Linux Adoption Barriers 3261

Let's buttume you're right. (You're not, of course... Windows 95 was just an attempt to be "Mac-like", for example. But let's buttume that.)

Linux won't disappear because it makes far too much sense in the server, embedded, and supercomputing spaces. It will have corporate, academic, *and* hobbyist backing there until computers are something other than Turing-equivalent.

From that secure base, it has innumerable opportunities to spread into the desktop space - and note that there's corporate, academic, and hobbyist efforts to move it there. By your own admission you haven't tried Linux in years - you should see what you're missing.

Much of Vista's functionality is a clone of what Linux already offers, only compromised in design (in complexity of interface and implementation) for reasons of backward compatibility. I don't see .NET the Windows Forms stuff, and that can be emulated and cloned - easier than Windows itself, really, thanks to the CLR. Not that Java and other alternatives are going away, either.

Of course, much of that is beside the point. Linux doesn't need to *kill* Windows - it just needs to get big enough to make cross-platform programs attractive to developers. Not even all developers, just some. We'd have a situation analagous to the game consoles of today - many crossplatform programs, and some specific to particular platforms.

I'm happy with Microsoft just having to compete. Look at the state of IE before Firefox, for example.

Not all the effort behind Linux is 'amateur' by any means - not even most of it. But the developers of Linux and other open-source applications have shown no indications of 'tiring' - ever let alone 'soon'. (Care to quantify what you mean by 'soon', BTW?)

-- Sincerely,

Ray Ingles (313) 227-2317

"Yes, but other than being useful, usable, reliable, extensible, free, and unencumbered, what does Linux have going for it?" - Hamilcar Barca