Doug McGarrett wrote:
On Sunday 20 January 2008 06:06, Philippe Landau wrote:
Dave Barton wrote:
From: Philippe Landau <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
You are tenacious, Dave, great :-)
Some may say tenacious, others would say that I am too stupid to know
when to give up. ;)
You wanted to but were kind enough to honour the efforts of list members
:-)
Still no joy with Lilo ?
Did give LiLo a shot, but the situation is even worse. On boot I get
half a screen full of 01s and then total lockup, requiring a hardware
reset. Thanks for trying to help, but I am sad to say Microsoft has won
this box.
Did anyone ever attempt to make a systematic survey
of reasons why Linux remains such a small player ?
Of course corruption on a massive scale is involved
in selling Windows to governments and corporations.
But why is the percentage of surfers using Linux so small ?
Is it mainly because of the games or are the shortcomings
of Linux an important factor and which ones most ?
Kind regards Philippe
From my own point of view, the lack of support for peripherals is one of
the biggest problems for Linux. Yes, I know that the source codes are
not available, and I'm not a real programmer myself, but some of this
stuff could be reverse-engineered, rather than every six months a new
version of the OS, full of bugs. Fix some version of Linux, then concentrate
on getting things to work with it. When you can plug in almost any
name-brand printer, almost any USB camera, drive, memory card, etc.,
That's the current state right now, Canon printers being the
primary exclusion (they refuse to release technical data to
allow the development of proper code to get full utilization
of their printers.
My solution -- I buy equipment from everyone except Canon
(my digital camera is an exception, because it DOES work
with Linux through the USB port, and I have a significant
investement in lenses with my Canon EOS 10 film camera)
then concentrate on getting unique Windows programs to work flawlessly
by emulation--I think of AutoCad, GW Basic, Borland Pascal, Corel Draw,
and so on (maybe some do already, but it's easier to just go to Windows
to run them)
With AutoCad, the better approach is to get them to port
to Linux. Much of the CAD industry, which used to be
almost exclusively on proprietary Unix platforms (and
optionally on Windows) has been ported to Linux.
If all of the niche applications which support 3 or 4
kinds of Unix, and Windows can also support Linux, then
it shouldn't be a problem for AutoCad to port to Linux.
Of course, this is difficult to do as individuals, but
small to medium-sized IT departments can. You tell the
AutoCad rep that the company's strategic direction is
to move from Winows XP to Linux, and that if they want
to continue selling, they have to keep up. IF not,
you're going to be buying SDRC Ideas, or some other
product that fits into your company's plans to NOT
migrate to Vista.
The threat of permanent loss of sales is an excellant
motivator to these sorts of companies.
>--then I think Linux has a much better chance to catch on.
While Linux seems to be pointed at the business world, which has, in
general, a rather narrow batch of program types--word processing,
spread sheets, and slide illustrations, and can pretty much do that, it
needs to become more friendly to the home user, who would certainly
prefer not to have to pay off M/S every year or so, as is becoming
obviously their way of life. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."--Ann Landers.
And, of course, games. I'm not a gamer. I play solitaire sometimes,
but that's about it. But games would get a _big_ play (no pun intended)
if there were a lot for Linux.
Sales of "consumer" software for the IBM PC didn't come around
until there was a significant installed base on business-world
desktops -- because that caused a significant amount of sales
of PC clones for home use.
Once Linux captures a significant share of business desktops,
the share of home usage will start to expand significantly,
and at that point, THEN you will see consumer-type software
being written and sold for Linux.
One problem I see: Linux is sorta free--if you don't want a lot of the good
stuff*--but to get the freebie, you have to have a computer running an OS.
It seems to be getting more expensive and complicated to get an OS on
disk, so the idea of getting a version that does everything on an intallable
disk set, with a manual, and is as bug-free as possible for a reasonable
price, that I can buy, preferably at Borders, that will last for years, is
something I would really appreciate.
*SuSE/Novell has already cut out a lot of the good stuff that used to come
with the OS. Free or paid. For SHAME! (It would seem to me that an
entrepenour who sold the "good stuff" on a disk compatible with SuSE
could make a buck at it. Except that the damned dependencies seem to
change with every version.)
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
