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From: geoffrey@netins.net (geoffrey alexander)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Linux vs BSD
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 12:23:31 -0500
Organization: The alt.movies.kubrick Newsgroup
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Message-ID: <geoffrey-ya023380001604971223310001@news.netins.net>
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In article <5is26g$fe9@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>, haszlaki@students.uiuc.edu
(eric richard haszlakiewicz) wrote:
> John Bianco (analogkid@ibm.net) wrote:
> : That will NEVER happen. Cant wait to install linux myself, but all the
> : masses want in a computer is a system easy to use, and linux is still
> : not the that easy to use still. So unless SUN has the balls to make
> : their own version of linux to comepte against MS in the desktop
> : enviroment, linux cant compete agains MS. People like brand names.
> Just wondering, but what do you mean by Sun making their "own
> version of linux"? Last I heard they had their own version of unix
> called Solaris which they are still quite happily selling.
Yes, and the same observation applies to Digital, IBM, etc. Further he
should note that, well, here's an OS for example which is effectively
platform-independent, with enough advantages to persuade mission-critical
users to purchase commercial implementations for whatever advantages, even
though an industrial-strength version (the *BSD's, for example) can be had
for free. And buying it shrinkwrapped doesn't make it easier to use -- it's
a matter of how integrally comprehensive a package can had, with
accompanying support.
Conversely, does anyone think that if NT were released as freeware that,
even then, it would be more popular than the various flavors of Unix?
There's another point, and maybe a niggling one. Unix is not hard to use,
per se. It is hard -- or more correctly, difficult -- to >administer<. It
takes some training, skill, patience, and experience to do it wel -- and
>using< Unix is only as hard as the administrator of the system wishes to
make it. A little skill goes a long way towards making the system easy to
use AND administer.
It isn't necessarily a bad thing that this requires a fairly comprehensive
understanding of the technology itself. And all of these factors together
contribute to the refinement and development of the system -- a process the
closed, proprietary model of software development obviates by locking-in
the design and development of a system to a core team of in-house
developers (whose efforts are guided as much by marketing concerns as by
technological issues) and by limiting the user-implementation options to a
small set of off-the-shelf solutions.
Geoffrey Alexander
__________________________________________________________
If you can talk brilliantly enough about a problem, it can
create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered...
Stanley Kubrick
__________________________________________________________
The Kubrick Site @ http://www.netins.net/showcase/sahaja