If there were some way that Microsoft could release win98 to the FOSS
world, without providing undue competition with their own marketing,
that'd be a major help for the millions of "normal" users, who just need
to get online for common web/email uses.... where the upgrade costs
surrounding Vista compete with numerous MONTHS of grocery bills. :((
I think Vista is overpriced by a factor of TEN. Even upgrading to XP,
for the average low- to mid-level income citizen is a hardship. Too
many winME installs still thrashing about, out there in the world...
I'm just identifying the pains of the masses here, for the business
world I think the costs are fairly nominal, although of course they'd
get FAR more bang for their buck by going with a FOSS-backended
architecture. If Intuit would only release a QuickBooks for Linux,
either an enterprise version for Linux or even their base product line
in such a way as to be COMPATIBLE with Samba. I have a client
for whom Samba was working as their QuickBooks share for years,
and recently things broke down and got bad, I haven't been able yet,
to figure out whether the particular instance of Samba is having troubles
or whether they've actually made their dependency more clear (in terms
of interoperability failures). Yuck, not stuff I want to deal with, but it
certainly drives the business world, and so many companies don't need
much more than a well-firewalled workplace WAN-connected LAN, with
QuickBooks or something similar. Yes, "something similar" could begin
to take over, but without easy training videos and course at LCC to
train on those similar, possibly FOSS systems, it just won't fly.
It might be known that I have become an OS X supporter... and I think
that computing platform has done more to offer users a good starting
place to switch, now with parallels, boot camp, etc... hopefully Xen or
similar (vmware?) will allow those last necessary windows components
of an organization's architecture to be hosted without dedicated hardware.
When I was at Lunar Logic, we had a handful of winders boxen on & around the
rack, which was otherwise almost 100% debian, the sysadmin team dreaded
it and was hoping to put them all in virtual containers IIRC. Ideally, into
the
circular file [ie, wastebasket] :) They did their job, though, although
at times
they took an inordinate amount of maintenance and tweaks for interop....
much like any ego-maniacal coworkers that need to feel like they run the
place.
("yes, whatever you say; yes, you are so right... we've adapted systems as
per your [PHB] assertions...")
</rant>
lol
ben
On 2/12/07, Ben Barrett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Agreed. At least they tend not to be on all the time.... sigh.
Chalk 1 up for organized crime, I suppose. It is fairly expensive,
in both money and time, for the average citizen user to avoid.
ben
On 2/12/07, Michael Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> I would be interested to see what type of network traffic over there
> Ethernet / cable modem / DSL line. Can we say BOTNET participants.
>
> On 2/12/07, Ben Barrett <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote:
> > With enough money, we can pimp your Ford Model T:
> > 1) any color you like (not even just black!)
> > 2) highway-safe by modern DOT standards
> > 3) run on corn/rice/electricity/squeeze-cheese/etc
> > 4) with dual DVD, PS3/Xbox360, GPS, etc
> > 5) remote crank-start, either by embedding a monkey or via fancy
> electronic
> > motors
> > ...and so forth.... no offense intended, just a few comical ideas that
> came
> > to mind.
> >
> > I keep hearing from family and acquaintances about how happy they
> still are
> > with their
> > win98 boxen... ug, how do I explain the badness there, since it
> "works" for
> > them??
> >
> >
> > ben
> >
> >
> >
> > On 2/12/07, Michael Miller < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > That would be my guess as well. There is just a point where you
> tell
> > > client [with money] NT 4.0 needs to be replaced by Win3k Server. Or
> > > what ever is running on NT 4.0 should be run on a Linux machine
> > > running wine.
> > >
> > > Just my $0.02.
> > >
> > > -Miller
> > >
> > > On 2/12/07, Ben Barrett < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > > My guess: the clients [with money] will tell you what "good
> business"
> > is.
> > > >
> > > > ben
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > On 2/12/07, Michael Miller < [EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote:
> > > > > NT 4.0? Why would your company support a OS that is no longer
> > > > > supported? That is just asking for trouble.
> > > > >
> > > > > On 2/11/07, Russ Johnson < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > > > > Mr O wrote:
> > > > > > > the major operating systems (linux, OS X.3,4,5, M$ 2000, XP,
> > Vista).
> > > > > > Don't count just those.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > The software company I work for supports the following:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Windows NT 4.0 and up
> > > > > > Linux, Redhat and SuSE officially, but it runs on just about
> any
> > > > > > distribution we've tried.
> > > > > > Solaris 7.0 and up on Sparc, 10 on Intel.
> > > > > > HP-UX 11.0 and up on PA-Risc and Itanium
> > > > > > AIX 4.3 and up on PowerPC. AIX on S390 unofficially.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > We've also been known to make it work on FreeBSD, and OpenBSD.
>
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I believe some of the developers have it running on their
> MacBook
> > Pro
> > > > > > Core 2 Duo systems. But that's not official yet either.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > My point is that SOME software companies DO support lots of
> OSes.
> > > > > > Unfortunately, it's a very expensive proposition to port code
> from
> > one
> > > > > > platform to another, and businesses have to make a profit, or
> they
> > don't
> > > > > > hang around.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Don't give me the OSS argument. We tried that... Our product
> was
> > open
> > > > > > source at one time. It stagnated as an open source product, so
> it is
> > > > > > again proprietary.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Russ
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