Posted on 11/13/2006 1:51:43 PM PST by bigdcaldavis
Anyone can tell you an interesting story, but when it comes to Microsoft and Novells recent deal Linux enthusiasts around the world have more than a couple up their sleeves.
Microsoft has a long history at killing competition. They started with Novells Server market, they tried to do with Java, and today they are trying to do it against the Anti-Virus vendors. They succeeded against Netscape, gained significant grounds against Sonys Playstation, and killed a thousand other products that I cant name because I forgot about them after Microsoft obliterated them out of the market. If any of you are XBox lovers, I dont have to tell you that in the war over consoles Microsoft has been losing money on every XBox it sells. Zune (the competition to iPod) is said to have a similar strategy. In short Microsoft has a huge bank balance and can pump in a lot of money until the competition goes bankrupt.
As a result of this announcement its not a surprise that the Linux world is almost up in arms against Novell for giving in for a few pieces of silver. I on the other hand have a different prespective on it.
* Microsoft isnt interested in suing anyone (anytime soon atleast) because of its Vista launch schedule and the tricky negotiations going on in Europe * SCO has already tried the same FUD which Microsoft is accused of trying. In fact if you remember Microsoft had licensed SCO unix in a similar deal which was indirectly used to fund SCOs battle against IBM/Linux * Most of the other visible products Microsoft has went after till now have been markets where Microsoft didnt really have a foothold. Linux is one of the very few unique products which started up as a competitor to Microsoft has has gradually increased in popularity over the years. [Firefox/Mozilla is the other one which I admire] * The other interesting point to note is that unlike most other commercial vendors who got nailed by Microsofts pump and dump strategy, Linux is not a commercial entity which can go bankrupt. They can kill Novell, but it will be very hard for them to kill the whole linux movement.
My personal analysis is that Microsoft is afraid.
* Its so afraid of loosing this battle that in its moment of desperation its ready to do anything short of launching a Microsoft branded Linux distribution. * The Financial deal Microsoft and Novell signed has a few hints of where this might be heading. * To begin with its clear both of them want to integrate each others OS using each others technology to provide a better virtualization experience. * Its also clear that though Novell might use significant portions of proprietary Microsoft technology (for example for authentication, authorization and accounting) Microsoft will mostly be using GNU code to which Novell doesnt have any rights anyway. * So why is Microsoft paying Novell ? * And whats the deal with 240 million dollars for linux license subscription cost ? What is it going to do with that many copies of linux distribution ? * Oh wait, they could embed it into your Microsoft operating system ? Have you ever thought which distribution of Linux you would use if your Microsoft OS copy you already have, has a Linux distribution pre-bundled with it? * Novell also mentions that it will pay Microsoft a minimum amount of licensing fees, which can increase depending on its own sales. So may be it will sell Windows as well who knows. But it will sell something with at least some part of Microsoft code in it. * Finally based on my personal opinion (with no understanding of financial details) it almost looks like Microsoft has kind of bought a share of Novells company and wants a piece of the action every year. * May be Microsoft is going to announce something even much more significant which will dramatically increase Novells sales. May be Novell is an investment after all not just a pump-and-dump target.
My thought process finally took me to the one place I didnt want to go Its the thought that Microsoft will soon bundle Suse linux with one of its own products.
Coming back to the discussion on whether we should abandon Suse or not, I personally think it doesnt matter as long as Microsoft is not trying to kill it. Stop acting like a 5 year old kid who doesnt like the big guys. If anything, you should be excited about more commercial support behind your favourite OS. And if they really do bundle Suse with every Desktop/Server OS thats exactly what I wanted when I joined the revolution. Linux on every desktop
I have said this before, and Ill continue to say it that Im not opposed to Microsoft Linux as long as others can innovate and keep Microsoft on its toes.
"I once had a friend who couldn't get the integrated wireless in his laptop to work. Knowing how these things go from experience, I started from the bottom and asked him to confirm that his laptop actually had integrated wireless. It didn't."
Now that's kinda funny. I installed the card myself...
:)
Under two bucks for a brand new wireless HP notebook? What a deal! GE would like to order 5,000 of them for his organization to replace their old Dells.
LOL! That would certainly make things difficult.
Outside of desktop publishing, where is Apple gaining ground? Is anyone running thier corporate infrastructure on Apple? By the way, many businesses that were running their prod site on Linux servers are now pulling out and going back to Windows, myself included. It is just too much trouble trying to find qualified people to support that infrastructure that aren't total PITA's to work with.
If there was a way to copy that and photoshop a picture of an Iggle on it.....
:)
hmmmmmmmmm.....
I don't believe Apple is gaining any ground in desktop publishing, especially since the big Adobe products aren't intel-native for the new Macs.
Their general marketshare went up far more than any other PC manufacturer in the last year. OS X gave Apple a solid BSD server and all the server software that comes with it. Apple just made it brain-dead easy to set up and administer at a very low cost (check out OS X Server unlimited client price vs. Windows 2003 Server 25 client). As far as clients, using their relatively cheap server software to manage thousands of clients (including remote assistance, monitoring and updates) is also brain-dead easy.
