Why Linux will never replace Windows (for now)

[Zep]

Re: Re: Re: While we're on the subject...

Oh. You mean it's kinda like Windows 3.1? It ran on top of a non-graphic OS as well.

Regards;
Beanbag (who expects his house to be firebombed by outraged Linux users everywhere)

Well, sorta. It's higher level than that even. It's ONLY the graphics and user-interface stuff that is handled by X.11.

Incidentally, in X.11, there is an actual a real live thing called a "widget", the shortened word for "window-gadget". A widget is something like a window slider or a button or a border that can be used as a component of a window on the display.

 

[bignickel]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: While we're on the subject...

I disagree with this. Even before Xerox made their GUI, individual programs were being made with a point-and-click interface. It was Apple that made it popular, and if anything Microsoft delayed implementing the GUI on the IBM clones. They only did so because they saw themselves starting to lose market share to Apple.

Hmm, if memory serves me right, both Steve AND Bill were blown away by what they saw at PARC.

But Bill was stuck with his contract to make OS/2 for IBM. That's why it took M$ so long to develop Windows.

When IBM found out about Windows, they threatened to sue under their contract: M$ can't compete with IBM. But M$ said: read the contract again: we can't compete with you in hardware.

Ah hah, says IBM. Wish we had noticed that. Well, creating our OS while making a competing one isn't going to work for us. We'll take over from here. Send us the code you've done.

As you wish, says M$, who then proceeds to devote it's full resources to Windows, while IBM finishes up and releases OS/2 (which was pretty decent, except for all the times I had to dispatch engineers to hit the reset buttons on frozen OS/2 boxes).

 

[LFTKBS]

I'd just like to point out that over the last three days I rebooted my (work) WinXPPro system over thirty times. A friend and I installed a new motherboard and chip this weekend, and it took thirty -THIRTY! - reboots to a) not boot XP (bad board? magically corrupt hard drive? Who knows? You only get two-line error messages!) and then b) reinstall the whole damn OS on another HD and shove that in.

This is on a brand new board with a brand new chip in a nice cool roomy tower and new components, with a CS grad student (the friend) who works for a defense contractor.

Meanwhile, my home box - a 500MHz EMACHINE with scavenged RAM and a power supply that technically can't turn off unless you yank the plug out - had as its last uptime over a thousand hours, and that only ended because I installed a new CD drive.

So yeah, I'm a little biased now.