don't want to do Linux. Indeed, some of the commentary at the event related to Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and its vulnerability when it comes to large business and government accounts because: Posted on 05/02/2006 5:49:36 AM PDT by ShadowAce
2008 will be a critical year for Apple, Microsoft, and the Linux contingent. If Apple can't significantly expand its presence by then in the PC market it is likely going to be finished with this segment. Its likely path in that case will be to focus more aggressively on the consumer electronics market it currently dominates.
I mentioned last week that I was planning to attend the Linspire-sponsored Linux Desktop Summit where the discussion would include reasons the folks who build PCs don't want to do Linux. Indeed, some of the commentary at the event related to Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and its vulnerability when it comes to large business and government accounts because:
There was also a lot of discussion about what Linux should become, with some of the most interesting commentary coming from Geoffrey Moore, author of "Crossing the Chasm," who was right on in stating that Linux is going in the wrong direction with respect to the desktop.
There was little mention of the Mac OS at the conference, yet, given the success of Linux against Unix (the Mac OS has Unix at its core) you would think that platform might make a better first target for Linux than Windows would.
It was as fascinating to learn that Moore was an avid Linux supporter as it was to learn that he felt strongly it was on the wrong path for the desktop. He went into great detail as to how he felt that Microsoft was, like many of the large companies that hire him to consult, a dinosaur trying unsuccessfully to be fast moving and trendy again. He clearly felt that the company was vulnerable -- but not to Linux, considering what this system's desktop path seems to be.
Moore pointed out that things move slowly and that a good place to look for ideas for future products is among kids and young people -- and what they are currently using. Today kids are using devices like cell phones and iPods, often juggling several gadgets running at once. These devices are not all-in-ones, rather they're specialized to whatever the user wants to do. In short, they're nearly the opposite of what Windows currently is. What does that mean? It means Windows might be a poor model for future products. Future products probably won't be running on anything that looks like today's Windows.
All of this reminded me of the way in which Windows came about. Back in the 1980s, IBM's (NYSE: IBM) dominance was based on mainframes, and this firm was more powerful in its day than Microsoft is today. Companies like Fujitsu, Hitachi (NYSE: HIT) and Digital tried to make a better mainframe product than IBM. Digital even changed its name to "DEC" so it kind of looked like "IBM." Several firms actually attempted to steal IBM's proprietary technology so they could build competing products that they'd offer at lower prices.
Often people seem to think that just because they can sell something cheaper they have a major competitive advantage. For software, in particular, price is just one factor -- but it's often far from the most compelling.
As a result of focusing intently on price and IBM these folks fought over about 10 percent of the market. Some were successful in peripherals or emerging markets, but IBM actually remained dominant in mainframes.
In contrast, Microsoft, Dell (Nasdaq: DELL), and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) grew, not by making a better mainframe, but by helping to create and ride the next wave, personal computers. This was a wave Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) started but couldn't ride itself. IBM couldn't move fast enough, often crippled its own products to protect existing revenue streams and recently exited the PC market after admitting it couldn't compete.
For the Linux set, focusing on Microsoft and Windows might mean those players will mirror the experiences of IBM's traditional competitors like Digital and face a similar end. To win, they need to focus not on where the market was, but where it is going, and they should do everything in their power to get there first even if that means finding a way to partner with Microsoft.
Shortly after the show last week I saw this post on the Groklaw Web site which advocates a boycott of Linux distributions and the hardware vendors who use them when FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) rules are not followed to the letter. This smacks of religious elitism -- and boycotts scare the hell out of hardware vendors, IT buyers, and consumers alike. As a result I have to wonder if it is even possible for Linux proponents to stop the infighting long enough to even think about the future, let alone get there first.
No one seems to talk much about Apple Leopard, the next version of the Mac OS. This is primarily because Apple, unlike Microsoft, is not talking about this next generation platform publicly. Based on comments by Apple chief Steve Jobs it was slated to roll out about the same time as Vista originally was, but if what I'm reading is right, it too has run into problems and won't show up until late 2007. This OS was largely modeled after what Vista was going to be. However, unlike Microsoft, Apple did not cut features to make the 2006 date, a date that Microsoft has now missed anyway. As result, Leopard may look a lot like what Vista was promised to be and, based on how Apple developed the iPod, it may also be capable of building a media center offering that works.
