MS & Linux - just some thoughts

[_xxx_]

With that Gentoo guy joining MS, do you think it would be possible for MS to pull off their own Linux distro? Kind of making it more Windows user friendly etc. and pushing it as a real alternative to Windows?

Just pure speculation on my part, but I think it wouldn't be a bad idea at all. What do you guys think?

 

[Frank]

Sure they can. But why would they? Windows is their prime milk cow.

On the other hand, they might try to hire Linux people to better understand what possibilities they might have to kill it.

 

[Saem]

MS could always do it, but why would they? It doesn't make sense, their strategies have been working for the most part. Even with Apple comming over to x86, it's not going to change things that much. The only thing that'll do is make it some what easier to build applications that work on both platforms, for instance Adobe is going to be very happy since they can drop their PPC tuning effort and pour it into x86.

If the hints as to what his job title are, are true, MS is merely getting an expert of the demographic, such that they can market to said demographic far more effectively. not to mention, his work for Gentoo is quite remarkable and there are some interesting technologies, policies and methodologies that MS might be interested in. Gentoo is much more than waiting for things to compile.

As for MS spinning out a Linux distro of their own, check out ReactOS, it's not MS' effort, but it gives you an idea of what's possible. That's all legitimately reverse engineered. Check the forums, last I heard, they had UT up and running, for at least a brief period of time.

MS is trying to get more jiggy with opensource, their (laughable) attempt with sharedsource is a start. But the thing most companies fail to realise is that OSS is more than a trend, people still see product where OSS wants to preach services.

 

[_xxx_]

Sure they can. But why would they? Windows is their prime milk cow.

On the other hand, they might try to hire Linux people to better understand what possibilities they might have to kill it.

They could as well find the idea of having two milk cows very exciting, or not?

And it would also give them the possibility to kill _other_ Linux distros, making them the "best" Linux, if they should be able to pull it off with a very nice package. Which would be very easy with all the menpower they have.

 

[hoom]

Not gonna happen due to the necessity of all that 'secret M$ code' having to be public.
Would be great to see a DirectX for Linux though

 

[PeterAce]

Linux at Microsoft, Part I :

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=65362

Linux at Microsoft, Part II :

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=66838

 

[PatrickL]

Not really related but I wonder why there are so many Linux distros? I see often people complaining that linux is not more widely adopted and supported. But don't you think that all theses distros with all the problems for drivers and software compatiblity are the biggest enemies for linux ?

 

[Saem]

There are a lot of different linux distros, but each of them serve different purposes, though there is a fair bit of overlap in the enterprise and desktop arena. But that's fine, this is what you'd want in a free market, many distributors compete for many consumer dollars.

 

[suryad]

I think MS can do no wrong right now...people will just keep using MS becasue they are used to it and they are going to keep accepting mediocre software from them becasue we are just too damn dependent on it and most people dont even know enuf about their computers to realize they have become spyware infested zombie machines. Linux will never go mainstream. It will remain the way it is right now...MS sucks but I still gotta use it if I wanna game.

 

[_xxx_]

Linux will never go mainstream.

And even if it does, it'll become a spyware infested zombie machine within 1-2 years.

 

[Saem]

The only thing keeping MS where it is is the fact that they have all your data hostage, and secondarily networks.

If the EU was remotely smart, they'd FORCE MS to open their formats and protocols to allow GPL or whatever else implementations without fear of ANY litigation.

This would mean no more hostage data or networks. Right now SAMBA is the only competition to MS' network technologies (others are largely minor) and in terms of data formats, anything can be supported because most OSS office suites aren't really far behind.

 

[PatrickL]

Look at what Norway announced yesterday All administrations Have to make plans to move to open format.

 

[Varg Vikernes]

The only thing keeping MS where it is is the fact that they have all your data hostage, and secondarily networks.

And I thought they make the best desktop OS and office suite. Silly me...

[quote[If the EU was remotely smart, they'd FORCE MS to open their formats and protocols to allow GPL or whatever else implementations without fear of ANY litigation.

This would mean no more hostage data or networks. Right now SAMBA is the only competition to MS' network technologies (others are largely minor) and in terms of data formats, anything can be supported because most OSS office suites aren't really far behind.[/quote]

SAMBA is a competition?? SAMBA is a reverse engineered Microsoft's networking system. Most OSS office suites?? I only know of one, Open Office and it lacks behind Office hard for anything more then writing your essey. And you do know Office supports saving as XML with full documentation? As if that's not enough Office 12 will default save to XML formats (.docx, .xmlx,...) with full documentation. Or if you dislike that you could save to a PDF...

Not really related but I wonder why there are so many Linux distros? I see often people complaining that linux is not more widely adopted and supported. But don't you think that all theses distros with all the problems for drivers and software compatiblity are the biggest enemies for linux ?

There are some valid reasons to this, but the most common is because 'you are able to'. There are like 300 distros and only 10 of them are widely used. And those 10 are built on 3 base distros (Debian, RedHat and Slackware). As for your second question; the kernel is mostly the same with some tweaks so there's not much driver problems, because of that. But there are problems for developers for making different packages for each distro (nearly).

