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Re: [Sheflug] Back to Windows



On Fri, 2002-10-25 at 15:03, Jonathan Hipkiss wrote:
> In my opinion LINUX will remain a niche OS, used only by techies and
> UNIX professionals.  It will never attain widespread recognition and
> remove Microsoft's dominance until it has been made much much much
> easier to install.

You'll come crawling back - they always do :o). 

To be honest, the installation isn't hugely important. It's as easy now
as it's going to get, and popular belief is that GNU/Linux systems are
as easy to install as Windows (e.g., SuSE, Mandrake, et al). This may
not fit with your particular experience, but try installing Win98 on a
reasonably current PC. Try installing any version of Windows on a
current machine, for that matter. WinME on that era hardware is about
the sweet spot; I would say earlier and later OSes are harder to
install.

Linux is one of the few OSes with growing marketshare. In fact, I
believe there are only two - Windows NT (2k/XP) and Linux. Maybe OS/X,
but I would doubt it. If you wish to join the MS future, where they tell
you what software you may or may not run[1], what data you may or may
not have[2], and where you give them remote access[3], fine, you can
have that. Some of us rate the freedom away from all these things, and
the freedom of Free Software in general, as far more important that how
difficult something was to install...

Cheers,

Alex.

[1]. Eg., VNC is unusable on XP for licensing reasons
[2]. Eg., You may not record audio and copy it under WMA 9
[3], Eg., WinXP SP1 EULA.

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