[CS-FSLUG] What Vista means to Linux
Nathan T.
celerate at gmail.com
Sun Sep 30 00:54:24 CDT 2007
I've seen a lot of people saying that Vista is a flop, I've seen the
same things said when Windows XP hit the market and for the same
reasons. A lot of people see the phase between Vista and it's successor
as an opportunity for Linux, but the door has actually been open for
longer than that, Microsoft simply opened the door wider by making
Windows XP harder to get. In this time where Windows was (and continues
to be) vulnerable I haven't seen Linux make any notable gains, in fact
lately it's been pretty quiet besides the usual progress and claims that
20xx will be the year of the Linux desktop.
I chose to move from Windows XP to Vista on the grounds that customers
keep asking what the feature differences are and I am frequently asked
whether or not it's worth "upgrading". I have been using it for a few
months and I think the biggest flop for Vista is actually the third
parties *caugh*Apple*caugh* who either haven't put effort into making
their products Vista compatible, or even seem to intentionally leave
annoyances in their products for Windows. Microsoft does deserve two
thirds of the blame though, they broke compatibility with a significant
number of network devices and introduced the plague that is UAC so that
deleting a file and emptying out the recycle bin would involve several
different confirmation dialogs.
Getting back to Linux's opportunity, I don't think it would mean
anything until some software producing third parties that make products
for your everyday desktop users show real interest; the open source
community has had at least decade to challenge problems like buggy
multimedia codecs, network incompatibility with the very same NAS
devices Windows Vista won't talk to, and attracting third party
developers. I've seen a lot of focus go into improving parts of Linux
that your average desktop user won't see, some of that is more important
such as driver development; but, amid all the victory cries and
contentment of OSS advocates with Linux, I don't see it winning any
ground in the next few years except with those who already share the
ideology of open source and make up a small minority. Vista will be a
boon for Linux, but it won't be a big victory like some people imagine.
What are your thoughts on this?
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