Two things I have never understood:
If people hate Microsoft products so much, why don’t they use something else (DOS, Unix, Apple, etc.)?
How can the DoJ call Microsoft a monopoly (i.e., “one and only one supplier”) when there are competitors for every bloody product Microsoft puts out?
(Libertarian Rant: Question Number Two is an example of the pot calling the kettle black, actually, since the Federal Guvmint doesn’t allow any competitors to themselves!)
Many of us do - however, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, free unixes aren’t ready for EU desktops (debatable, of course)
If Blizzard bloody well ported to linux, I wouldn’t run windows at all.
What percentage of PCs sold do NOT ship with some version of windows installed on it? How many of THOSE machines don’t have IE on them? That’s not a monopoly?
No, of course that’s not a monopoly. That’s suppliers responding to customer demand. SOME PCs ship without Windows. If that’s what you want, you can get it. But purchasers overwhelmingly choose the ones that ship with it. And you’re free to scrub it clean and load it up with a non-MS OS and non-MS applications if you like, there are plenty out there.
What’s more, there is a long running company that ships personal computers without a scrap of MS software on them; it’s called Apple, and it’s still alive, offering all of the same functionality (some would say more).
That might be OK if you are willing to run crying into the arms of yet another Big Corporation, but how about ditching that entirely? How about using an OS with genuine ground-up support, with active maintiners around the globe, using nearly every hardware configuration known to man?
How about buying a fully modern, fully upgradeable (and incrementally upgradeable without breaking), OS for $50?
How about Linux?
The Penguin: Microsoft’s worst nightmare. 
How about getting LINUX for free? I only just found out today that you can download Red Hat LINUX for no charge from their website. No manuals or support, but who needs that wussy stuff!
A man who dual-boots XP pro with Mandrake speaks…
No. It simply isn’t. If and when OpenOffice/StarOffice produce a decent, interoperable product, it might become slightly more of a worry. If a decent windowing environment emerges for it (please, hurry up with Berlin, people), it might. But let’s face it; in the foreseeable future, Linux stands absolutely no chance of taking desktop market share from Windows. At a guess I would say I am easily in the top 5% of the people I know as regards computer literacy. It took me approximately 8 attempts to get a stable, working build of Linux on my machine. Do you really think the average two-finger typist is going to do that? They’re the ones who’ve made Bill rich, y’know.
Linux is ugly (don’t talk to me about ttfs). It is a pain in the bloody arse unless you are a guru of high order and have shitloads of time to spend tinkering with it. X is an abomination of bloat in excess of even Redmond’s achievements. Inexperienced users are far more likely to kill their computer stone dead under linux than under windows. You can’t play games with it. You sacrifice performance in your windowing environment. Hey! I just recompiled the kernel and I can play DVDs! Whoop-de-fucking do. Linux is a server and development tool. It is a lovely one. I like it a lot, for that purpose. A desktop user OS it is not.
I am absolutely no fan of MS. I am of the firm opinion that Win Me was the closest thing to a virus that has ever been released, and paid for by consumers. But I have to hand it to them; XP is nice. It’s pretty. It’s skinnable (with a brief hack). The fonts, as has been pointed out, look gorgeous. It runs perfectly on my PIII 500 with 256 megs of RAM. It has never crashed on me. The suspend utility is fantastic. It boots in mere seconds. It loads apps beautifully quickly, due to some really clever pre-fetch algorithms. It is a Good Product. I can’t speak for IE, since I switched to Opera a while ago and have never looked back. I am prepared to believe that IE still sucks. Get Opera, folks. It costs twelve bucks if you’re a student, and once you’ve tried MDI browsing, you can’t go back
Yes, it is a monopoly when Microsoft threaten the OEMs with withholding Windows from them unless they pay for a licence for every box they ship, regardless of whether windows is on it or not. It is a monopoly if they commingle their other products with the one they’re forcing you to buy. I hate to break it to you, but MS have been found guilty in a court of law of monopolistic practices. And just why in the hell should someone who wants an alternative OS have to pay for Windows just to erase it, hmm? I think you need to go and check a) what constitutes a monopolistic practice and b) what MS actually do. They most certainly do not just sit back and let market action do their work for them.
And I should point out that I’ve only found one option in XP that actually said “Let Windows decide what’s best for my computer.”
It occurs to me that most people having trouble with constant crashes in WinXp either have some seriously messed up hardware, or something else is the problem. People automatically blame the OS if something starts being unstable. In W98, I agree, most were due to the OS. Constant crashes in a program can be caused by a lot of things…flaky components (if you have a cheap, bargain bin PC), excess heat (no cooling fans), and more stuff.
FWIW, been running XP Pro for 10 months now (including RC1 and RC2) and I go weeks between reboots…that’s on a P2-350 for 5 months and an AthlonXP 1800+ machine for 5 months.
Dead Badger pretty much nailed it. Linux is a great thing, but would you give your grandmother a copy of redhat and just let her go to town? Nope. XP is extremely stable, its fast, and reasonably compatible with older stuff. Like any other OS that has to run on a hardware platform that the developer has no control (Apple has the advantage of building the systems thier OS runs on), it will crash on some systems. I have found that BIOS upgrades solve 90% of the problems. I do sorta look forward to the day when Linux matures enough that it is a viable option of the general public. Then again, I don’t, because Mircrosofts flakeyness has paid for my house.
Whoop, sorry. Meaning was lost in editing. I was trying to get at “Sure, it’s not the most stable OS, but it’s the most stable Windows OS”.
