Replies

"But isn't that what's great about open source? You can pick and choose what you want, and not have anything forced on you (*cough*Internot Exploder*cough*)."

Internet Explorer is forced on no one. If someone makes the free choice to purchase and install Windows or a computer pre-loaded with Windows, then by now they know that Internet Explorer comes with it.

"There are a variety of browser choices for Linux, just as an example."

There are also a variety for Windows.

"There's Konqueror, Mozilla 1.6, Mozilla Firefox 0.8, etc."

Konqueror is a bad browser, it came pre-loaded ("forced" upon me!) with KDE on the SuSE Linux distribution I have installed on my computer. And whats this about Konqueror intergrating itself at various points of the visual interface? I thought when Microsoft did that it was bad, so what about now?

"For Windows...well Mozilla runs on Windows...but they still haven't broken into the market. "

So? Windows users have the free choice to use Mozilla if they wish, no one at Microsoft is preventing them from installing it. Because it hasn't "broken into the market," doesn't mean any wrongdoing on Microsoft's part. Internet Explorer is a great browser - thats why it has the market share it does.

"The install was completely painless, and it comes with enough programs to get you off and running. "

The install for my SuSE Linux was also completely painless, but the pre-installed applications (all forced upon me!) are mostly low quality, IMHO.

"Let the mindless use Windows, and everyone else can choose an alternate."

So those who choose Windows are mindless? What utter nonsense. I have both Windows XP and Linux on my PC. I am a fairly technical person and I find myself using Linux only to learn Linux, and using Windows to get things done.

(snip)So those who choose Windows are mindless? What utter nonsense. I have both Windows XP and Linux on my PC. I am a fairly technical person and I find myself using Linux only to learn Linux, and using Windows to get things done.(snip)

I like you.I have two PCs networked together and use Dos6.2 Win98, and XP.I started to install Linux but the fact that it didn't have a simple install program bugged me and I still can't think of a legitimate reason to have it.

Internet Explorer is forced on no one. If someone makes the free choice to purchase and install Windows or a computer pre-loaded with Windows, then by now they know that Internet Explorer comes with it.

That avoids the question. They have purposely intengrated it into the operating system for the sole purpose of crushing Netscape and other browsers. I believe a gentleman from Australia made a program that could cull the program out of Windows, but I think MS either bought him out or sued him into submission.

The whole question of being "forced on someone" recalls the whole Windows preloading debacle. Becoming a defacto standard by prearranging deals with OEMs is hardly what I would call a popular choice. It is analogous to saying that if Yugos were given away with each house sale, that Yugos were the popular choice of homeowners. If you had a free car, regardess of its suspect reliability, wouldn't it be taken and used in lieu of a car you had to go out and buy separately? And remember when they deliberately put code into early versions of Windows to make it so an MSDOS competitor, DRDOS, would not work with Windows?

The install for my SuSE Linux was also completely painless, but the pre-installed applications (all forced upon me!) are mostly low quality, IMHO.

Most of the apps that come with Windows are pretty low quality too. Try out StarOffice for the quality you want. I believe that most of the provided apps can be unselected on a custom install. To be sure, a comparison of proprietary Windows and the many flavors of open source Linux isn't quite an apples and apples comparison at the "forced on" level. With IBM, Sun, and others, Linux will be a viable and powerful competitor to MS, that will do more via competition to improve both products that any MS monopoly would. You simply have to look at the AMD/Intel competition to see that.

With all due respect, don't put anything past MS.