RE: MJR on Linux/OSS

["Bill Royds" <broyds () rogers com>]

I think Marcus is perfectly correct. But the real advantage for Redmond is the
fact that almost every Intel box sold at retail runs Windows XP out of the box.
Who wants to install any Linux distro when they have an OS adequate for what
they want to do already for "free". The fact that you pay for Windows in your
purchase price is irrelevant when Dell and HP/Compaq and IBM and ... etc. come
equipped with Windows unless you go to GREAT EFFORT to avoid it.
   Microsoft beat the U.S. government in the anti-trust case when it was not
forced to unbundle Windows and sell it only at retail. If users had to go to
Best Buy and chose between Windows or Red Hat (or Debian, SUSE, Gentoo, Mandrake
etc.) to install on their new machine, they might make the OSS choice, but they
don't get that choice. Software publishers aren't stupid. They make products for
the marketplace and the marketplace for desktops is mainly Windows, with a bit
of a specialty niche for Apple.

-----Original Message-----
From: firewall-wizards-admin () honor icsalabs com
[mailto:firewall-wizards-admin () honor icsalabs com] On Behalf Of Devdas Bhagat
Sent: Monday, March 07, 2005 1:17 PM
To: firewall-wizards () honor icsalabs com
Subject: [fw-wiz] MJR on Linux/OSS

http://www.ranum.com/editorials/divide-conquer/

Summary: Diversity in interfaces is bad. Microsoft's consistent interface 
is good.

I thought we went through this during the discussion on the personal
firewall day (firewall-wizards, Sep 30 2003 by Paul D. Robertson)?

Which consistent interface would suit everyone? As opposed to users
saying "I know this interface, and I don't want to learn anything new",
which interface would be acceptable?

KDE? GNOME? WindowMaker? Windows? MacOS? The command line?

Oh yes, you can run any distro with no big real difference between
them. The major lines: Debian, Redhat, Gentoo. The rest are clones, or
similar enough to transition easily between.

The trouble with a single dominant monoculture is that it does increase
the damage caused by a single hole. See blaster, and the long thread
which was spawned by *that* on this list.

I guess this is one of those things on which I disagree with Marcus.
Hopefully, this leads to another good discussion on what would work
best for what requirements (as opposed to the /. threads).

Oh, and Marcus: DLL hell ;)

Devdas Bhagat
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