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Subject: Re: What will be the position of Windows in 3, 4 years in the future?

Author: Vincent Diepeveen

Date: 14:47:56 12/06/99

Go up one level in this thread


On December 05, 1999 at 21:11:36, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On December 05, 1999 at 16:42:55, Christophe Theron wrote:
>
>>On November 30, 1999 at 09:13:30, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>
>>>Here i reply to my own message? Why?
>>>I"m using this linux program/unix program called Lynx.
>>>I have 20 lines or so. I DO NOT SEE HOW TO INSERT lines.
>>>Me as a programmer can not EASILY see how i insert a line.
>>>Lynx is heaven compared to linux programs. You need to
>>>read gigabyte of doc files and ask a lot of friends how to
>>>get things done before you can install it. I never ever tried
>>>to install my cable modem in linux i never even installed internet
>>>at my system. Linux is improving, no doubts about that,
>>>but what is more important in this world, something that works
>>>wel or something that works better and better yet the others
>>>improve faster? Same question as for computer chess engines.
>>>We can only see in the future how it unfolds. For now the
>>>Merced is gonna be an important obstacle. If companies like
>>>redhat can offer linux systems that are a lot more user friendly
>>>and more integrating things with a better compiler than or just
>>>as good as the visual compiler, then linux makes a chance to expand. As the
>>>world gets more computer expansion is there anyway, but i guess most important
>>>is relavite expansion: the % of the market you occupy.
>>>For now linux is getting used by f'ing freaks who need to spent nearly fulltime
>>>learning how to work with it.
>>>that is the main obstacle. Software is of course another point but that's a bit
>>>smaller points if linux users would be WILLING to pay for something
>>>the average linux user is either student like me or working at a university or
>>>learned during his university period to work with it. they don't want to pay for
>>>anything. that's the main problem for game developers.
>>
>>
>>I completely agree with you, Vincent.
>>
>>Linux is probably very good, but it's very hard to notice ! :)
>>
>
>
>
>That isn't exactly true.  Microsoft has _definitely_ noticed it.  They noticed
>it enough to run a SMP test with a terribly mis-configured linux box, so that
>they could show how much better NT performs as a file server, and a http
>server, and so forth.  :)  I can supply some _real_ data for anyone that is
>interested...

I'm smelling 2 different viewpoints here.

Bobs viewpoint:
  "I as a big freak can configure everything in linux just as how
   i want to configure it, and i can proof it's working cool then"

99% of the world:
  "Please give me something i can use instead of needing a professor
   title to use it"

I don't doubt the truth from both viewpoint sides. Definitely
what m$ is doing in
its tests is kind of pathetic, everyone knows how stupid a NT firewall
is compared to a well configured linux firewall. However, how big
a % of people in this world using a computer can configure a
firewall in linux, or will know how to configure it in the future?

If this % is rising, because linux gets easier to install and especially
use, then no hard feelings, but for now it's obviously not a
high % for linux.

At my home i simply run the operating system where my program runs fastest
on the most. So for me the only interesting thing is: what compiler is
fastest?

In this respect recently i was again amazed. M$ hardly works on its
compiler speed, but it remains quicker than the gcc compiler.

Now recently gcc promised their new ia-32 backend
would speed up programs bigtime, but it remained 8% slower than the visual
compiler!

This is like giving you a rocket engine and after testing it doesn't
appear faster than the previous 486 propellor when talking about a 32
bits program...

Now i know the whole gcc team, in contradiction to the kernel makers,
don't get paid to improve linux. However, the amazement didn't get
smaller. What the hell did those guys do, implement a few 64 bits
instructions better?

>>I have set up one of my computers with Linux, because as a professional
>>programmer I cannot afford to ignore it.

>>It was very hard to get it running. It was hard to get my video card working
>>properly. It was hard to get the sound card working.
>>
>>I tried to get the MSDOS emulation working. It's one of the main things for me:
>>I want to get rid of Microsoft stuffs, but still need (at least for a while) to
>>run my DOS utilities.
>>
>>I had to read dozens of docs, spend several hours, and finally I gave up.
>>
>>Two days ago I had to change the motherboard on this system. Now Linux does not
>>work anymore. I can boot it from a floppy, but then I have no idea how to get it
>>working again.
>>
>>Compare this with Windows (I'm still using good old W95B): I just had to reboot,
>>Windows noticed some changes on the hardware, made the appropriate changes, and
>>it worked in 2 minutes.
>
>
>From my experience, rebooting is so common..  :)  My wife boots, connects to
>her ISP, gets a disconnect, and can't reconnect until she reboots.  Disgusts
>her when I just keep working and let my ppp connection automatically re-
>connect after a failure with no action on my part...  and certainly no re-
>booting...

All scripts you write for linux can be written just as easy for NT too
of course. I've done it for DIEP too. it autoconnects to icc after
getting kicked off for whatever reason.

>>I'm planning to erase Linux from my computer and try it again next year. My
>>plans to port Tiger on Linux are delayed.
>>
>>
>>I'm very sad about this: I would really like to work on a non-MS platform. With
>>Windows I don't feel in control of my computer anymore (especially W98). But
>>with Linux it's even worse! I feel I don't control anything anymore. Each time I
>>have the smallest problem I know it's going to take hours to fix it.
>
>
>This is a stretch.  Come to Birmingham Alabama.  I will show you a company
>that is managing the electric power for the southeast US, running _linux_.
>I will show you a campus (UAB) with over 20,000 employees, an enormous medical
>center, etc...  things like our campus-wide voice mail system?  Linux.  News
>server?  Linux.  Email server?  Linux.  Campus DNS server?  Linux.  I do a
>"intro to Linux" continuing education 2-day class 4 times a year.  It usually
>has 10-20 people in it. Maybe 2 are from inside the university.    Maybe another
>2-3 are just interested in Linux in general.  The others are businesses that are
>using linux in mission-critical applications...

I can show you dozens of schools & universities here that used to
run SUNOS, HP-UX or LINUX and now are using basically NT. Just a small
corner usual there is a new slow sun (new but slow compared to the
NT machines) where i go sit behind and internet.

>It does work.  It never crashes.  It is utterly reliable...

Nah, server uptime 180 days here... ...NT 4.0... ...sp3, not even
rebooting to install sp5 as the banksoftware doesn't work with sp5
(visual basic libraries...).

>>
>>And, on purpose, I don't want to spend the needed time to learn the OS. "Normal"
>>users will not spend all this time. So I want it to be easy enough to get wide
>>acceptance. At this time, it is FAR from being the case.
>>
>>
>>The less worse solution I have found to my OS problem so far is to stick with
>>Windows 95B (OSR2). It works on all my computers: 386sx-20 (5Mb RAM!),
>>486dx2-66, K5-100, PPro200, K6-2-300 and K6-2-450.
>>
>>The problem with Microsoft is that you'll never get a reliable operating system:
>>you get a system that almost works, but has many bugs. When you want to fix
>>them, you have to get the next version of the OS, which is fatter, does not run
>>anymore on your computer (allegedly because your 1 year old computer is already
>>outdated) and brings a lot more bugs than what it fixes.
>>
>>I don't want to be part of this crazyness. But nobody offers an alternative.
>>    Christophe

I think Christophe mentions a good point here. With the release of
windows2000 m$ clearly is gonna buy linux some time to improve,
as the beta releases of windows2000,
I killed directly after i saw that they were eating over 60mb of my
RAM... ...so basically needing machines with like 256mb at least...
...they should buy some stocks in that area...

However i'm never gonna go back to DOS again, as that looks like
a bad configured linux version (without X)...




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