Dear friends:
I would like to add my two cents' worth to this matter of applications.
[Preliminary Note: I love Linux and especially Mandrake and have been
supporting it by purchasing its official versions since version LM 6.1
and continue to do so (in spite of Macmillain's recent LM 72/Wallmart
fiasco, which I consider a serious setback to Mandrake's professional
standards and especially reputation among newbies for whom it is meant.
Let's hope Mandrake/Macmillain never pass off a Beta as an official
version again.]
Now to the subject at hand:
Two years ago I abandoned Windows 95 for good and installed Linux Red
Hat 5.2. That was followed by Linux-Mandrake, which I have been using
ever since. I was originally hoping to never again so much as look at
Windows, and for the first year I was happily and blissfully free of it.
But then, for professional reasons (broadcasts on Windows Media Player
and Quicktime), I had no choice but to reinstall Win98 SE as part of a
dual-boot system. I added an extra hard drive for Windows and this makes
it much easier to keep the two OS's separate (using Lilo to switch back
and forth -- thank God for Lilo!). I thought that would pretty much do
it. But then a funny thing happened: we decided to invest a little money
in the stock market, and to help my wife with her research, I decided to
look for stock market analysis and research software programs. Well, I
found nothing on Linux, so I decided to to go ZDNET's software library
and see what Windows had to offer. I was astounded to discovere HUNDREDS
upon HUNDREDS of financial programs of every sort, dozens upon dozens
specializing in one aspect of stock market trading or another. I was
overwhelmed, tried out a dozen or so and settle on what I thought were
the best: SpeedResearch Browser (SRBrowse), EZStock and StockAnalyzer.
Two of the three are also free (as in beer) and the third costs only
$35.
So, now I am more attached to Windows than ever and I don't like it one
bit. Win98 SE may be better and more stable than Win95 (which was a
nightmare) but, still, it's the same old unreliable, unstable Windows
that crashes at the most inopportune times, crashing the OS along with
any "misbehaving" application. Furthermore, Windows's multitasking is a
joke. It can barely handle two or three applications at a time before
crashing. I use it only when I have to, but, as you can see, I need it
more and more.
Bottom line: Until Linux, which is rich in thousands of applications,
has an equally vast and varied collection of CONSUMER applications of
every sort, it won't quite be ready for prime time. And this won't
happen till Linux is much more popular. The old chicken and egg problem:
no consumer applications until there is a consumer market for Linux big
enough to justify it, and no consumer market until there are
applications.
Meanwhile, Linux as an OS, with its great and beautiful and configurable
new graphical KDE and Gnome desktops (and even xfce and other
light-weight desktop for those with low-memory) and its thousands upon
thousands of applications (some for consumers, mostly for professionals)
and its reliablity, strength, superb multi-tasking, kernel 2.4 (around
the corner), wealth of browsers (yes -- Netscape 4.75, Netscape 6 --
when it is fully operational, KDE's Konqueror and, most importantly,
Mozilla (now at M18 and moving ahead fast), is catching up with (has
already caught up with?) Windows and Apple. I would guess that the most
important of all browsers is Mozilla because, when it is completed this
spring, it will spawn dozens of branded versions, which, while building
on Mozilla, will add special features of their own. In other words,
Internet Explorer will find itself faced not with one derivated, namely,
Netscape 6 but with dozens of equally powerful (and superior) browsers
all built on the open-source Mozilla. This will be good for the
consumers acorss all platforms and a last laugh at Microsoft with a
vengeance. There is already one major spinoff of Mozilla called Beonex.
It's still not quite ready, either. But by the end of the coming year,
IE will find itself outgunned on every front by the Mozilla browsers
(under a variety of brands) which they themselves caused by forcing
Netscape to go open-source. It will be sweet revenge on Microsoft.
Benjamin
P. S.
There are other critical problems as well such as winmodems (I use ADSL
along with a USRobotics 56k as a backup, but, apparently, most PC's now
come up with winmodems. Fortunately, many people are now switching to
broadband (Cable, ADSL, Wireless) and this will eventually solve this
problem. But, I imagine that the problems having to with winmodems (only
minimally solved by Linmodems, according to my readings) will remain a
major hurdle. Most ordinary people don't like to have to open up the
innards of their PC, remove their winmodem and install a regular
faxmodem, nor do they like paying someone to have it done (unless it
comes with their system in the first place). Whichever distro can solve
this problem will win a major battle for Linux among consumers.
