Re: Linux -- MIDRANGE-NONTECH

>
>
>| is not a Microsoft product. Until I am no longer forced to buy any
>| Microsoft products, I will not buy any Microsoft products unless forced
>| to. Linux is easy to get, inexpensive (to free), easy to install and
>| run, has many applications available for it, and (most important)Just my
>| little one person protest.
>
I just want to point out that something happened to that paragraph above
when I clicked on "send." There was a sentence (I don't recall what it
said) in the beginning of it where it now says "is not a Microsoft
product" and the "is not..." part was at the end right after "(most
important)" and before "Just my". I don't know where the bug is that
mangled it, but I even looked in my "sent" folder and that one is
mangled, too. But I proofed it before sending and it wasn't mangled then.

>Very laudible...  If I wasn't so lazy, I'd move to another platform.  I got
>heavily involved in PCs (putting them out in each of the stores) about the
>time of Windung 3.0...  (PC software actually ran on OS/2, but IBM lost that
>battle...)
>
OS/2 is the best desktop OS I've used. It was (is) rock solid. I had to
have a little reminder on it so I'd reboot once in a while (I tried for
every week or so, but didn't always get around to it) because I thought
there might be some boot time housekeeping. There were lots of good
applications and it ran a lot of Windows software. It was everything
that XP promises to be but without the big security holes (and with a
history of actually delivering rather than just promising). If the DoJ
hadn't bent over at the last minute and had actually forced MS to
publish their API and IBM had used it to implement 32bit Windows in
OS/2, I'd have forked over the money and formatted this hard drive on
day one. Not out of brand loyalty or even because of my distaste over
Microsoft, just because I want to be able to take my PC for granted like
I used to back in the OS/2 days.

>But I recall Zeitler saying (more-or-less) that they're providing Linux
>because that's what the market wants.  Not so much because he saw it as the
>be-all and end-all...
>
The problem with OS zealots is that they have trouble seeing this. IBM
implementing Linux isn't IBM saying, "This is better than FreeBSD" or
whatever. It is IBM saying, "Here's something we see that we can use to
keep Microsoft from controlling this little market segment over here."
Linux gets a lot of free publicity, that is good for IBM. It has a
reputation that IBM cannot have (underdog, little guy makes good, etc.).
It is valuable as a server platform for performing all the tasks that PC
servers are good at.

I'm writing a little more about stuff like this in my opinion I'm
submitting to David for the IMO thing. We'll see if I can be clear and
opinionated at the same time. ;-)

>My gripe with Linux is the leadership of the movement, more than the
>platform itself.  I read someplace (don't recall where) that some folks
>think OS-X is the end of Linux-on-the-desktop...  I tend to think that
>FreeBSD is more stable than Linux, is a better run organization.  Don't know
>enough about this stuff, though.
>
>Fact is.. Linux gets all the glory (again, due to it's leadership), and it
>exists on the iSeries...  So if Zeitler can't ignore the desires of the
>market, I don't know that I should.  My views are, obviously, still in
>flux...
>
Well, I don't think you can trust "a movement." Linux is fine, FreeBSD
is probably fine, too. OS X has the advantage of being a part of a
company's revenue stream. To me, that is something I can trust. When a
company sees an item as being important to their profit margin, then you
can start to predict the behavior around that item.

--
Chris Rehm
javadisciple@earthlink.net

Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one
that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. 1 John 4:7