Imagining life after Microsoft
The Web is abuzz the past few days with Microsoft layoffs, with a whiff of severe Microsoft vulnerability in the air. Microsoft's problems may well result from its dogmatic insistence that Vista isn't rubbish, as Gartner suggests, but that will provide small consolation to the 5,000 employees set to be laid off.
Just a momentary blip that Microsoft will soon right? Possibly, but have you checked the job boards recently? A quick Monster.com search reveals that more than 115 new Linux-related jobs have been posted since January 1. (Not that Windows jobs are in short supply.) Companies like Qualcomm have posted more than 100 Linux jobs in January alone, and I'm hearing similar numbers from other employers.
Unlike Windows, one of the most compelling aspects of Linux is the fungibility of Linux skills across employers. Linux is Linux is Linux, which means that my embedded Linux skills put to use for Sony, for example, could tomorrow be made effective for Cisco Systems' new Linux-based router, or for corporate IT's newest Red Hat or Suse Linux server.
That's power, and it's sapping Microsoft's strength. Still, I can't help but worry about life after Microsoft.
Who will be the software industry's new monopolist that we love to hate? Who will the open-source community revile? Who will become the new shorthand for all that is wrong (and much that is right) in software?
Google? Maybe. Its increasing power and sometimes slippery hold on its "don't be evil" mantra could make it the big player everyone bands against. Cisco? Powerful but still a bit bland. IBM? Nah. It had its chance decades ago and is content to mint billions of dollars without dominating the industry.
I like to compete against Microsoft. It's a tough competitor. I would miss it. I don't want Microsoft to "go softly into that good night, but rather to rage, rage against the dying of the light."
Microsoft has helped reset customer expectations about quality and cost of software. Now Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer suggests that the economy is foiling its profitability as "the economy (resets) to a lower level of business and consumer spending."
Could it be that the world is resetting to life after Microsoft?
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
Matt doesn't use Linux, he is a OSX fanboy.
The one thing I am not going to miss are idiotic MS fanboys like you.
My skills with Windows have come in very handy. I've helped 8 friends figure out how to defrag their hard drive, how to run an antivirus and which antivirus to pick, how to clean their cache and even how to fix their registry over and over again. My skills with Linux have kind of gone to waste. I mean, once someone learns the OS, they figure out everything really quickly and then I'm left with nothing to do. Maybe I shouldn't be talking so many people into giving it a chance by just using the LiveCD I recieved free of charge from Ubuntu. Damn that user friendliness.
While Microsoft's eventual decline in market power is a sure thing, but it's nothing like what this writer is suggesting.
Give me any distro, and I can install and run anything I want. Including changing kernel on a whim.
KDE and Gnome are both standardized as well. Neither are difficult to set and use, and even write for
From an ssh session, it is difficult enough to tell Red Hat 7.1 from RedHat Enterprise Linux 5.0 that I have worked to solve problems not even realizing the difference in OS versions much less the years difference (7.x Red hat was released in 2000, while RHEL 5 was released last year (I believe). The same is true for any version of Linux more or less, regardless of what it is scaled to.
Does this mean that Linux is better than windows? No.. not really... they both have their place in the world in my opinion. For the most part, your basic user applications and your "business class" things people expect (such as email and exchange integration) are easier in windows.
Does this mean that in my opinion some one with prior linux experience is more versatile and adaptable to any linux box they touch versus windows and windows experience? Yes, it does.
These are just my experiences and my opinion... lord knows Cnet users will have plenty of their own opinions to throw at this.
Users don't (or rather, shouldn't) care about the OS, they should be all about the application. As long as the application works, they're happy. Give them a a browser-agnostic web-based accounting program and OpenOffice.org, and the typical accountant will be able to do his/her job just as effectively on Linux as on Windows.
What is more "ridicules"(sic)? His opinion, or you inability to understand that this is not a news piece.
At least you are keeping the idiotic MS fanboy tradition alive.
I am no more idiotic than you keeping the Linux idiotic loser tradition alive. I have abandoned Linux in 1992 and again in 2000. It was more bloated than windows XP giving the same functionality and still not common people ready. In 1992, I had to write the display driver to get it to display graphics. In 2000, I had to get enough spare hard drive space to load. Just get back to us when Linux is the market leader. Or at least open your eyes and try to see why other peoples chose MS over Linux or even the Mac for that matter; and also ask yourself why Linux still can't topple MS? People don?t use Linux even it?s free. Why? And what are you going to do about it other than accusing people choosing what they like?
Reason 1, FUD. The average PC user reads FUD as fact.
Reason 2, price. Contrary to your opinion that the reason most people choose Linux is the price, it's actually not true. There have been scientific studies done proving that people believe the more you pay for something, the better it is. MS costs more than OS X, but the price is hidden. Apple computers appear to cost more and the consumer market has proven that when a person can choose any computer brand to buy, regardless of price, they will choose Apple.
Reason 3, MS fanboys. In other words, if you are an MS fanboy, you won't try any other OS, regardless of abilities, ease of use or how much better that OS is in any way.
Reason 4, judging by an old distro. Do you realize, if the only Windows I had ever tried were 3.1, I wouldn't know Windows had gotten any better? If I judged Windows on such an old version, what do you think I'd think about it when comparing it to OS X?
Linux is more user friendly than Windows. It's currently got better driver support. It's easier to customize. It's quicker than XP on my system and most certainly would be quicker than Vista. It's able to do more with less hardware, not just be faster, but be faster and more impressive at the same time. It's easier to set up my wireless account, requiring only that I log in the first time. It doesn't require me to defrag my hard drive, ever.
Unfortunately, FUD like yours is what most people read.
Single standards are great, it's a shame MS won't join everyone else in the world on that one and insist on it being their way or the highway.
I'm sure many Linux coders would love to work on improving Windows but reverse engineering is a dark art that few can master; it's easier to just write a new O/S without such restrictions.
PS. You have seen IE's market share lately, right? You could get up a good speed in a go-kart on that kind of downward gradient.
Please, you speak of FUD spoken by "MS Fanboys" yet have you ever looked objectively at the FUD used by the "Linux Fanboys" such as yourself? There is nothing more hypocyrtical then someone saying "Linux is more user friendly than Windows". "User Friendly" is a subjective ideal and some random Linux fanboy making that statement certainly doesn't make it a fact. Half the time you can't even make up your minds and stay consistent with the UI. People who have a almost fanatical following to a operating system are not the most subjective people to determine whether anything is in fact "User Friendly".
I'd tell you, but we're all supposed to back off and give the man his privacy these days.
Apple and Red Hat, of course.
I can't believe how much of a rip-off RHEL is, and how my bovine Fortune 1000 employer is happy to pay for it instead of simply getting CentOS (or better yet, Solaris).
Apple, they one-upped Microsoft software lockin by adding a hardware lockin to the equation.
- by ctfoley January 24, 2009 12:49 PM PST
- the one linux people are gonna gripe about will be a commercial, user-friendly linux that people actually USE. it will be dissed for being too popular, too commercial, and too dumbed-down. and linux people will continue to feel superior for using a command line instead of a gui.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
-
- by odubtaig January 24, 2009 4:55 PM PST
- If that's the case, who's going to produce this distro? Not Linux people? Is that a hole in your argument bigger than the Suez Canal? Looks like.
- Like this
-
(29 Comments)ctfoley: making Windows fanboys look dumber with every keystroke.