Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Linux don't blink

Author:--
Posted:7/3/1999; 9:06:22 PM
Topic:scriptingNews outline for 7/2/99
Msg #:8146 (In response to 8144)
Prev/Next:8145 / 8147

I think, the wrongest move of the "current" MS strategy to Linux is that they see an enemy. Microsoft is a great company which knows how to beat their competitors. They have done it to Lotus, to Apple, and recently to Netscape (yes, you can say Netscape screwed up themselves, but MS's friendliness to Web developer when they haven'y won the browser war was definitely a strategy -- just a strategy). But this time, there's really no enemy -- a better way to say it is, there is no competitor. The users of Linux, at least right up to now, are mostly Linux developers. You can develop a strategy to beat business competitors, but you can't beat users. The harder MS beat them, they moved further away, and the fact is, these people are networking people, are server people, are Internet people. They are exactly the people who MS should keep inside the Windows camp. If these people move away from Window, eventually, the general consumer will follow.

BTW, Dave's suggestion is brilliant. I just installed Linux yesterday on my old Pentium 100. Man, it runs fast and is way faster than when it was running NT 4. And now it can act as my server with reasonable speed. However, the GUI is too inferior when comparing to NT. The mouse doesn't feel right to me. The behavior is not up to the standard that has been set by the Mac and Windows. So, if MS can come up with a cheap NT server, I will definitely buy it -- why? I am a person who is interested in setting up a server, but I am not technical-savvy enough to feel comfortable using Linux.

But, MS has to act fast. They won't have too much time left to take this chance. Linux is catching up -- fast.

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