Look at :
http://grc.com/dos/winxp.htm
Idea : create an Outlook "attachment" to automatically post this URL all
around the world. It would be so funny to bash Microsoft with their own
bugs... Hum, let me do my Olrik laugh : "Muahahahaha!!" :>
Seriously, I would say that Linux particularly lacks :
- integration (ONE default desktop, ONE default X toolkit, and
obviously zero major bug under X). UNIX exploded for which reason?
- first class games under the GNU GPL.
Advertisement is not so important nowadays, thanks to the Internet. What
really pushed Windows95 is not its new GUI or its "features", but
because editors released games "Designed for Windows 95". Linux will not
overtake Windows before there are great games for *free* (and Free). The
best strategy is definitely not to fight against Microsoft (for the
reasons you mentionned), but to define standards for the GUI, and to
have great games. I want to help for the second issue (that's the reason
I'm learning OpenGL!).
Go SDL, go!
PS : For those of you (any?) who would like to give XP a try, take a
close look at the site above. This is frightening.
Mathieu Bois wrote:
> Hi,
>
>
>>schedule for Windows XP is to release at the end of
>>August.
>>
>
> Microsoft has never been able to fulfill the schedules. And anyway XP is a
>very very bad thing, because of all the new licensing and privacy issues, all the
>good press should have told that already, no?
> ***BUT*** it's expected that MS will spend much more money in marketing than
>it never spent until now for releasing one of its products. So XP will be everywhere
>and people may run to the shops to buy it... :-(
>
> Linux companies shouldn't waste their money in doing so much marketing yet,
>because anyway if they want to compete with MS on this point, they will lose and
>close down, and (most linux users will not agree here... I'm a linux user since Oct.
>1995, I love Linux, but I know MS products and I've a wide experience of MS users)
>this could do Linux a disservice because MS users who will try to switch will realize
>that:
> - Linux doesn't have a good competitor to MSOffice. I know about
>StarOffice/OpenOffice, but they are still under big development and imports are
>missing file formats and don't work perfectly yet. Regarding Wordperfect, it is a
>good office suite, but since it uses wine it is definitely too slow and takes too
>much ressources.
> - Linux doesn't have a competitor to Internet Explorer yet (Konqueror
>is on his very very good way, especially in its KDE2.2beta1 release, but is still a
>little buggy [in the beta release] and doesn't handle perfectly JS, and cannot
>already [but very sonn] support Active X plugins) Not having a good, quick,powerfull,
>and quite light web browser has become a big handicap for Linux [but Konqueror will
>soon win !!!]
> - most (all? ;-) distributions are buggy, especially Mandrake (sorry,
>but it's true... 7.2 was quite reliable, but 8.0 is not reliable and Mandrake Freq is
>less reliable as 8.0... I don't speak about 6.x where it was impossible to kill
>processes until a patch was issued). And when I say buggy, it is really a bug that
>appears during the installation, or at first use, or on very often used programs.
>
> Once these 3 points, and especially the 2 first ones have not been improved,
>MS users won't switch to Linux.
>
> Now, once that it is solved and once that XP has been annoying so much people
>and especially companies because of licencing and privacy problems, it will be THE
>RIGHT TIME to attack on the mass media !!!
>
>
>>Since Mandrake one of the best alternatives to MS
>>
>
> Definitely true, but not yet sufficient.
>
>
>>products we need to get something out the door to
>>trump Microsoft's release.
>>
>
> Linux companies don't have enough money to do that. Remember of Corel
>which has tried to promote a distrib for desktop users: where are they now ? Just
>developping .Net products for MS which gave them money because they had lost so much
>money, partly in Linux dvpt, because the mass-market is not yet there, because MS is
>still much more enticing and much more usable (during one month or one year onyl, but
>afterwards people think it is their fault if it doesn't work because they have
>installed so much crap from magazines's cdroms and so on, so they don't blame MS and
>either install again from a CD that formats everything and installs a new clean
>system, and/or buy the latest MS "OS" and why not a new PC...). Dell is currently
>stopping delivering Linux for end-users PC for the same reasons.
>
> Anyway I'm just stating here my point of view, I don't claim I have got the
>Truth... So maybe it's the right time to attack, who knows? ;-)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Mathieu
>
