Quick hit: see Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols’ opinion piece on the newly announced Dell plan to offer desktops/laptops with Ubuntu Linux pre0installed. He’s perhaps a little overly enthusiastic, but the point he makes has some merit:
Just as the arrival of Firefox forced Microsoft to improve Internet Explorer, the arrival of Linux on a mainstream desktop will force Microsoft to make significant, rather than cosmetic, improvements to its own operating systems.
Hmmmm… could be… If so, lucky we.
HA!
I’ll believe that when I see it. I’m not holding my breath. I just wish Google would merge with Apple and DESTROY the big M.
logipundit,
Unlikely, IMO. There are sound market-driven reasons, among others, why Apple still has only about 5% of the personal computing market. One reason among many that I’d not buy an Apple computer is that I can build one that’s got hardware just as good for much less, load it with PC-BSD and have the functional equivalent of an Intel Apple running BSD with the Apple straightjacket GUI slapped on top. What’s not to like? Heck, if I want the straightjacket, I can always install a desktop GUI to emulate a Mac, complete with an immovable dock bar on top.
But, each to his own. I use about four different versions of Windows, as many different distros of Linux and one PC-BSD distro and find them all usable–some more than others for different purposes. I have my gripes and bitches about Me$$y$oft software, but unless Vista poisons the well beyond recovery, I don’t see Me$$y$oft going belly up.
But pressure from alternative operating systems–including Mac OS for folks who absolutely, positively cannot use a computer without training wheels or are locked into a Mac-only software they NEED for production–might well compel Me$$y$oft to get off its duff and stop screwing around so much with their OSes.
Might.
One could hope, at least.
Meanwhile, I’m moving to Linux/BSD as much as I can.