And that's probably why LINUX in it's current form will never become the leading desktop OS, and to a certain degree is why it's so common-place in the business area.

Note that I'm not talking about merely using the system to write letters or do homework. These days anyone can learn how to do that under Linux in minutes, without even having to install it. That option wasn't available 10 years ago.

Further to my point, it took me years to develop an understanding of DOS. Then, the same thing happened when I had to grudgingly "upgrade" to Windows. It takes years to learn the intricacies of computer systems. That is a fact of life. They're complicated devices.

The hardest part of learning Linux is "unlearning" the Microsoft way of doing things, which everyone will eventually have to do one day, anyhow. When that day comes, I'll make a fortune working as a consultant.

If there is anything about "the Windows way of doing things" that must be "un-learned," I'd say it would simply be: that you must "un-learn" the notion that you can actually get away with continuing to be blissfully ignorant of anything and everything else!

I happen to be one of those people who vividly remembers the IBM 360. In its day, nothing else really mattered.

Fast-forward ... (well, just never you mind!) ... years, and ... let the record show that "the noble descendents of the IBM 360" are still selling, although these days the system is known (for some unknown reason) as Z/OS. Although your knowledge "from past lives" is still quite applicable, it is no longer "the only thing that really matters."

Fortunately, IBM Corporation understands this, and therefore they never allowed their company to become typecast. Unfortunately, Microsoft did. Microsoft became a "one-trick pony."

Like it or not, "Linux/Unix came." And, at least so far, Microsoft has never re-unveiled their Xenix product line. Until and unless they do, they're going to continue to gradually lose market share just because other companies are diversifying and they are not.

As a practitioner in the field, however, you have no choice: you must learn Unix/Linux. Fast. No matter what Windows-7 may or may not do.

Excellent post sundialcvs!

Some of us aren't currently practitioners, but may become consultants post-apocalypse.

As a practitioner in the field, however, you have no choice: you must learn Unix/Linux.

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For home use, no. People have been convinced that there is no real alternative to Windows. For small businesses, Windows is familiar and serves their needs if they keep it updated, and don't forget that for home users and small businesses, linux has an aura of being the operating system of choice for guys who can't get dates.

Only when you get to industrial-strength commercial situations "must" you learn linux. In other situations it might be nice, but it is not necessary.

The original post was whether Windows 7 would set back Linux. I am not sure that "set back" is the proper term. To the extent that Windows 7 does not require people to go out an buy new hardware, however, it will slow down the poopular adoption of linux.

Moxieman99

As a practitioner in the field, however, you have no choice: you must learn Unix/Linux.

-------------------------------
For home use, no. People have been convinced that there is no real alternative to Windows. For small businesses, Windows is familiar and serves their needs if they keep it updated, and don't forget that for home users and small businesses, linux has an aura of being the operating system of choice for guys who can't get dates.

Only when you get to industrial-strength commercial situations "must" you learn linux. In other situations it might be nice, but it is not necessary.

The original post was whether Windows 7 would set back Linux. I am not sure that "set back" is the proper term. To the extent that Windows 7 does not require people to go out and buy new hardware, however, it will slow down the popular adoption of linux.

Thanks for informing me that I am not suited to run Linux.

Linux will run fine if you run hardware that is a little older. I choose for the most part to run hardware from today, this is where my problems come from.

And as far as coming to forums to throw tantrums (seems you may have put me in this place), I never have! I read and read and read over again 100's of times to make certain I understand how to try and fix a problem, but if my hardware is just a tad to new to work correctly, really that is not user error!

Please don't judge me, you don't know me or my understanding of how operating systems work!

No you don't. If you have no need to learn Linux, then there certainly is no call to "learn it fast". Where this idea that Linux is going to take over the world comes from i don't know. Maybe there are lots of articles stating this, but in the real world it isn't happening.

My last company's IT (5 year) road map, was to expand their Windows environment (bearing in mind that they already had 4000 Window OS installs - and this is just servers) and reduce their UNIX / LINUX environment (and more-so their Mainframe reliance). This was a company with 80,000 full time employees and another 20,000 people via out-sourcing on their pay roll.

And this road-map was based on a years study comparing other like-for-like companies of it's size.

My present company where i have done site-visits for approx 30 or so companies, UNIX / LINUX either has such a small foot-print that it's not even discussed or it simply isn't present in the company.

Only one company i support uses LINUX (Redhat) aggressively.

