MS Office on Linux 14820

billwg poked his little head through the XP firewall and said:

Okay.

The time loss is minimal, believe me. Even a complex upgrade such as upgrading the GNU C runtime library, gcc, takes no time at all, even though the duration of that particular upgrade is about 1-2 hour. Why? Because it goes on in the background, while you are STILL USING THE OLD VERSION of the library (or application).

You see, unlike Windows, Linux follows UNIX in using copy-on-write, so that all the code currently in use remains on the disk until your applications all stop using it. No need to "Close all currently running applications", or to reboot to reload DLLs.

I continue to use my system, large parts of which depend on glibc, while at the same time totally replacing all the libraries that are part of glibc.

Sure, bill, if you're talking about a single user. But you're not. You're talking about a large number (depending on the product) of users WITH A DIRECT PIPELINE to the developers.

And, to reiterate, no significant time is lost in an upgrade. This isn't Windows.

True. And many OSS projects do the same.

How do you think that OSS projects, as a rule, have fewer bugs per KLOC than commercial products?

-- When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When all you have is Microsoft software, everything looks like Windows.