rather crude. You'd think SuSE would have put some spit shine on it by now,
but its been virtually the same for a very long time.

I don't know if it's a money issue, or if the techno gurus that develop this
stuff are actually clueless to what the average user needs, but it doesn't
seem that anyone is actually making huge strides to make it more consumer
friendly. If they really put some effort into it, it could change for the
better in just one or two releases.

Open Source, in general, and Linux suffer from "engineer's syndrome", which
is that they lose interest at the point "it can be made to work." Besides,
"it's obvious" anyway (to those skilled in the art).

And boring things like documentation are to be avoided if at all possible.
Or, if you must, then explaining all the fundamental principles to
designing and making your own hard drive are essential before giving the
command to format one because at least that's interesting (to an engineer).

Examples are a waste of time, even though 99% of it's usage will be the
same, because it's clear from the meta-language which of the 25 switches
and 45 sub-options do what.

Now, that's over and beyond the everybody doing it differently syndrome.

 

[Mxsmanic]

Funny... Recent estimates have Linux home use at approximately 13% of all
users either using Linux full time, dual booting it, or slipping in a
Knoppix type disk and running it...

Thirteen percent of all _Linux_ users, perhaps, but not thirteen percent
of all desktop computer users overall. The overall percentage of Linux
desktop users is around 0.3%. About 5% of users are running a Mac.
Essentially all the rest are running Windows.

 

[Mxsmanic]

Let's face it, the first time you sat down to a computer, did you have a
clue?
Yes.

Using a completely different OS is like sitting down to a computer
for the first time all over again.

User interfaces have a lot in common, even across operating systems,
especially when they run on similar or identical hardware. Windows
looks a lot like the Mac. Many distributions of Linux look a lot like
Windows. The Mac looks a lot like Smalltalk. Smalltalk looks quite a
bit like PLATO. MS-DOS looks a lot like CP/M, which looks a lot like
UNIX, which looks uncannily like Multics.

Most distros are completely free.

They all have price tags on them in the stores.

Linux has its strengths and weaknesses. Unix flavors such as FreeBSD would
not be as good as they are without the Linux movement.

I don't think FreeBSD has been influenced at all by Linux; nor have
other derivatives of UNIX.

Much of the software it uses came from the Linux community,
ported to BSD Unix.

Most of the software it uses predates Linux.

 

[Mxsmanic]

Why does Windows enterprise use require MCSE certified support staff?

It doesn't.

Why does Window require support at all?

It doesn't. If it did, Microsoft would have gone bankrupt long ago.

 

[Mxsmanic]

All software of such complexity requires support.
Why?

The operating system is extremely complicated.

Just because something is complicated doesn't mean that it requires
support. That is a longstanding fallacy of the IT industry.

Which would you rather have. Instruction about how to patch it
every time it is broken, or instruction about how to modify and
make it work for your own personal needs?

I'd rather have something that works out of the box.

Windows is a monopoly because it was the first to develop network
effects and a positive feedback loop, which keeps users and
programmers locked in.

Windows predominates because it has the best combination of cost,
suitability for a purpose, open design, and proprietary design. Today
it also benefits from the huge list of applications that run on Windows
(and often _only_ on Windows).

Seems to me that open-source software lends itself well to
subscription licensing, which looks promising.

All open-source "free" software ultimately becomes commercial
proprietary software, because there's no money in free software, and
there just aren't enough idle millionnaires around to support and
maintain free things.

 

[Mxsmanic]

You're full of it. Linux is just a kernel.

That's a big part of the problem. With UNIX dervatives, all you need is
the name of the derivative (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris); with Linux, you
need to know which distribution as well. There is no standard Linux OS.

The Gnu and OSS applications that actually turn it into an operating
system make it dynamic.

They make it a mess, you mean.

Major companies are making great strides to shift to Linux both on
the desktop and for their servers ...

No, they are not.

... in particular DaimlerChrysler.

They are not among my customers, but all the major companies who _are_
my customers are running Windows.

Average everyday Joes are using Linux on the desktop too, like myself.

No, they are not. Everyday Joes don't post to USENET.

I'm probably a little more informed than the average computer user,
but I'm not a techno geek.

You're a _lot_ more informed.

I just kept at it and learned something. It's not hard, just different.

Most computer users just want something that works. They don't want to
have to learn anything. That's why they choose Windows (or a Mac if
they are extremely averse to computer use).

