Is Microsoft Windows invulnerable re an real competition for the foreseeable future?

Great Debates
21

Ok, but Bill Gates seems less likely to be stymied by anti-trust lawyers than IBM did. He’s rather good at spotting business mistakes and adapting to them.

I suspect that an MS OS will dominate the desktop PC market forever. Whether they will dominate the non-PC market, though is another matter entirely.

Gorsnak: *If people don’t think Linux poses a threat to Microsoft, I’d personally be very curious as to why Microsoft is scared shitless by the growing number of companies and governments that are shifting or considering shifting to Linux. *

Because only the paranoid survive as monopolists.

I didn’t know about Visual Studio; thanks. Excel, IMHO, is a surprisingly good product. More generally though, Word and the Office Suite established itself primarily through shady business tactics. Specifically, Microsoft was able to get a stable word processing product out first when they unveiled Windows 95 (how about that?). Once established, it makes sense for users to use Word rather than Wordperfect because… everyone else uses Word and compatibility is a key feature. (This is an example of what economists call “network externalities”: a “network” becomes more valuable to each user as more users join it.)

22

I’ve got Red Hat 8 and being all but computer illiterate was amazed to see the package - if people weren’t intimidated by change, I think Linux would really give Gates a run for his money.

I’m still exploring everything it offers but … the range of apps is staggering; the whole (equivalent) of Microsoft Office is included here…really like the e-mail client very much …I like Red Hat 8 a whole lot – there doesn’t seem to be anything missing from here that my last ‘home pc’ package (ME) didn’t have … once you take the initial leap, it’s been, so far, very impressive…

Fwiw, I mainly run Win2000 now … not yet sure on that match up …

23

What could make inroads against MS is if manufacturers like Dell and Gateway would provide machines with Red Hat pre-installed for a few hundred less than machines with Windows.

24

That’s a remarkable reinterpretation of events.

WordPerfect was clearly done in by Corel, who bought it out, planning to create a competing office suite, and then

  1. Produced a horrible upgrade of WordPerfect in WP 8.0,

  2. Produced a terrible office suite to go with it, and then

  3. Generally ran Corel into the ground, when as a middle-sized Canadian company they were in no position to be anything less than a premiere-performance company if they wanted to compete with MS.

Corel was dynamited by its idiotic alliance with Sun and the wastage of hundreds of millions into a plan to produce “net computers” (remember those?) I was an enthusiastic WordPerfect user; my whole company used it. I spat on Word. WordPerfect 7.0 was, as far as we were concerned, the alpha nad omega of word processors. We were driven away by the shoddiness of the 8.0 product and office suite in general, and the company’s self-destruction. Word simply overtook it in quality.

If you wanna know who killed WordPerfect, it wasn’t Bill Gates. It was Michael Cowpland.

Question; if I install Red Hat Linux on my PC, will all my top-end games run exactly like they do in Windows XP? - e.g. seamlessly?

25

RickJay: I defer. I did not follow the Wordperfect saga closely enough. FWIW, I loaded WP 9 on my computer and prefer it over Word (more intuitive interface, better equation editor). But the compatability issue (and my pre-existing knowledge of Word) lead me to use the MS product most of the time. Alas. (I also use a text editor a lot. No muss. No fuss.)

Question: Does Red Hat come with a dual boot option? I have Win98 and wouldn’t mind getting a more stable OS that isn’t as intrusive as XP. (Win2000, OTOH, gives me sticker shock- unless we’re talking about buying it as part of a new computer).

26

No, I don’t think they will run at all, let alone seamlessly. A few games have Linux ports, but they few and far between.

flowbark, you can configure a machine to dual boot Red Hat and Windows. I haven’t done it myself, though.

27

No. There are some games that are ported to Linux, and run generally as well, but there aren’t many. Games for the Win32 platform can sometimes be run with emulation layers like WINE (which I believe is now strong enough to run Warcraft III), but as you’d expect, you take a performance hit because you’re running an emulator.

If you’re interested in trying Linux, your best option is to dual-boot, which can be done with any distribution of Linux. All you need is an extra partition that’s 3 or 4 GBs in size. I can do everything under Linux, including playing my DVDs (illegally), except play the sort of games I play on Windows.

28

No. There are some games that are ported to Linux, and run generally as well, but there aren’t many. Games for the Win32 platform can sometimes be run with emulation layers like WINE (which I believe is now strong enough to run Warcraft III), but as you’d expect, you take a performance hit because you’re running an emulator.

If you’re interested in trying Linux, your best option is to dual-boot, which can be done with any distribution of Linux. All you need is an extra partition that’s 3 or 4 GBs in size. I can do everything under Linux, including playing my DVDs (illegally), except play the sort of games I play on Windows.

29

IIRC, MS is basically dumping W2K, so you should be able to find a copy fairly cheap somewhere. That being said, if you’re running W2K and have a Wintel modem, W2K may not recognize it, and you might have a tough time finding the drivers for it.

30

Microsoft is facing two huge problem right now.

First, Linux. Many governments have defected and many more are considering, simply the cost to maintain a MS shop is ridiculously high. Not to mention the huge number of holes in MS stuff. Linux distros are getting progressively easy to install and the OS is inherently more stable than Windows.

