[GRLUG] Linux use

[Bob Kline]

On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 1:42 PM, Michael Mol <mikemol at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 1:38 PM, Dagny Scott <parsleyfirefly at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > The only way I see any of this changing is specialized software moving to
> > the Web. We've already seen this somewhat with some CRM software moving
> to
> > the web, but this will have varying degrees of success depending on the
> > industry.
> > Dagny
>
> And what we're talking about, here, is the commoditization of the
> desktop. At that point, there will be little practical difference
> between Linux, Windows or Macs, and I'm trying hard to feel the rabid
> advocate zest I used to feel here. It's just not coming to me.
>
>

There's the little detail that windoz
comes on about 400M new machines
each year, costs $45 or so, and there's
little practical way around it unless you
roll your own, which is a small number
of PC users compared to 400M.

If OS X, windoz, and Linux, merge in
the way you suggest, and it seems
to be happening, then the fiscal choice
would be Linux - free in the dollar sense.
Apple and M$ will of course not take
kindly to that.  Apple could wave the
OS fee, but it would leave M$ with nothing.
I could hope will in fact happen, but don't
count on M$ taking it lying down.

But then what can it do?  Commodity boxes,
which are essentially here, and a copy of
Linux with all the basic software, is tough
to compete.  M$ did rattle a saber a while
back that it had something like 200 patents
that it could use to sue anyone using Linux,
but who knows how far that would take it....

    -- Bob

-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://shinobu.grlug.org/pipermail/grlug/attachments/20110826/38ff31bd/attachment.html>