I'm almost sure I am going to be unpopular when I ask this question, but
WHY??????????????? does everyone want a remake of Windows? Does anybody out
there envision a desktop control system that isn't just a plain command line
but also is not a collection of little pictures and pop-up windows? I
honestly believe that over time, in order to keep adding all the functions
that people seem to demand, how can it not get all balled up? I think the
KISS principle is so appropriate in this context. OK, go ahead, bash
me.............leo.
On Tuesday 12 June 2001 11:28 am, you wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Jun 2001, Russell Hires wrote:
> > Can I get a witness to the original article! .... No....well, why not?
> > All good rebuttals here, Mike...
> >
> > The part about "Not enough money in it to make it worth someone's time":
> > Ha! What a laugh. Doing anything with Linux was never about money until
> > recently. It was all grass roots before that. Linux has always been about
> > no money. I think people invested their time in Linux because it wasn't
> > M$'s O$...It didn't crash, it didn't "blue screen" on you (unless you
> > wanted that screensaver :-)
>
> A good chunk of people in the beginning wanted an alternative to the very
> expensive unix flavors. The original people really didn't care about
> Microsoft. They wanted a free Unix clone - not a free windows clone.
>
> Once it started to hit more mainstream - right around 1.2.13 - people
> started to see it as a Windows alternative, but things were still pretty
> limited then. But even as far back as that people were using it to make
> money. I can bet you that on some oil tank fields there are still some
> 486 PC104 controller/monitoring boards running 1.2.13. I'm saying to you
> that doing almost everything with linux was about money for a great
> majority of the engineers out there.
>
>
>
> Sidenote: The fact of the matter is that if you can't make it profitable
> for companies to install it and ship it and put it into the stores then
> they aren't even going to look at it and the end consumer won't ever be
> exposed. In addition, you try to sell him one of those units sitting on
> the shelf with linux and then you tell him that all those shelves with the
> software boxes behind him are off limits because "They don't run on
> Linux." He will go pale and never even give it a second thought. You
> will see linux go the way of OS/2. It was a great OS but people didn't
> buy it because there were no applications. I would like us not to repeat
> history because there is only going to be one shot at it. If it fails
> companies will be really skeptical to do it a second time. We still have
> many years to go before it will be ready to make an assault on the desktop
> for Joe User and I'd rather take that time to make it better instead of
> just talking about how great it is.
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> | Mark Bishop (mark@bish.net) | Computer Engineer |
> | 813.258.2390 | Network Engineer |
> | http://bish.net | Embedded Programmer |
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Fri Aug 01 2014 - 18:46:33 EDT