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Re: To Linus or not to Linus???
de Achim Nolcken Lohse 04/22/2006 08:25
On Fri, 21 Apr 2006 22:18:10 -0600, Anonymous <noemail@noisp.com>
wrote:
>Hi Dookus,
>
>If Linux had appeared twenty years ago, then it would be number one
>today. Windows has nearly two decades of marketing, acceptance and use
>in the global market for computers. Too many companies and people have
>closed "retirement-assuring" contracts using MS Office and MS Windows
>to switch over to Linux right now.
>
>Linux is a great OS and it is free and (IMHO) it is superior to
>Windows. Linux applications are free, open source, and superior to
>Windows applications. The problem is that the vast majority of the
>world uses Windows and doesn't want to spend any money or time and
>effort to retrain their employees and/or family memebers on new
>software that does the same job but does it differently.
No, not quite. The problem is that Linux has crappy quality control,
and it's gotten steadily worse. Whereas a decade ago the distribution
publishers bragged about the ability to run on older hardware, now
it's easier to run Windows on a seven or ten-year old PC than Linux.
Quality control is so shoddy, that I've even downloaded a Redhat
version two or three years ago in which they simply neglected to
include the floppy image (it was listed in the index, but wasn't
there). When I went to the Redhat website looking for an errata
message, there was nothing. I had to get the image from some private
website in the Czech Republic to install the distro on a PC without a
bootable CD-ROM.
But I've encountered similar problems with Mandrake, Caldera, and
other big name Linux distributions.
Furthermore, big distributions like Red Hat demand constant upgrades
if you want security updates. Only a few years ago, Red Hat still
supported versions that were four or five years old. Last time I
bothered to check, you were cut off in less than 12 months. So you
absolutely need a broadband connection to keep your OS secure.
Almost forgot to mention - Linux documentation is a joke.
--
Achim
_____/)
axethetax