Microsoft Hatred FAQ

[John Bokma]

joe at invalid.address wrote:

> John Bokma <john at castleamber.com> writes:
> 
>> joe at invalid.address wrote:
>> 
>> > John Bokma <john at castleamber.com> writes:
>> > 
>> >> "David Schwartz" <davids at webmaster.com> wrote:
>> >> > 
>> >> > "Tim Roberts" <timr at probo.com> wrote in message 
>> >> > news:a103l1tkejrc99s0385qjqqhm96d46dpc4 at 4ax.com...
>> >> > 
>> >> >> Part of their behavior really escape me.  The whole thing
>> >> >> about browser wars confuses me.  Web browsers represent a zero
>> >> >> billion dollar a year market.  Why would you risk anything to
>> >> >> own it?
>> >> > 
>> >> >     It really isn't that hard to understand that web-based
>> >> >     applications that work in any browser on any OS threaten to
>> >> >     make it irrelevent what OS you're running.
>> >> 
>> >> And it's even easier to understand that your statement is
>> >> nonsense.
>> >> 
>> >> It doesn't matter which Linux distribution you pick, all use the
>> >> Linux kernel. On all I can run OpenOffice, and get the same
>> >> results.  Yet people seem to prefer one distribution over one
>> >> other.
>> > 
>> > He was talking about the browser war, and gave a pretty good
>> > reason why it was important. So you respond by pointing out that
>> > people choose a linux distribution for personal (non-technical,
>> > non-marketing) reasons. I think I missed the connection.
>> 
>> web based applications that work with any browser make OS irrelevant
>> -> not true, since for OpenOffice it doesn't matter which Linux
>> distribution one runs (or even if it's Linux), yet people seem to
>> make a point of which distribution they use.
> 
> A linux distribution isn't an OS, it's a distribution, so I'm not sure
> what your point here is.

Ok, let me spell it out for you: If all your applications are web based, 
and the OS shouldn't matter, why do Linux distributions matter? It 
doesn't matter which one you use to run, for example, OpenOffice. Yet 
people pick a certain distribution. Why? Well, one reason is that people 
like to belong to a group. So even if it really doesn't matter which OS 
you are going to use to access a web application, or even which browser, 
people will pick a certain browser, and a certain OS, just because.

> In fact, there are lots

How much?

> of Microsoft-centric web pages that don't
> work well when accessed from a linux system. ActiveX, MS Java, etc.

Does it matter? There are webpages that just don't work for some people, 
no matter that they do work for others. You can't just make up one 
standard average user and design the web for it.

>> >> > MS has a strong interest in making sure it's important
>> >> > to be running on one of their OSes.
>> >> 
>> >> Maybe *they* do have a point :-).
>> > 
>> > Which is?
>> 
>> That it *does* matter. It doesn't matter which brand makes your
>> graphics card, since most stick close to the reference design of the
>> GPU chip supplier, yet people take the brand in consideration when
>> they buy.
> 
> I don't think that's true, at least not yet. I recently bought a
> Compaq Presario,

Hey, me too :-) (SR1505LA to be exactly, and it does work with Kubuntu, 
or at least I get a picture).

> which came with XP installed. I wiped the disk and

Me too (but that was to get rid of the Spanish XP)

> installed Linux, only to find that the hardware would only work under
> XP.

Now that's odd, since mine worked, network, video, sound, etc.

> So I then had to install network, video, sound etc cards to get it
> working.

Odd, very odd. But I am quite sure that if you don't have a driver for a 
certain chip set, that it doesn't matter who puts the chip set on a 
piece of PCB, it isn't going to work.

-- 
John                   Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
               Perl programmer available:     http://castleamber.com/
                                        I ploink googlegroups.com :-)