MS is trying to get more jiggy with opensource, their (laughable) attempt with sharedsource is a start. But the thing most companies fail to realise is that OSS is more than a trend, people still see product where OSS wants to preach services.

Someone once said: "Being able to read other people's source code is a nice thing, not a fundamental freedom." Take it as it's written.

 

[Frank]

SAMBA is a competition?? SAMBA is a reverse engineered Microsoft's networking system.

Did you ever map a remote drive under Linux/Unix? You can even decide where you want to have it. Just make a directory somewhere and mount any drive at that point instead.

Drive letters?

And the only reason why Word is considered better than Abi Word or OpenOffice, is because people complain that they cannot find the button they want. Ever made a multi page table in Word, and tried to change things afterwards? Did it work? And there are much more things Microsoft Word is totally unable to do. At all.

If the value of software was determined on other criteria than just "I tried to push the button, but it wasn't there! HELP! What do I do next?", Word would lose big time.

 

[Varg Vikernes]

Did you ever map a remote drive under Linux/Unix? You can even decide where you want to have it. Just make a directory somewhere and mount any drive at that point instead.

Drive letters?

Wow! http://www.microsoft.com/resources/...all/proddocs/en-us/dm_modify_access_path.mspx

And the only reason why Word is considered better than Abi Word or OpenOffice, is because people complain that they cannot find the button they want. Ever made a multi page table in Word, and tried to change things afterwards? Did it work? And there are much more things Microsoft Word is totally unable to do. At all.

If you'd compared Word to Write I'd might even give you some links, but AbiWord...

If the value of software was determined on other criteria than just "I tried to push the button, but it wasn't there! HELP! What do I do next?", Word would lose big time.

I thought the costumer determes the value of software? And I don't see any large company using Open Office over Word, Blender over Maya/Lightwave, etc. Those open source projects that actually _are_ better than other (closed source) are beeing used widely (Firefox, Apache,...).
Next you'll tell me KDevelop is better then VS.

 

[Saem]

Varg, you seem uninformed.

Samba is actually a superior implementation, there have been a fair number of tests and on the same hardware, samba scales twice as high.

Word isn't that great and in terms of usability it's never going to win any awards, the only thing it has is familiarity. If all you know of is OO then you don't know the competition.

As for Office's up comming formats. Seems you don't know much in this area either. Those formats will be documented and available under a license under which that information is available forbids GPL implementations. Seems, you don't understand much about XML, because it's not just the fact that it's XML, you still don't know what valid schemas are let alone what it means. Reverse engineering schemas is a not non-trivial task

Again, MS' advantage is solely holding data and secondarily networks hostage.

 

[Varg Vikernes]

Varg, you seem uninformed.

Samba is actually a superior implementation, there have been a fair number of tests and on the same hardware, samba scales twice as high.

I never said the opposite. I only said it is a rev-eng MS' network.

Word isn't that great and in terms of usability it's never going to win any awards, the only thing it has is familiarity. If all you know of is OO then you don't know the competition.

OO looks and feels almost exactly like MS Office. What is so usable in Writer? That the page cannot be centered? Btw, enlighten me on other open source office suites as I don't know the competition.

As for Office's up comming formats. Seems you don't know much in this area either. Those formats will be documented and available under a license under which that information is available forbids GPL implementations.

I never said it will be compatible with GPL. I said they will be open. GPL is not the only open source license (it is probably the only one MS doesn't like), even the old BSD license, one of the 'most free', is incompatible with GPL. The format is open, that's what I said. StarOffice, for one, will support it.

edit: It seems you don't quite understand what the Office XML format really is, so I took some time to provide you with some links.

http://nfocentrale.net/orcmid/blog/2005/06/microsoft-ox-vs-oasis-od-is-it-really.asp
http://nfocentrale.net/orcmid/blog/2005/06/heavy-lifting-toward-open-formats-in.asp
http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2005/06/13/428655.aspx
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1829356,00.asp

 

[hoom]

They got a patent for it in my country :?

 

[Blazkowicz]

Did you ever map a remote drive under Linux/Unix? You can even decide where you want to have it. Just make a directory somewhere and mount any drive at that point instead.

Drive letters?

You can do the same under windows too. but for non-zealots, drive letters are good!

 

[Saem]

I never said it will be compatible with GPL. I said they will be open. GPL is not the only open source license (it is probably the only one MS doesn't like), even the old BSD license, one of the 'most free', is incompatible with GPL. The format is open, that's what I said. StarOffice, for one, will support it.

GPL, LGPL and Apache are basically the only important licenses, if we're talking opensource applications and libraries; moreover, the OSS desktop. Yes, I know F/OSS!=L/GPL, but for the majority of OSS it does mean that. And in the case of say KOffice, Gnumeric, Abiword... it's very important.

Basically, this "openness" is a load of horse crap, because it looks open, but if you scope out the competition, it hinders significantly. Again, this still doesn't change the fact that MS has your data hostage.