Two: itself. The MS business model relies on its customers uprgading to a new version of software every two years or so. However, this is breaking down. Most of the XP sales are actually ones bundled with new PCs, not retail market sales or upgrades by companies. IT managers are increasingly ticked off by MS, which is a completely stupid move on MS’s part. Companies don’t upgrade to XP because it’s bloated and offers no real advantage over W2K. Who needs to use Office XP anyway? Most users wouldn’t even use a fraction of the features on Office 97.

31

Most “top end” PC games suck anyway, big on sound and graphics and low on game play.

32

Dell certainly used to do this a couple of years ago, at least with thier workstation/upper-end offerings. They no longer seem to do so.

I dunno if the Linux option was dropped for lack of demand, or if perhaps a horse’s head was left in Michael Dell’s bed. :smiley:

33

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product_listing.gsp?path=0%3A3944%3A3951%3A41937%3A86796%3A96356&dept=3944&cat=96356&sb=61&bti=0

I’d say that is competition. Its enough for the average user that only wants things like a browser and email, and it is cheaper.

34

Not sure about that few hundred number…the big manufacturers buy Microsoft products at pennies on the dollar. They pay a lot less because they provide their own support. The cost of support is still embedded in the system price. If they sold systems with Linux and Linux apps instead, they’d be saving the actual software cost (I’m guessing it’s about $100 for the OS, MS Works, and the other apps that typically come with a base Dell system), but their support costs would be the same, or possibly higher.

However, I suspect that they discontinued this option because it wasn’t very popular, and the amount of overhead required to maintain the Linux support structure wasn’t justified by the number of units shipped.

35

One problem with selling Linux combined with something is that almost no one who knows how to put a computer together is going to want to buy a pre built server. People who use Linux don’t want a machine that comes with Red Hat pre-installed because its probably going to be cheaper and more customizable to buy the parts individually.

Lindows has a chance of giving Linux part of the “I don’t know nothing about no computers” market which would want to buy assembled PCs.

36

What about Xandros?

37

Well, I wasn’t really interested in it, I was trying to illustrate a point; a rather significant reason Linux isn’t going to overtake Windows anytime soon is that it’s useless to anyone who mostly uses their PC for games, like I do.

There’s really no pressing reason for a normal user to switch, and there are reasons why they shouldn’t switch. So why would they? That’s straight to the question the OP posed, is it not?

38

I’m not a gamer. I’m happy as a clam plaing Freeciv and Freecraft (clones of Civ2 and Warcraft II), so I could really care less about the latest 3D shootemup extravaganzas. Apparently, you can do quite well running UT2K3 on Linux, but I wouldn’t know, because I’ve never cared to find out.

That said, I’m a relative babe in the Linux woods, but I have every confidence that in a year or two at most, Linux will be ready for the big time. As it stands right now, if you’re a non-gamer with a mild technical inclination, you have no excuse for continuing to use Windows. SuSE and Redhat are both to the point where anybody who isn’t scared of editing the occasional text file shouldn’t have any problem at all. They’re as, if not more, easy to install than XP.

My main reason for switching was the cost factor; I got a full featured office suite (several, in fact) and a powerful graphics program for free, bundled with the OS. Photoshop and Office would have cost me a small mint that I can’t really afford.

Hell, I’d feel better about setting up my technophobic grandfather with a minimal Redhat install than I would about getting him a computer with XP. All he needs is a word processor, email, and a browser, and a Linux user account is virtually idiot-proof when it comes to fucking up the system. Not to mention the lack of viruses. And he’d never have to touch the command line.

The only things missing at the moment (besides lots of 3d games) are a handful of graphical configuration tools and an easy-to-install personal database (OOo/MySQL is a complete bitch to set up, but that should change in OOo 1.2.) And there’s no technical reason for the oft-cited lack of games other than a lack of developers.

Unfortunately, though, it’s going to take more than just being ready for the fight for Linux to take down MS. Bill has the advantage of both intertia and FUD. Hell, my supposedly smart employer just traded an indestructable AS/400 backend for a bunch of W2K/MS SQL/Citrix servers that spend as much time offline as on, to the tune of several sorely needed million dollars. It sure looks purty, though.

39

Operating systems aren’t the kind of thing that anyone but an enthusiast changes; almost everyone lives with the OS the computer comes with, and they’re fine with it. So no, there’s no reason to switch, per se.

To whatever extent Linux achieves general desktop penetration, it will be as a low-cost alternative, meaning a lower cost to the whole computer: either businesses purchasing computers with Linux pre-installed, or consumers purchasing computers like the Lindows boxes Walmart is offering.

To the same extent those Lindows boxes succeed, you will see more games come out for them.

I think the last is most interesting: now, there’s truly a computer for, to put it bluntly, the blue collar class to buy in large numbers because it’s genuinely cheap. And what I suspect will happen is what happens with cars: the computers won’t work well, so poor kids will learn to make them work beyond all reason, just like they keep junker cars running. A large number of the coming generation will grow up with a much better working knowledge of computers than their peers from more prosperous economic classes, and they’ll become a computerized blue collar class. Just as the mechanic fixing your beemer probably didn’t go to college, I suspect that in twenty years the I.S. departments and help lines will be full of people with high school diplomas.

40

Make something “Idiot Proof” then you create a bigger idiot.
Microsoft is the most widely used software so a bigger impact would be made by attacking Microsoft. Why do you think the twin towers in New York was attack.