Large companies go with what they know. IT techies certainly don't have a say in the over-all direction of what OS's will be used on mass no matter what their preference of OS. It would have to take a monumental screw-up on MS's part for a large multi-national company to change directions (and even then, i reckon MS would have to screw-up a number of times before a switch would be talked about).

Put it this way, using my last company as a reference, how much would it cost X company to switch from Windows OS to LINUX based on these numbers (and i'm not making these up);

100,000 Windows OS desktops
4,000 Windows OS servers (everything, Test / Dev / UAT and PROD)
2,500'ish Windows based applications

How long would such a project take? How much would it cost just for the migration? How much would it cost in training staff to support? How much would it cost for testing applications? Just guessing but it would probably run in to the 10's of millions.

Look, i'm not dissing Linux - it has it's place and any competition to the MS market is always good, but over the past 10 years, what has really changed in the IT market when it comes to OS's? Nothing if i'm blunt. MS is still there, the only area has been the take up of VMWare and even that is now just a platform to run multiple instances of MS OS's (and even then it took for ESX to get to version 3.5 before a large number of companies started to take it seriously and use it as a PROD platform).

Unless LINUX does something vastly different to an MS OS (with regards to functionality) then in a decades time we will still be in the same position as we are today.

Actually, i would add that the only area i would see LINUX making a big impact would in it replacing Mainframe installations (which is what IBM are already actively advertising).

And the cost and retraining of staff when they
switch from XP to Vista, and Office 200[03] to
the thing with the fancy "ribbon"? :}


Alongside with pushing Linux on IFL (intergrated facility
for Linux) on the mainframe; good fun. IBM will sell you
anything, including windows consultancy. ;}


Cheers,
Tink

You got me. My hardware is like, soooo last month...

Sorry for bring this up from the dregs - i was away for awhile.

First point:

Cost? = None. There will be no training. There won't as said company isn't moving from from XP. Perhaps Windows 7 - however the training will be walk in rooms to ask "How do i?" questions. I.E. costs will be tiny compared to moving to Linux. XP out of support? Yep, but if you are a very large enterprise company then you can get nice "support contracts".

Likewise with Office - no training, and to be honest, unless there's a massive need to move to the latest version of Office, then the version will remain the same and when the move does come (which is will), it'll be the same "walk-in rooms".

As for Linux as Zseries- Even Gartner are stating that IBM's push for Linux over Zseries is proving to be a massive success.

Again - MS and windows is entrenched in Enterprise companies. Change just isn't going to happen unless something big happens.

(Though getting a Zseries job for Linux will bring in the big bucks, compared to a Windows engineer).

Remember always that operating systems, just like computers themselves, are "a means to an end" ... not "an end unto themselves."

Companies may own equipment of all shapes and sizes, including midrange and mainframe, but in all cases the same reasoning applies:

"The computer" is not the point.

Companies choose hardware and software using the simple maxim that the end-result must be functional and maintainable. That's it. "Change," of any sort and for any reason, "is expensive" and therefore highly suspect.

Many people blindly suppose that the folks who make those decisions are uninformed, unenlightened or what-have-you ... or maybe that they don't know what Linux is, etc. That's just not true. It's just that the business decision is very complicated.

Nonsense. The decision process for business computing is very simple.

1. Nobody ever lost his job buying IBM.

2. IBM annointed Microsoft twenty years ago.

3. The legacy cost of leaving Microsoft would negate any savings from Linux for so many years that the ROI would not pay off in <decision maker's> career span.

and is there a reason why Linux does so necessarily need to be leading desktop OS?

sry, i just saw the title n had to throw out my "2cents".

as someone who went to open source because i didnt like bloat and spyware, i think these recent offerings from ms are unlikely to make much of a dent in linux's uptake. even if for almost the first time ever they have released an OS which is reported to actually be faster than their previous OS (2-3% i hear), even if they offer it for free for a year... doesnt matter. it's still masssively slow*. they're still massively into spying on you, leaving them total access to your machine. they're still into protecting their secrets (dirty as they are). and though you dont hear as much about it these days... it's safe to presume they are still pumping in a shitload of subliminal messages. i could go on.

* so slow. it makes me think vista was just a marketing ploy so they could release windows 7 and people wouldnt baulk at how heavy n sluggish it is.


but uptake in the workplace? go talk to the guys who decide. go show them a couple live distros, go show them the bottom line*, ... seeing is believing as they say... and if you cant get these stuborn IT-clueless execs to comprehend, you can at least get them to believe, right? lol.

*money is the only language they'll understand.

haha, oh i've such a cynical view dont i.