Will Unix-based operating systems overtake the M$ Windows monopoly someday?

[Panag]

hi ,


Q ; [....]


A ; yes

have a nice day

[optimus2861]

Originally posted by elijah
I think MS has a bright future, but not in operating systems, they should stick to what they do best, namely making software apps.

Actually, the vast majority of MS's revenues come from Windows and Office sales. Nothing else even comes close, and many of MS's attempts to expand outward from those two monopolies have been money-losers. XBox, for example, is estimated to cost MS $100 on every unit sold, and hasn't caught on outside North America. MS has also been almost totally unable to get in on cell phone software; their first couple cracks at a cell phone OS were bug-ridden and have won them no allies in that market.

The harder MS pushes privacy-invading and untrustworthy schemes like Product Activation and "Trusted Computing", the more they change their licensing schemes to ass-rape their customers by forcing them to MS-dictated upgrade schedules, and the more they try to tie future products to their Windows monopoly, the more that Linux will trickle its way into general acceptance. MS Office will find itself on much more precarious ground as open-source alternatives mature, such as OpenOffice and the recently-begun Exchange-compatible project.

MS will still be king of the hill for a good decade, especially with that mammoth hoard of cash they're sitting on. After that, hard to say.

[Asher]

OS/2 has a better chance of overtaking MS than Unix ever does.

Actually, the vast majority of MS's revenues come from Windows and Office sales. Nothing else even comes close, and many of MS's attempts to expand outward from those two monopolies have been money-losers. XBox, for example, is estimated to cost MS $100 on every unit sold, and hasn't caught on outside North America.

The Xbox lost $100 on every unit sold when it was launched two years ago, costs have come down considerably since then (to the tune of 150-170 bucks), which means MS is only losing about 30-50 bucks per unit. Interestingly, they make 50 bucks for every Halo copy sold alone...

And the Xbox has caught on everywhere but Japan. It's dethroned Nintendo in every market except Japan.

The harder MS pushes privacy-invading and untrustworthy schemes like Product Activation and "Trusted Computing"

The term is "Trustworthy Computing", and you obviously haven't the faintest clue what it is if you think it's "privacy-invading". I can't say that I'm surprised, though, most people who waste their time railing MS haven't a clue about much.

And the reason I haven't posted is because I spent the weekend at the SO's house drinking, partying, and having lots of fun.
Obviously more fun than the people in this thread have had, that's for sure.

[Asher]

Originally posted by elijah
I think Linux will overtake MS and Unix, obviously first on servers, especially with the impending release of 2.6.x kernel, which will be superior to even 4.4BSD.

Why do you say obviously first on servers?

5% of new Windows Server 2003 installs are Linux people migrating to Windows.

As for the upcoming 2.6.x kernel, I give it about a year and a half to two years before it is considered actually "stable". Remember the 2.4.x launch? Pathetic, it was.

[mrmitchell]

Linux is a four-course feast that you have to make yourself. It will be very rewarding but you can't possibly hope to do it all correctly.

Windows is McDonald's. You don't have to do anything yourself but it's not that much better than dog ****.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Mr. Nice Guy


That's what I mean. Apolyton is the perfect place for these thugs.

I respect Ming and the other moderators for the work that they do here; I just wish that they would enforce the rules more. Then the Poly Forums would become a much more civilized destination on the Net.

All forums either die down to about half a dozen people, or have lots of what you call "thugs" or have a bunch of "moderators" with no life who constantly have to read everything and slap wrists with rulers. Then the thugs make DL's, or play other games.

The ignore button is a nice feature. And I don't want to read every word of every post and treat everyone like it's a first grade class and little Johnny isn't being polite to little Suzy, so he gets a mark off for citizenship. In other words, it's up to everyone hear to deal with the little stuff, and we'll bother stepping in when it's big enough or interesting enough to warrant busting a few heads. (Think "beat cop" not moderator. Then you'll have a much more accurate picture of the job. )

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by mrmitchell
Linux is a four-course feast that you have to make yourself. It will be very rewarding but you can't possibly hope to do it all correctly.

Windows is McDonald's. You don't have to do anything yourself but it's not that much better than dog ****.

Complete nonsense. The majority of computing $$$ is in commercial systems, and Linux completely misses that boat. Yes, I want to hire a C programmer to do a one-off custom device driver for an $1300.00 data acquisition board that I'm going to use precisely once in my industrial process. Then I can maybe get the same programmer to write another device driver for the different $900.00 DA board that goes somewhere else in my process. Maybe they'll both even work, and by some miracle, won't cause an issue with other Linux versions or other hardware products I might add later.

Or I can just run NT/2k/XP/2k3 boxes, and find twenty times the available DA boards for less money, all with prebuilt device drivers. Gee, I wonder which one makes more commercial sense.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Wraith

Still, they've been kind of shooting themselves in the foot lately. A good chunk of the places I know of that are considering more *nix stuff are doing so because of Microsoft's latest licensing scheme.
This will help alleviate the problem above, btw. If more people end up using it at work, they'll get used to the problems of the UI, just like they have with Windows.

Yeah, that's what I've been hearing too. People seem to be really pissed off with MS's support for their products. For them Linux isn't perfect but it's good enough and much cheaper.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

This is the former 'Cloud9' reporting in after a long day on the lake. As you can see I have a new username. Hope everyone likes it. You'll know more about what this entails later.

Standby for a signature change to take place sometime in the near future!

[Agathon]

No more Mr Nice Guy, huh?

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Originally posted by Agathon
No more Mr Nice Guy, huh?

[Asher]

Originally posted by Agathon
People seem to be really pissed off with MS's support for their products. For them Linux isn't perfect but it's good enough and much cheaper.

Aye, the corportations sure are getting the shaft with support for MS.

I mean, MS even has **** like they can replicate an entire corporation/organization's computer network within a week and run the Windows 2003 code on it and test for interoperability problems. If there are any, software engineers for Win2K3 are on-site and fix it immediately. Did I mention that service is free?

What crap support.

They'd be far better off with Linux, where they can just cross their fingers and hope everything works alright. Then go find someone familiar with that code, find someone to write new stuff, etc.



It doesn't get much better than MS' Corporate support. Why do you think so many corporations keep buying Windows over *nix? TCO for Windows tends to be lower since it's so widespread and has one unified corporation behind the support rather than thousands of freelance people.

[Cruddy]

Originally posted by optimus2861

Actually, the vast majority of MS's revenues come from Windows and Office sales. Nothing else even comes close, and many of MS's attempts to expand outward from those two monopolies have been money-losers. XBox, for example, is estimated to cost MS $100 on every unit sold, and hasn't caught on outside North America...

I've got news for you Optimus - everybody loses money on console hardware sales. Sony, Ninetendo, and Sega when they played the game.

You lose money on the hardware, and you rake it in with the software.

At current rates, MS could keep losing money on X-boxs for decades... and it still wouldn't affect their overall performance.

To make serious inroads with the Xbox though, they have to get the software base - and to get that, they have to woo the games houses into developing X-box titles.

That costs money.

It's not a question of X-box winning, it's more a case of taking 2nd place from Nintendo - sounds impossible? Well, Nintendo don't make money outside of consoles, so it's really just a matter of time... and MS deciding that the game is worth the candle.

I doubt the X-Box will oust PS2, but hey, I've been wrong before.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Ok, if you look to the left of this post you will find a new and interesting clue!

More later. . .

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Cruddy
it's more a case of taking 2nd place from Nintendo - sounds impossible? Well, Nintendo don't make money outside of consoles,

Pokemon & Gameboy.