In any case, if I were you, I’d have the rest of the hardware in that laptop checked out before you start screaming for Mr. Gate’s head on a pike. I wonder how many people have sworn off Windows due to a damaged jumper on their motherboard…
This claim is without merit now that it’s been revealed (through trial evidence) that Microsoft constantly engages in purchasing contracts, bundling agreements, and punishment pricing which force PC OEMs to install Windows on the vast majority of their computers, regardless of what customer demand dictates.
It’s getting closer…
The computer I use at home is a mere Celeron 466 with 256 mB. Since I upgraded to Win XP Professional when it was released, this computer has never crashed. Boots quicker and runs programs faster than it did under Win 98. No complaints from this customer.
Oh, can someone explain the Opera advantage to me? Popular wisdom seems to hold that this browser is superior to Internet Explorer. I tried it about a year ago and while the mouse action shortcuts were way cool, I couldn’t see what the hype was. I stopped using it after a few days, prefering the speed at which Iexplorer loaded.
Illuminate me, please. (Asked in the spirit of curiosity, not belligerence.)
Well, that sounds just dandy. Why, exactly, would I want a Linux environment running windows executables? It will unavoidably be slower than the real thing, no matter how well programmed, and will suffer from exacerbated stability problems. While no doubt a well-meaning effort, this is not the way to go about things. Lindows.com will be forever playing catchup on compatibility, and will forever be a step behind. It won’t be as pretty, again no fault of the programmers - they are limited by X. The CEO of Lindows.com talks about getting 5% market share; he must be mad! What is the incentive for a windows user to change to something which will inevitably be inferior at the task they require, i.e. running windows programs? I just can’t see a natural constituency for this product. Linux gurus will be dissatisfied with the kow-towing to MS, and Windows natives will just see an inferior version of windows. Those who want both, e.g. me, will likely be dissatisfied with both aspects, and just dual-boot. It ain’t that hard, really. I will, of course, be happy to be proven wrong on seeing an eventual release of Lindows, but I strongly suspect this will not be the case.
I see this as a fundamental problem in the way the Linux community approaches the problem of making Linux more accessible. Emulation simply can not win you market share. You will never get a product as polished as the original. Users want interoperability, they don’t necessarily want exactly the same thing. Granted, the major obstacle to this interoperability is MS, and they’re not about to help anyone make Word document import/export filters. But this doesn’t mean it’s impossible. What would be nice would be if as part of any DoJ remedy, MS were forced to make all their file format standards open. It wouldn’t exactly be open source, but it might allow some competitors to get a foot back in the door.
Oh, and Opera. I presume if this was a year ago, you were using 5.0, which I never saw. I’m on version 6, and can’t get enough of it. Firstly, the multi-document interface is extremely addictive, and easier to use than XP’s taskbar grouping, IMO. Like you say, the mouse gestures are cool, but I’m guessing none of this is news to you. I haven’t found many sites it won’t display properly (assuming you get it to lie about what it is to browser-checking websites), and those that it won’t are generally horribly coded piles of poo in any case (www.nme.com is a good example).
I think what made me try it in the first place was a combination of privacy and security issues. It’s not IE, so while it may have security holes, exploits are much less likely to appear. And I can filter cookies on a per-server basis, which appealed at the time. But it’s the UI that made me keep and pay for it. It’s all the little things (search toolbar, zoom, style management…). But I guess if you’ve tried it and weren’t all that impressed, I’m not going to change your mind. FWIW, I think the speed of Opera 6 is if anything better than IE6, but this is purely based on qualitative opinion, not any tests I’ve made.
You know, I hate this argument.
No, I wouldn’t give my grandmother a copy of RedHat. I wouldn’t give her a copy of XP, either, because either way, I’d be on the phone with her talking her through mouse clicks. Even on OSX, she’d be helpless.
The minor differences in usability and appearance between those three are irrelevant compared to the skills and the previous experiences of the user, and their willingness to figure things out. Windows users who switch to Macs find a plethora of irritating, apparently irrational details; likewise Mac to Windows or to Linux, or Linux to either.
All the manuals that you would get in the pretty box for $50 are easily obtained on Red Hat’s website for free as web pages or as downloads.
Actually, it could have been less than a year ago. I think it I tried Opera just when version 6 was released.
Multi-document interface? Is that like having several browser windows open (I vaguely recall Opera grouping them all, taskbar-style, at the bottom of the screen.) I didn’t think this was very different to the Windows format (with that silly taskbar grouping on Win XP deactivated).
Bought XP yesterday. Installed fine and so far, I like it. I changed the settings to “best performance” so it looks more like the classical windows interface (which I like). So far, so good. The only driver I installed was the newest detonator for my GF3. Everything else installed just fine from square one. I’ll start installing my software today and see if I run into any problems.
Yeah, I just found that out too. I’m installing Red Hat Linux on a machine at work, and I’m think I’ll put it on my home PC once my new PC I ordered today comes, so I can play with both Windows and Linux. Amazing stuff, for free!
Hey, I never said Microsoft isn’t breaking the law; they may well be. I just said that they are not a monopoly. Remember high school economics? Monopoly = mono = one and only one source. You know, like the phone company used to be (as in “We don’t care. We don’t have to!”)
Since there are many alternate sources (named in above posts) which many people seem to have problems with (described in above posts) it seems that MS’s huge market share is (at least partly) due to the fact that they suck less than everyone else. If you have a choice, it ain’t a monopoly. I’m sorry if people prefer a different definition, but that doesn’t change what the word means…TRM
p.s. - for the record, I use XP and like it. But I refuse to use IE or Outlook; I use Netscape and Eudora. Choices!!