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Distribution: LMDE/Peppermint/Mint 9,&10/along with a few others
Posts: 152
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SilverBack
To be honest I worked with M$ and believe me the kind of crap we tell customers why some software does not work as expected or why is windows slow or why windows is superior to every other OS makes my concience scream at me. No matter what anyone says this is what I have concluded - M$ makes money *nixes makes technology. I do not think anyone here can dispute the statement.
I have to agree with this after all I went into the local computer shop to see about a new desktop all they wanted to sell me on was a windoze system ( I got them really messed up when I told them NO WINDOZE I wanted to put CrunchBang on it!). Needless to say they lost a sale there by them trying to sell that other money pit. Today I'm using my Hackintosh Dell Inspiron 1525 Snow Leopard. I just love messing around with computers.
Last edited by tiredofbilkyyaforallican; 04-28-2011 at 08:58 PM.
To be honest I worked with M$ and believe me the kind of crap we tell customers why some software does not work as expected or why is windows slow or why windows is superior to every other OS makes my concience scream at me. No matter what anyone says this is what I have concluded - M$ makes money *nixes makes technology. I do not think anyone here can dispute the statement.
SilverBack, please tell us more. I hold your same view. MS is more of a pure profit-motivated business than a love-for-technology business. They could probably run a bank just as well... if not better. Anyway, please tell us more about what you did and some of the MS scams.
..sometimes i wonder what would happen if Windows wouldn't exist - would Linux be born then? It was kinda born because someone wanted something else from windows..
Not really. The vast majority of GNU/Linux in its original usable form was in fact GNU. Linux was just the Kernel. Richard Stallman and associates did the work they did because of a philosophical issue with proprietary software in general and wrote an open version of Unix because its what they knew. The one part of GNU that wasn't rewritten was the kernel at which point along came Linux to plug the gap.
Linus wrote Linux as an open version of Minix, an OS study tool that was kept proprietary by its creator. From what I can make out it wasn't so much that the guy charged for it but that Linus could not change it that provided the impetus to do his own.
So really GNU/Linux originated from the general dislike of closed source software more than anything else.
You could also say btw that Windows would not exist without Unix, or Mac, because Windows emulated many of the ideas that were produced in those arena's and didn't shout very much about IP rights while they did it. GUI desktop and mouse control were not MS ideas, they "borrowed" those, like they "borrowed" a great many of the design concepts they used for MS-DOS and Windows from other people. By making that statement you are basically falling into MS's propaganda trap that they are the great innovators. This is anywhere but close to the truth.
MS have behaved in an anti-competitive way for decades. This is not my opinion, it is the courts opinion. Competition promotes innovation, so MS have also been stifling innovation for decades. If MS didn't exist? Who knows what technological wonderland of an operating system we might have now.
i wonder what would happen if Windows wouldn't exist
For a start, Microsoft could have named their OS "doors".
Another scenario is that some other proprietary OS would have taken place of Windows - some Apple product, IBM product, or a product created by any other company. Linux still could happen, but because it was kinda late to appear on the scene, it wouldn't dominate market anyway. I also think that without Microsoft current hardware wouldn't have become that powerful.
Linux was late on the scene? Not by much. Does anyone else remember the state of Windows in 1991, when Torvalds first started working on Linux? It wasn't even an operating system yet... it was just an application environment running over DOS. It had very limited use. I was working with a guy who was building PCs for a living at the time, and we were installing Windows but removing the executable from autoexec.bat, because there was no point in launching it on startup. You would find yourself using a native DOS application as often as you'd use a Windows one, and nobody wanted to wait forever for Windows launch to complete only to stop it again.
Honestly, Windows was not a competitor with Linux then for the same reason it isn't today. Windows is Computing for Dummies. It goes out of its way to make things simple so you don't have to know anything about how computers work in order to use it. Often times, that simplicity is merely aggravation, because it won't let you do what you want, only what it thinks you want. But in order to take control away from the system, you have to know what you're doing, and so... Linux.
They are two completely different operating systems based on completely different philosophies on how the product should be used. Windows dominates the desktop environment, Linux dominates the supercomputing and web server market, and that's the way it should be.
For a start, Microsoft could have named their OS "doors".