 

[Mxsmanic]

Let's face it, the way Novell is
going get more enterprise desktop marketshare is to get the same OS on the
home computers as well, making working at home and sharing files to/from
home and office a lot more natural.

There really isn't that much of a connection between the two markets.

 

[Mxsmanic]

Open Source, in general, and Linux suffer from "engineer's syndrome", which
is that they lose interest at the point "it can be made to work." Besides,
"it's obvious" anyway (to those skilled in the art).

Yes. Open-source software is written as a function of what geeks are
willing to work on for free. In general, they work only on what they
find fun. Doing something weird or challenging is fun. Getting
uninteresting details to work, or maintaining software, or fixing bugs,
or providing comprehensive support for even unchallenging hardware or
software, is not fun. So you can really profit from open source only if
the software you need also happens to be software that is fun to write.

And boring things like documentation are to be avoided if at all possible.

Alas, while that is undeniably true for open-source software, it's also
true for commercial software! Most commercial software has some sort of
summary user documentation (usually poorly written and very inadequate),
but virtually no software of any kind (commercial or otherwise) has any
kind of internal documentation. Developers don't like to write it (and
they often are very poor writers, anyway), and companies don't make any
money from it, except in the most indirect ways (reduced support costs,
but it's hard for most companies to develop that much insight).

 

[David Maynard]

Mxsmanic wrote:




Mandrake, now Mandriva, has a desktop emphasis. It has some ways to go, but
it's pretty good. Hell, you can insert a Knoppix CD and boot it and be up
and running in minutes. And it's not hard to use, just different.




Nope. I tried using Linux based on all the buzz about it back in 1998. I
struggled with it dearly. It was very crude back then. I've slowly found
out more and more about it.

Let's face it, the first time you sat down to a computer, did you have a
clue? Using a completely different OS is like sitting down to a computer
for the first time all over again.

That's the myth Linux aficionados use to explain away the jumbled mishmash
of inconsistent and obscure operation that comprises a typical 'Linux'
system. And it's true, if one puts little effort into making a consistent,
intuitive, user friendly system.

Which is, of course, the point and the problem.

One of the reason's Linux 'gurus' believe that is the "engineer's syndrome"
I mentioned in another message. They tend to think in terms of 'how the
guts work' rather than 'what would be easy for the user?' Or, rather,
they're unable to separate the two because they tend to think that 'how it
works' is, well, 'how it works' and surely you have to understand that to
'use' it. Which is why they tend to think that a 'user friendly interface'
is a 'page' that allows you to type in exactly the same thing you would
have otherwise done with a text editor. Thing is, it's still a jumble of
metalanguage items, organized the way 'the guts work', indecipherable to
the average user.

The point is, no, one doesn't have to know how a digital watch works, much
less how integrated circuits are made, to read time off it.

One may have been clueless when they first sat at a computer but it's a
heck of a lot easier, and more intuitive, to learn how a menu system works
than it is 'no clue given' commands on a command line. And it's a heck of a
lot easier to follow wizards asking questions in your own language than it
is to decipher a gaggle of metalanguage command switches or to track down
scattered configurations files and text edit them, uh, back to finding more
doc files and deciphering that metalanguage.

Even with something so basic as installing a new program, in Windows it'll
end up on the menu, under Programs, and, in XP, highlighted as new. With
Linux lord knows whether it'll end up on a menu somewhere and, even if it
does, lord knows where in the menu or by what cryptic name.

Now, I'm not saying those examples describe a particular Linux distribution
but they illustrate that the user interface design of a system affects how
easy, or not, it is for the clueless to use even though the 'guts' may be
highly complex.

<snip>

 

[David Maynard]

David Maynard writes:




Yes. Open-source software is written as a function of what geeks are
willing to work on for free. In general, they work only on what they
find fun. Doing something weird or challenging is fun. Getting
uninteresting details to work, or maintaining software, or fixing bugs,
or providing comprehensive support for even unchallenging hardware or
software, is not fun. So you can really profit from open source only if
the software you need also happens to be software that is fun to write.

Yep, although it can be 'fun' to be a part of a larger project even if that
means one has to do some 'non-fun' stuff, and there are some people who
take pride in 'completeness', so it's not quite that bad, but pretty close.