One of the interesting features expected to be included in Leopard is a true hardware virtualization layer, probably at least partially leveraging Intel's (Nasdaq: INTC) LG technology which should be nearly fully cooked by that time. Virtualization was supposed to be included in Windows Vista but it too slipped out of the product. As many have pointed out, virtualization could be a vastly more palatable way to gain Windows compatibility than Apple's Boot Camp now is.
One lesson that may come out of this is that removing a feature to make a deadline is a bad idea because there are dependencies that break -- and this breakage can dramatically reduce, if not eliminate, the time savings such a decision was expected to create. In addition, it makes the product look crippled -- and crippled products don't sell well. If the right people observe and learn this lesson it may result in better and timelier software products going forward from a lot of companies.
Despite all this, if this Leopard vs. Vista scenario plays out this will place the most competitive Mac OS in history -- on aggressively designed Intel based hardware -- against what may be the most competitively exposed Microsoft desktop OS since Windows Millennium Edition in the market, in the fourth quarter of 2007.
If Apple can't at least double its small share during this unique event it should abandon the Mac OS as a dead end, because this kind of opportunity will never come again.
If it does double share, which it could do by cutting a broad swath through the consumer market with a well designed media center-like product, it could dramatically change the market and remind the Linux folks that the desktop isn't about FOSS -- it's about selling the products consumers want to buy.
2008 will be a critical year for Apple, Microsoft, and the Linux contingent. If Apple can't significantly expand its presence by then in the PC market it is likely going to be finished with this segment. Its likely path in that case will be to focus more aggressively on the consumer electronics market it currently dominates.
If the Linux set can't get over its internal problems it will be bypassed, likely by something else that better blends proprietary and open source components into solutions that more accurately meet the emerging needs for appliance-like products real people want to buy. If Microsoft can't find a way to become agile and customer focused again it will clearly be on the long slow path that IBM blazed -- and that Sun is already reaching the end of.
There is potential for 2008 to be a year of change, both positive and negative, for Microsoft, Apple and Linux. This is history in the making for all three entities and we are getting a chance to witness it.
The outcome will have a great deal to do with the quality of the decisions all parties make this year. The first decision all should make is to focus unwaveringly on their customers -- if they can figure out who they really are. Of the three entities, the only one that appears to clearly understands this, so far, is Apple. 
should be able to, not sure how good the Mepis 3.4 is im using the Mepis 6 beta1. you can get it from distrowatch.com but like i said i'd wait for the newer version due out tomorrow(Mepis6 beta2).
Don't forget the preliminaries, from your link.
1. Install the lates wine,
2. Download and install firefox windows version
3. On firefox download the extension MediaPlayerConnectivity
https://addons.mozilla.org/extension...nfo.php?id=446
4. Go to the Macromedia site and install flash
5. Using your favorite editor, make file mplayer.exe and cut and paste this to it
#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/mplayer -really-quiet -nojoystick -nofs -zoom -vo xv,x11 -ao esd,alsa,oss,arts,null -osdlevel 0 $1 </dev/null
It said:
You were corrected on this by someone not long ago. Already forgot?
in response to what I said:
OTOH, running dual head with either separate desktops (my personal preference) or with one desktop spanning both monitors rocks. Windows will do dual heads, but I don't think you can get dual desktops without third party tools.
The troll's reading comprehension is lacking.
The tool you recommend is a poor substitute for a real window manager. As described on microsoft's site:
Virtual Desktop Manager
Manage up to four desktops from the Windows taskbar with this PowerToy.
As I've said previously, I regularly use 8 virtual desktops. In the dual head setup I described above, I was talking about two separate desktops running on one computer. I'm not just talking multiple virtual desktops. At the moment, my dual head setup has two desktops, that you can copy and paste across, each with 8 separate virtuals.
Do that with windows, take a picture, and get back to me troll.
I was responding to what you posted, not to what you now claim you were thinking.
Tech BUMP - for read later
I'm running vncserver and viewer between a windows laptop and a Ultra 20-x86 dual-booting Solaris 10 and Fedora Core 4. It's cool but have had a problem getting x2vnc (virtual viewer) to run on my Sun box, so i can manipulate my laptop...