Is anyone running thier corporate infrastructure on Apple?
Yes. We have a FReeper who supports business installs on Mac and Windows, and admittedly doesn't make as much money for Mac service calls. Aside from that, Apple's servers are popular in supercomputing clusters due to their hardware, UNIX base and the supercomputing tools that Apple ships, which make setting up a cluster, again, brain-dead.
Can't, we don't know what he looks like.
Wait a minute...
LOL
Not what I was thinking, but damn that fits :)
LOL
Fits like a glove...
"As far as your specific printer issues, have you ever been able to get the domain admin folks to assist?"
Not yet. I've pretty much given up because I can access the web and have a laser printer attached. Since I only have to roll my chair 5 feet to get to the other computer, it's not really a problem.
I'm using Linux as a test station to for fun. What I have learned it 3+ years:
1. Even though people say Linux will run on anything newer than a 386, it doesn't. Not if you want a GUI. A cheap Athlon or Celeron will, however, work nicely.
2. Open Office will work as a substitute for Word and Excel in basic ways but doesn't handle some of the advanced stuff very well and has no Access type database component.
3. If you can't operate from a command prompt you won't be able to run Linux successfully. Fortunately for me, I perfer a dot prompt to a GUI interface in many cases. CP/M, DOS, DEC-10, Dbase and a few older operating systems are a great plus if you want to run Linux.
4. There's a lot of available documentation, but it is way too high level for beginners. If you don't know what IP means, you are in rough shape using your machine on a network.
5. Most Linux geeks are incapable of explaining even the simplest of Linux tasks to an non-Geek. They speak in jargon and abbreviations, assuming users are familiar with a wide array of utility programs and how to use them. Saying the word Samba to a Linux beginner might as well be Mandarin Chinese.
6. Too many flavors. This week's version of Linux won't be next week's fad. Ubuntu seems to be in right now and Fedora is out. This is not good for beginners. They don't understand or even recognize the difference between versions and often don't recognize the names of distributions of Linux. Most people think Ubuntu sounds a little obscene and don't want to ask what it is.
8. Doom doesn't run well on Linux. Gnome mahjong is fun. Firefox on Linux has trouble formatting some pages correctly.
9. New hardware often doesn't run on Linux for a long time.
For the time being at the desktop level, I'm pretty sure that Linux will remain an operating system for geeks.
Mark
It is simply an HP Laserjet 2000 connected to an XP workstation and shared by XP. I think it's a parallel interface, in fact. It has a cool infrared port that I used to use with my Toshiba laptop.
It doesn't have its own IP address. It works fine with all of my XP computers on the domain. I'm pretty sure it's not a printing problem at all. I have exhausted every fix for that possibility.
It is a knowledge/ignorance problem. Anybody who has had this problem before could solve it in 10 seconds. I just haven't met that person. I suspect that person will have to be a domain administrator at my college. My crappy little Linux box on an unauthorized hub is the least of their worries.
I'm going to junk the $199 WalMart special and replace it with a 2.8 Gig Intel box in a few weeks. I may bother the network people after that change.
OK guys... Which distribution should I install on the Intel box?
All of them! Disk space is cheap! :-)
Actually, If you have VMWare, I'd suggest you try out Knoppix, Kubuntu, Ubuntu, and Fedora Core6.
See which one you like best and go with it.
Of course not, I simply corrected you when you attempted to assert that if they claim to be Christian, they couldn't possiblhy be communist. Which is, of course, bogus, being a small group of misguideds are already well known as "Christian Communists". Guys who have named themselves after Ivan the Terrible Russian and Flaming Death are hardly believable retorts on either subject, either.
This is the point where I think the free market is screwed up. Capitalism is about competition, not annihilation. Olympic athletes compete to determine who is best. They aren't allowed to sneak around before the race trying to kill one another, winning the race simply because nobody is left to run.
Similarly, the benefits of capitalism arise from the forces of competition, and are decreased or eliminated as competition is decreased or eliminated. Competing companies must continually produce better products at a lower cost, or lose customers as a result. When they turn to strategies other than honest competition to stay in business, it throws a wrench in the works.
More and more, businesses don't seem to be interested in competing, but in eliminating competition by various means, destructive and cooperative.
The strategy of simply spending the competition into the ground because you have piles of cash is one that I find particularly unethical. It severely tilts the playing field, yielding victory not to the best product, nor to the most efficient producer, but to the one who can muster enough cash to cover all his inadequacies!
That's harmful to the market and to the consumer. It's anti-capitalist and should be illegal, IMO.
As opposed to something that swoops down and eats mice? BTW, which subspecies are you, the Russian Berkut?
BTW, Ivan's early reign was mostly quite positive.
Ah, Tanya Harding.
More and more, businesses don't seem to be interested in competing, but in eliminating competition by various means
One of the biggest old-time examples I can remember is the trucking industry, where the big trucking firms would undercut the independent truckers for hauls, even if they had to do it for free, in order to put the independents out of business.
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