Alas, while that is undeniably true for open-source software, it's also
true for commercial software! Most commercial software has some sort of
summary user documentation (usually poorly written and very inadequate),
but virtually no software of any kind (commercial or otherwise) has any
kind of internal documentation. Developers don't like to write it (and
they often are very poor writers, anyway), and companies don't make any
money from it, except in the most indirect ways (reduced support costs,
but it's hard for most companies to develop that much insight).

Yes, unfortunately most techie types make for lousy writers and those who
can write often don't understand the technical side but, for commercial
software there is at least some incentive and pressure to document, to the
extent they realize the benefits, while there's virtually none with open
source.

 

[John Doe]

John Doe writes:
....


Windows predominates because it has the best combination of
cost, suitability for a purpose, open design, and proprietary
design.

Libertarian: usually one who still doesn't realize that Microsoft
possesses monopoly power.

But the Libertarian must ignore the fact that Microsoft is totally
dependent on our government. Without our intellectual property law
and our government to force compliance, Microsoft would fall apart
like playing card house.

If you want to dump some simplistic opinions and realize Microsoft's
monopoly power, you can do that here:

http://usvms.gpo.gov/findings_index.html

Search for these terms:

"network effects"
"positive feedback loop"
"applications barrier to entry"

The fact Microsoft holds monopoly power was spelled out and upheld
in total.

The federal district court wrote:

"Microsoft possesses monopoly power in the market for
Intel-compatible PC operating systems."

The federal appeals court wrote:

"... we uphold the District Court's finding of monopoly power in
its entirety."

Good luck.

 

[Ruel Smith]

Yes. Open-source software is written as a function of what geeks are
willing to work on for free. In general, they work only on what they
find fun. Doing something weird or challenging is fun. Getting
uninteresting details to work, or maintaining software, or fixing bugs,
or providing comprehensive support for even unchallenging hardware or
software, is not fun. So you can really profit from open source only if
the software you need also happens to be software that is fun to write.

Wrong!

What people don't seem to get, is that the major components of the Linux OS
are developed by _PAID_ professional software engineers. The kernel, KDE,
Gnome, and many GNU projects all get developed in a very professional
fashion by _PAID_ programmers. They work for companies like Sun, Novell,
Red Hat, IBM, HP, and others who contribute by having their paid staff work
on the open source project. Other projects that are less glamourous receive
money through donations from various Linux sources, including the major
distros, and that money is usually spent paying for professional
programmers to work on the project either in-house or on a contractual
basis. Other applications, like YaST and SaX2 by SuSE (Novell), Synaptic
and SmartPM by Connectiva (now part of Mandrake), etc. are developed by the
distro publishers themeselves by _PAID_ software engineers, and released on
a GPL or LGPL license and other distros then pick up on them and
incorporate the applications into their distros. Then there are the
applications that are of less significance that are totally a volunteer
effort. However, make no mistake, though Linux is a community effort, it's
not a _voluntary_ effort.

 

[Ruel Smith]

Mxsmanic wrote:

Having kept up on the Linux industry over the past few years, I disagree
with your comments I snipped, but I'd rather just let this thread die, as
it's just beating a dead horse.

Most computer users just want something that works. They don't want to
have to learn anything. That's why they choose Windows (or a Mac if
they are extremely averse to computer use).

I guess you speak for the entire computer using public?

If they want something that just works, they should avoid Windows like the
plague...

 

[Ruel Smith]

That's the myth Linux aficionados use to explain away the jumbled mishmash
of inconsistent and obscure operation that comprises a typical 'Linux'
system. And it's true, if one puts little effort into making a consistent,
intuitive, user friendly system.

Not true. If Linux was the first OS you ever sat down and tried, and you
learned your way around, you'd have an equally difficult time using Windows
for the first time, as does current first time Linux users. I will qualify
that by saying, I'm talking about using the computer, not installing it.
Linux's Achilles heal is lack of hardware support.

Which is, of course, the point and the problem.

One of the reason's Linux 'gurus' believe that is the "engineer's
syndrome" I mentioned in another message. They tend to think in terms of
'how the guts work' rather than 'what would be easy for the user?' Or,
rather, they're unable to separate the two because they tend to think that
'how it works' is, well, 'how it works' and surely you have to understand
that to
'use' it. Which is why they tend to think that a 'user friendly
interface' is a 'page' that allows you to type in exactly the same thing
you would have otherwise done with a text editor. Thing is, it's still a
jumble of metalanguage items, organized the way 'the guts work',
indecipherable to the average user.