Naw, it says you can play it in native Linux by changing a simple Mplayer setting. Should be no problem...I did it in 30 seconds, don't even need to have Wine or Firefox for Windows installed.
Sure you did. See #67.
Besides, who wants to have to tweak a bunch of crap just to watch baseball? If you want to use Linux, at least use it for something it's good at. I know that's limited, but multimedia is Linux at its worst. Did you notice how the author said Linux on the desktop may even be completely out of the picture in a few years? All it would take is a solid GUI for Solaris clients. You do know what platform runs MLB.COM don't you?
http://mlb.mlb.com/images/masthead/mlb_sun_logo.gif
"Sure you did. See #67."
Um...I got my information from the link in 67, moron.
Maybe YOU should see #67, because you apparently flew off the handle again and posted without reading. Typical of you, though.
"Besides, who wants to have to tweak a bunch of crap just to watch baseball?"
I guess copying and pasting a single line is beyond you. Regardless, I forgot...I should learn about Linux from a guy who doesn't even know what Yum or Synaptic are, rather than believing what I have experienced myself.
You're a joke. From now on, stick to all the leftist things you know something about, like your buddy Stallman for whom you advertise all the time, your UN gods that you'd love us to sell out our national autonomy to appease, and Planned Parenthood, whom you tirelessly defend.
Mepis is good too. All the software in it is not "free"; it does include some proprietary apps, such as Java, Flash, RealPlayer and Adobe Reader. Some software in MEPIS does not respect the Debian Free Software Guidelines.
But, you can still download it at no cost. It has excellent hardware detection and is one of the easiest Linuxes (Linuxi?) to use. Echo Talon has almost talked me into downloading the brand new 6.0 version, which is still in beta (apparently, it's really good).
If you want Linux for an older computer, Zenwalk is a good one. I have it on a laptop right now that I use primarily as an Internet radio...433 mhz, 196 mb of ram. It's got a built in JBL sound system and actually sounds very good for having puny laptop speakers. Boots in under a minute and is extra stable (the thing crashed frequently with Win98, and XP barely ran on it).
Anyway, my two cents.
"Do that with windows, take a picture, and get back to me troll."
haha!
I don't know if Apple would abaondon the computer industry. If anything, if Mac OS X fails to gain ground, I figure Apple would just drop all support of OS X in favor of Windows, basically becoming just another Wintel machine but have Apple's line of productivity software (iTunes, iPhoto, iLife, Garageband, etc.) and Apple's web browser (can't recall the name at this moment) pre-installed on all Apple PCs.
I think if MS keeps screwing up like they've been doing lately, then we could see a push for either Mac OS X being ported to Wintel machines such as Dell, HP, etc.; or a wider adoption of an easy-to-use Linux distro such as Xandros, Ubuntu, or Linspire. The latter could be interesting because when Linspire announced Freespire, they also announced that CNR (Click N Run) will now be open-sourced for other distros, which means CNR can now be officially ported over to rival Linux distros such as Xandros and Ubuntu. So the rumors of CNR being ported to Ubuntu were partially true.
I use it on all my computers. WinXP is UG-LEE.
It depends. Spaghetti code hits that point way earlier. Systems that are built up from distinct modules, such that the parts only interact in a few well-defined interfaces can grow fairly large, because each part stays understandable, and the whole can be seen from a high level
Windows seems more like the the former than the latter. You have parts that send out filaments that entwine themselves around the testicles of other parts, etc. For example, Internet Explorer code should not have been embedded into the OS
There comes a point where you just have to scrap the old system and start over with a clean design. And that won't happen with Windows
I started using Linux in 2004 with Linspire and Xandros. I now have Xandros 3.0.2 OCE on my laptop (planning on getting Xandros 3.0.2 Business Edition to put on the laptop) and on the desktop as well. I'm downloading the latest Linspire ISO (version 5.1.427) and I'm gonna try that out on the desktop once I get it burned to a CD.
I was responding to what you posted, not to what you now claim you were thinking.
The only person who apparently had trouble with comprehending was the troll. So, Once AGAIN...
I said:
"running dual head with either separate desktops (my personal preference)"
Like I said, if you can do that with windows, take a picture and post it.
Unfortunately, I don't know much about VNC at all anymore, though I used to use it years ago when I supported lots of windows systems. Hadn't even heard of x2vnc.
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