When Longhorn release, Linux got end. 3495

Alan Connor Lopez Hernandez" choice to

This trend has already been happening in Asia and Central-South America. In some countries such as Japan, Linux has grown to 30% of the installed base, and now outsells Windows in terms of unit volumes.

Mexico has had Linux in their public education systems for almost 7 years, and Linux is widely used in that country.

Brazil has switched to Linux for all government workers, and Linux has been widely used in that country.

Germany has been using Linux in their banking systems. For those who read German, Germany's laws prevent Microsoft from influencing benchmarks and other comparitive reports and articles. The feedback from this country has been extremely positive. Several Municipalities have switched to Linux and Microsoft has tried to do damage control by offering Windows to these agencies on a more liberal nonexclusive license.

Microsoft knows that it cannot compete toe-to-toe in a market not controlled by the EULA, OEM License Agreements, and Corporate License agreement terms which prevent direct comparisons between Windows and Linux.

of the increase

Linux nearly clobbered Microsoft when Microsoft released Windows NT 3.1. Users were not enthusiastic about Windows NT 3.1 and pretty much avoided it. The cost to make the switch was nearly $10,000 per user.

During this period, Microsoft know that it faced the threat of real compebreastion from Solaris, OS-2, SCO Unix, and Linux. It spent several billion dollars to discourage publication of articles which endorsed these compebreastors.

At that time, Linux was being used by about 2-4 million users, and the user base was doubling every 6-8 months. Microsoft didn't really turn the tide until the release of Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 3. Even then, it was the really buggy release of Red Hat 5.0 that slowed Linux down. Up until that release, Linux advocates could simply give a user a Red Hat CD, which was easily available for less than $2-copy, to lots of people, some of whom would try the installation and be successfully. This tactic was particularly effective with those kids who were 12-18 and living on limited budgets.

Of course, those kids are now 22-28 and many are now pushing for Linux own their corporate desktops.

Longhorn seems to be turning more and more into 64 bit Windows. Microsoft has shipped lots of beta versions, but it's still uncertain whether a 64 bit version of Windows will be able to leverage the existing user and software base established by Windows 9x, Windows NT, and Windows XP.

Linux has been capturing the lion's share of the 64 bit Intel and AMD markets in the server arena, and thus far, many AMD-64 systems originally sold with Windows XP have been converted to 64 bit Windows.

Keep in mind that many OEMs have been selling machines equipped with Windows simply to avoid liability and license audits later, especially if retail customers convert to 64 bit Linux and then run Windows in a Bochs client.

Microsoft has some of the best metrics in the industry, and is holding their cards very very closely. They know they don't have much of a hand, but they are hoping they can bluff out long enough to get Longhorn into the market with some sort of "Linux person" application or function.

The problem is that Linux has many person apps, but no really effective "Windows person" applications that will make people stampede to from Windows to Linux. In 1994-5 the person App was the Web, and users were going to Linux to have access to good web browsers and web servers. By 1997, Microsoft had integrated ActiveX controls and Java had taken away many of the real-time GUI advantages of Linux. There were security problems with ActiveX, but most users didn't seem to mind the viruses, trojans, and worms. They stayed with the familiar preconfigured Windows installed by the OEM.

Another problem was that the Linux community held back during the DOJ trials. They buttumed that the courts would somehow limit Microsoft's monopoly control, that they would be able to force OEMs to install Linux on desktop machines. They buttumed that the DOJ would be able to force the divestature of Microsoft, even though the divestature of AT&T was a voluntary act.

Microsoft was a very different company from AT&T. The ownership is concentrated into the hands of less than 10 people who own roughly 70% of the stock. It only take the agreement of 3 out of 4 to control 51% of the stock and proxies, and no decision can be made without the agreement of both Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.

The one thing that could break the Microsoft Monopoly is if Gates and Ballmer ever split over a fundamental strategy. Even though Gates has been stripped of much of the direct control of the company, he still considers himself relevant and will likely continue to support Ballmer.

There are so many WinTrolls who are so totally anonymous, that it is hard to point the finger at any of the Penguinistas. Many of the penguinistas give the names of real companies, provide real e-mail addresses, and even answer their own e-mail. Several even work for major corporations.

These days, it's hard to say who are the trolls, or who is using what aliases. There are many posters who seem to have intimate inside knowledge of Microsoft's technology, tactics, and strategy (things normally revealed only to employees), yet claim to be nonexistant people from nonexistent campanies, with e-mail addresses that are undeliverable.

There are actually thousands of contributors to this group, and tens of thousands of lurkers. After all, usenet newsgroups are one of the few sources of unrestricted, unvarnished, unobstructed feedback on both sides. In COLA, you get the good, bad, and ugly on both Windows and Linux.

Given the amount of support Linux gets in these groups, it's not surprising that Microsoft wants to maintain an iron hand of control over other publishers. I can't say that if I stood to loose $40 billion in just a few years, that I wouldn't consider doing the exact same thing. Bill Gates has watched the price of his stock drop from nearly $60-share to less than $25-share, then languish at this very low level for almost 4 years.