While this is still true to some extent, it's mostly old outdated info. You
can setup the majority of your system with SuSE or Mandrake Linux without
ever editing a single configuration file or using the commandline. I say
the majority because I'm sure there are obscurities that still need to be
addressed that way. However, an average Linux user will never have to do it
with those distros. They use control panels that are very similar to a
Windows/Macintosh environment to set it all up, now. Now, Debian,
Slackware, Gentoo, etc., are a completely different ballgame.

The point is, no, one doesn't have to know how a digital watch works, much
less how integrated circuits are made, to read time off it.

One may have been clueless when they first sat at a computer but it's a
heck of a lot easier, and more intuitive, to learn how a menu system works
than it is 'no clue given' commands on a command line. And it's a heck of
a lot easier to follow wizards asking questions in your own language than
it is to decipher a gaggle of metalanguage command switches or to track
down scattered configurations files and text edit them, uh, back to
finding more doc files and deciphering that metalanguage.

Again, you don't need to use the commandline anymore. That's what KDE is all
about. It has come a very long way...

Even with something so basic as installing a new program, in Windows it'll
end up on the menu, under Programs, and, in XP, highlighted as new. With
Linux lord knows whether it'll end up on a menu somewhere and, even if it
does, lord knows where in the menu or by what cryptic name.

Not on any distro I've used in a long time. I'm currently running Debian
Sarge, and I have yet to run into an application I've installed that hasn't
made its way onto the Kmenu.

I think much of your info is dated.

 

[Ruel Smith]

Yes.

You're lying. Everyone who sits down to a computer for the very first time
is clueless where to begin.

User interfaces have a lot in common, even across operating systems,
especially when they run on similar or identical hardware. Windows
looks a lot like the Mac. Many distributions of Linux look a lot like
Windows. The Mac looks a lot like Smalltalk. Smalltalk looks quite a
bit like PLATO. MS-DOS looks a lot like CP/M, which looks a lot like
UNIX, which looks uncannily like Multics.

Yes, but they are very different. To view files on a Mac, you have to open
the finder. To view files on Windows, you open IE. To view files in KDE on
Linux, you open Konqueror. They may be the same on the surface, but they're
not.

They all have price tags on them in the stores.

You didn't read they rest, did you?

You want SuSE for free? ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse
Mandrake (Mandriva)?

I don't think FreeBSD has been influenced at all by Linux; nor have
other derivatives of UNIX.

KDE, Gnome... All from the Linux movement.

Most of the software it uses predates Linux.

KDE was the first GUI that was full-featured for *nix. Gnome came later. KDE
was released in 1997 for the first time.

http://events.kde.org/info/kastle/presentations/kastle-history/html/slide_2.html

Most of the software you'll use in FreeBSD or Linux in a GUI environment
will either be derived from Gnome or KDE. Those environments, including all
the applications like KDevelop, KOffice, etc. are all originally developed
for Linux.

 

[Ruel Smith]

Sorry, forgot the link to free Mandrake:

http://www1.mandrivalinux.com/en/ftp-premium.php3

 

[Ruel Smith]

Thirteen percent of all _Linux_ users, perhaps, but not thirteen percent
of all desktop computer users overall. The overall percentage of Linux
desktop users is around 0.3%. About 5% of users are running a Mac.
Essentially all the rest are running Windows.

Your statistics are waaay off. You must be quoting the statistics given some
time ago based on web page hits. If you had any clue at all, you'd know
that Konqueror has the ability to identify itself as another browser, which
is typically done to bypass browser identification checks by websites.
Those statistics are very, very skewed...

 

[Ruel Smith]

Well, I'm glad it 'works' (pun) for you but Linux doesn't offer me
anything, as a work machine, to make up for the risks involved. For
example, I regularly need to exchange word documents and there's no
assurance of compatibility like using the real thing.

Wine, CrossOver Office...

 

[David Maynard]

David Maynard wrote:




My Linux toy box just became my work box after awhile. I still do some
things on Windows, but I'm doing less and less of it there. It was a
gradual move. Hell, I might not even bother with Longhorn when it's
released, installing Debian on my Windows computer instead...

Well, I'm glad it 'works' (pun) for you but Linux doesn't offer me
anything, as a work machine, to make up for the risks involved. For
example, I regularly need to exchange word documents and there's no
assurance of compatibility like using the real thing.