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IP: Requested -- ANONYMOUS POST -- Linux competes with Windows 98 -- not
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1999 17:53:05 -0500
From: http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/review/crg733.htm OPINION Linux: Windows competitor ... NOT! Wanna learn Linux? How much time do you have? By Will Rodger, USATODAY.com Microsoft Group Vice President Paul Maritz seemed a worried man when he took the stand in the Microsoft trial last winter. A specter, he said with dread, was haunting Microsoft. Promoters of free software -- Open Source revolutionaries -- were massing beneath the black and white banner of Linux. At the head of the mob was a bespectacled Finn named Linus Torvalds. He, along with fellow revolutionaries Eric Raymond, Larry Wall and Paul Vixie were exhorting the masses to churn out free software "It seems trite to say it, but it's almost as though the village blacksmiths of the world can now build axles in their back yard and assemble them together and compete with General Motors," Maritz said then. "And that's literally what is going on. We have proof through the Linux operating system." Microsoft spent much of that trial trying to show that Linux, like the hand-held Palm organizer and the fringe Be operating system, is a "competitor" to Windows 98. Microsoft needed to show that to avoid being labeled a monopoly. But the strategy failed, and Microsoft now seems all but certain to lose its case before Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson. The Redmondians lost their argument because Linux, in fact, is remarkably difficult to use. I should know -- after several weekends of experimentation at home, Ive determined Ill need to sit down and study hard to achieve even minimal competence with the operating system. Small wonder Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson dismissed Microsofts assertions that Linux and Windows 98 compete for the same customers. "The target is people who are very sophisticated with computers," says Tim Scanlon, a Northern Virginia computer consultant who has spent the last 15 years of his life working on Unix computer systems. "By definition this is someone who is not (an average) user." My own experience has uncovered a host of problems that Microsoft and Apple licked years ago. Since I added Linux to a computer at home, I find I cant make my cable modem work because the device that connects it to my PC wont work with Linux. I cant make my standard- issue laser printer work because -- contrary to the assertions of the point-and-click interface in the configuration settings -- Linux does not know it is there. I have the same problems with my PCs sound, since the "sndconfig" program designed to handle that part of the computer isn't working either. It's so not working, in fact, it doesn't even have the good graces to give me an error message when I try to start it up. This, by the way, is a fairly common trait of Linux software. Sophisticated programmers, after all, don't want to spend time on things like warning messages when there are so many more urgent matters to address. Scanlon tells me my problems are pretty minor for someone who knows what he's doing. A new circuit card to hook up to my modem plus a few changes to some internal configuration files should set things straight. But even simple tasks like those are far beyond the Linux neophyte. To get my printer to work, I must first learn a powerful yet hard to use word processor called the vi text editor. Vi (pronounced vee-eye) is all command lines -- no menus, no point-and-click, just glowing letters on a blank screen. Once Ive figured out how to use that, Ill be able to write the short string of code the printer needs to talk to the PC. The documentation that came with the operating system does give me a few tips on using text editors, but not nearly enough to do what I need. For that, the manual told me, I need other books that go into greater detail. Running Linux from publisher OReilly & Associates tells me a bit more about how to use text editors, but still not enough to make me feel comfortable with the job. And a third book, Teach yourself Linux in 24 hours, offered a few more pointers, but only enough to make me minimally competent. None of this looks like anything I ever had to do with Windows. As difficult as the printer problem has been, I expect hooking up that cable modem will go more smoothly. When it does, Ill be sure to write about it on my new copy of StarOffice for Linux. Of course, I need to install that, too. The accompanying documentation tells me I should install the software just as I would any other new package, but doesnt offer any specifics I can understand without a bit more research. Of course, Im still not worried. I mean, how hard can it be?
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- IP: Requested -- ANONYMOUS POST -- Linux competes with Windows 98 -- not Dave Farber (Dec 21)