On 03/03/2010 10:32 AM, Derek J. Balling wrote:
On Mar 3, 2010, at 10:17 AM, Mark Wallace wrote:
They are developing other products because I think that
they see that eventually Linux will pass both of their operating systems
and become the dominant desktop.
I'm sorry, I've been hearing the siren song of "Linux will be the killer desktop
real soon now" for over a decade, and it's no closer to happening today than it was
then, IMHO.
Sure, for geeks it might be fine, and for very limited-use scenarios such as
"browsing only", it might be fine. But at the end of the day, users want to
play games, download tracks from iTunes, etc., etc., and that's just nowhere near being
the case in the foreseeable future.
The desktop exists to do "what the user wants to do", not "to mold the user's
actions into something the computer can do". And that's really not the model any Linux desktop
environment (that I've seen) has actually ever operated.
My thought regarding Linux vs Windows is that I really don't care what
others decide to do, just so long as their decisions don't prevent me
from doing what *I* want. If the majority of the lemmings want to run
Windows, vote for the Demopublicans/Republicrats, watch American Idle,
etc, then that's their choice, questionable or not. But their choices
had *better* not be preventing me from making mine. That's the problem
I have with Windows bundling, closed-minded dependencies on MSIE &
MSoffice, etc.
Linux works great for me. Far better than Windows ever has. If Windows
works for someone else (especially if they have explicit need for a
Windows-only app), then go for it. But just as I respect their choice,
they had best be respecting mine.
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