Googling around to try and educate myself about this Windows 7 thing, I'm running into a lot of claims that Windows 7 will kill Linux on the Desktop. Based on what exactly?
I'll admit that Linux has difficulty supporting certain software. Maybe GCC isn't the most optimal compiler in the world. Perhaps package dependencies have gotten out of control in some Linux distributions. And yes, certain distros like CentOS are especially limited because they don't support the latest OpenGL release nor is there an obvious way to upgrade OpenGL because of dependency hell. Still, I have Rick Rocket and Dirk Dashing and there is a lot that even CentOS can support if you add Vmware workstation and Crossover Linux to it. I'd love to get Secret Maryo Chronicles working on CentOS 5.2, but that requires updating OpenGL which I can't figure out how to do. It's not just CentOS that is limited these days. There are hundreds of Linux distros in existence and the Eee PC by Asus uses Xandros which is out of the box using an old version of firefox. I am glad that companies like http://mygamecompany.com are challenging the notion that noone produces commercial software for Linux. Still, there is a great deal of room for improvement. I'm not sure I buy the notion that we are all going to give up our Linux systems for Windows 7. First off, I doubt that Microsoft will abandon the annoying and abusive habit of requiring it's customers to activate their Microsoft software. A product key isn't enough anymore. I doubt that Windows 7 will be free of digital rights management. I seriously doubt that it will run on a 32 bit single core computer. I'll be surprised if it is significantly faster than Vista. If ReactOS ever becomes stable, and it seems to be moving in that direction, I'll be surprised if people even feel a need anymore to buy Microsoft's latest version of Windows. I'm sure Windows 7 won't cost $400 for a single user license. Oh I'm sorry, that was sarcastic. I wonder what other people's thoughts are. _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