Another scenario is that some other proprietary OS would have taken place of Windows - some Apple product, IBM product, or a product created by any other company. Linux still could happen, but because it was kinda late to appear on the scene, it wouldn't dominate market anyway. I also think that without Microsoft current hardware wouldn't have become that powerful.
why not...? MS was not a player when silicon valley´s corporations started their HW core business, the players at that time were commercial versions of UNIX... although first AIX and HP UX only came along in 1986 ... i think there were others before that...
AFAIK, there were computers before that. A determined company could have turned them into windows alternative.
Microsoft has been created in 1975. Apple has been created in 1976. Xerox alto was built in 1973. However, free software foundation was born only in 1985, windows 1 was released in the same year, and first Macintosh was released in 1984. So I'd say both Apple and Microsoft had significant advantage from the beginning.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SL00b
Does anyone else remember the state of Windows in 1991, when Torvalds first started working on Linux?
IMO, it doesn't matter. Microsoft|Apple already had a working prototypes when FSF only started writing software for GNU operating system. That's significant advantage, no matter how you look at it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SL00b
Windows is Computing for Dummies.
I don't think so, but discussing that any further is useless.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alexvader
why not...? MS was not a player when silicon valley´s corporations started their HW core business, the players at that time were commercial versions of UNIX... although first AIX and HP UX only came along in 1986 ... i think there were others before that...
I have impression that Microsoft contributed a lot to hardware race, so I think that if there were no MS current hardware would cost few times more and we wouldn't be running multicore CPUs at home. I cannot back it up with facts, though - it is a personal opinion. IMO, Unixes weren't meant to be used at home, so they wouldn't trigger significant demand for faster hardware.
Interesting, although I'd argue that a kernel is pretty darned important.
I'd like to hear your argument against Microsoft innovating desktop computing, Pete.
Well my first 30 seconds of googling turned up this, but its a waste of 30 seconds because I'm sure that not only do you know better but will correct me forthwith.
I didn't say the Kernel wasn't important, I'm saying that the linux kernel is about as much use to the average user as a chocolate teapot without the rest of the OS around it. Its certainly the critical core component but it's nowhere near the whole show.
For a start, Microsoft could have named their OS "doors".
Another scenario is that some other proprietary OS would have taken place of Windows - some Apple product, IBM product, or a product created by any other company. Linux still could happen, but because it was kinda late to appear on the scene, it wouldn't dominate market anyway.
They could have called it "toilet seat" for all I care. The point is the concept of a gui, the term "window" for the box an app appears in etc was all invented elsewhere. And you are right, another product would have filled that niche, but would the producer of it been so ruthless (and immoral) in squashing the competition?
Quote:
Originally Posted by SigTerm
I also think that without Microsoft current hardware wouldn't have become that powerful.
Absolutely wrong. There is one key event that almost uniquely drove the dominance of the IBM-PC platform, and that is that IBM in effect OPEN SOURCED the hardware design allowing Taiwan, Hong-Kong and the like into the game. It allowed them to produce copy-cat hardware for little or no-cost licensing wise. There was a huge explosion in cheap PC's (I remember this, I was using a PC-XT with an 8Mhz processor at the time!) and Microsoft benefited massively from this, they effectively rode the wave that this generated while determinedly sticking their foot on the head of any competitor that got close to them.
For this reason personal computing became synonymous with Windows PC, the IBM-PC hardware platform and the MS Windows operating system, but it was IBM that made possible the advances in hardware, not Microsoft, they just took ruthless advantage.
The point is the concept of a gui, the term "window" for the box an app appears in etc was all invented elsewhere.
Somebody already pointed out that Microsoft's job is making money. One way to do it is acquire technology developed by others and resell it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by baldy3105
And you are right, another product would have filled that niche, but would the producer of it been so ruthless (and immoral) in squashing the competition?
We'll never know. I do not think that being ruthless is bad, by the way, but that kind discussion isn't suitable for this thread.
Quote:
Originally Posted by baldy3105
There is one key event that almost uniquely drove the dominance of the IBM-PC platform, and that is that IBM in effect OPEN SOURCED the hardware design allowing Taiwan, Hong-Kong and the like into the game.
Maybe. I do not have enough data about hardware development in 90s, so I cannot argue about this subject.
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