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- TheZorch, on 03/12/2009, -2/+18Steve Balmer would ***** bricks if Google began developing a desktop Linux OS, which is why they should do it. Microsoft needs a powerful competitor to force them to make a better product than what they've making and they need to do it in a way that Microsoft can't muscle them out the market. Google is in the right position and they have clout, the resources, and the power to pull it off. So, Google, get in there and show Microsoft hell! Never ever say something ever can be done, because before you know it is happening and you didn't see it coming. Mainstream Linux Ney Sayers, you are about to be proven wrong.
- GMH24, on 03/12/2009, -7/+20I disagree, Google linux would most likely be nothing more than regular linux with a million ads everywhere. I'll take my ad-free, agenda-free, free-free, Ubuntu thank you very much.
- tuxchick, on 03/11/2009, -0/+8Ok I'm rambling on too long, but I think this is important-- I want to point out that Steven's article has good information on how the Linux and FOSS world have overcome many of barriers to interoperability that Microsoft and other proprietary software vendors built, and have given back customer choice and interoperability. This is huge; without Linux and FOSS there would be no competition in the computing marketplace, and we might as well get Microsoft barcodes tattooed on our foreheads.
- leamanc, on 03/12/2009, -0/+8You are thinking more of Debian (which Ubuntu is based upon). Ubuntu only puts the proprietary drivers in restricted repositories for legal reasons (MP3 patents, etc.). But these repositories are enabled by default, and the first time it detects your NVidia video card, or your Broadcom-chip WiFi card, or you try to play a WMV, it will prompt you to install these drivers from the restricted repositories. They would install the drivers by default if they weren't getting into shaky legal ground.
- mithrasinvictus, on 03/12/2009, -0/+8That same argument applies to microsoft. Every time you boot, your PC connects to redmond for updates and time synchronisation, every website you visit with ie will be sent to microsoft to check if it might be bad for you.
The information might be sent in order to "help" you and they might not (yet) be able to do anything with it legally but would you throw all that valuable information away? I'd be dying to know how many people switched back to windows firewall after a microsoft update broke zonealarm or how many of my customers have the ODF pugin installed in office. - chicagospur, on 03/12/2009, -5/+13It would be an OS with Spyware built in.
Everything you do will go back to the Google Mothership so that you can get more "relevant" ads sent to you.
Who's evil now? - vardhan, on 03/12/2009, -2/+9Is the author suggesting that Google use it's "apps" (i.e., google docs and company) for its linux distro?
So wait. You have a bunch of *web* apps, and you want to run them on an operating system? Isn't that what browsers are for?
I don't understand the point of this. The author is just making some really stupid predictions.
Someone clarify? - HonestAbeinator, on 03/12/2009, -0/+6They would be integrated into the operating system. Your default word processor, email, calendar would all be google. Also there would be some extended version of gears to make all services available offline. Basically, Linux gets a brand name that people will recognize and be interested in, google gets more people using its services (meaning more ads sold) and consumers get a free powerful os with cloud capabilities. Everyone wins...except microsoft
- garyedwards, on 03/11/2009, -5/+11Great article Stephen! Seeing you and the Windows loving David Coursey go at it is great entertainment. I also think that finally, the days of Windows dominance are numbered. The future of the Open Web is looking good. But a year ago, while attending the Web 2.0 Conference, that future was about as bleak as it could be. Adobe and Microsoft proprietary RiA initiatives were everywhere. The great white hope that was AJAX was noticeably absent, having pushed the limits of complexity, hitting the hard wall of scalability. Things looked bleak.
No one would have guessed back then, even with iPhones everywhere, that the Big Bang of the Open Web had already happened. Some picked up the fact that Sun's demo unveiling JavaFX, was using at it's graphical interface core the WebKit layout engine and visual document model. Others noted that the Adobe Air runtime engine implemented WebKit at it's core. For the most part though, the Web 2.0 Conference was no longer about Ajax. It was about Adobe Flash versus Microsoft XAML-Silverlight-WPF-Mesh battling for the future of Web applications.
My how times have changed. All for the good i think.
~ge~ - ArthurSucks, on 03/12/2009, -0/+6What's there to buy? It's all GPL code.
- tomz17, on 03/12/2009, -2/+8Umm... I've never had any problems with Samba on windows, mac, or linux.
I've used a linux box as a PDC, SDC, and for regular shares. never had an issue. Just take 15 seconds to read your smb.conf file. - tuxchick, on 03/11/2009, -2/+7Hehe, and I'm a grouchy poopyhead. This is why Coursey's piece hit my grump button: it's ass-backwards, as so many articles of this ilk are:
"Give most people a netbook that is compatible with the file formats they use, whether for work or entertainment apps, and they will be happy."
That is the heart of it-- making purchasing decisions because of MS' success at lock-in and removing customer choice. Then he contradicts himself:
"What I would like to see is an emphasis on cloud synchronization, allowing the netbook to share address book, calendar information, files, and other data though an online service like Apple's MobileMe. Keep my netbook in sync with my other computers and operating system becomes even less an issue."
No, it doesn't become less of an issue, it's just as much of an issue as ever. The end user has even higher exposure to security risks with Web apps, and any provider using Windows on their backend should be sued for malpractice. Citing Apple is funny because they're even more closed and restrictive and litigious than MS.
"I am still waiting for the Linux that will change my life." True, Linux will not change anyone's life the way Windows does when their identity is stolen by multiple organized crime rings in different countries, and their computers are brought to their knees yet again because Windows or other MS ware trips over itself. I rather suspect those are the kinds of life-changing experiences that most folks would prefer to not experience. - lvizon, on 03/12/2009, -0/+5@leamanc
ah, good to know. thanks!
i don't know my distros and i'm not afraid to let that show lol. i'm happy with my proprietary unix. - tuxchick, on 03/11/2009, -5/+9Nicely done, Steven, and you didn't even call him a fact-challenged poopyhead who really needs to try other platforms than Windows before writing about them like I would have. You are a model of gracious restraint :)
- eraccusa, on 03/11/2009, -1/+5Carla, your "fact-challenged poopyhead" comment made me LOL. Thanks. :)
- 7aji, on 03/13/2009, -0/+4I would love to see what Google can do for Linux. I mean, look at Chrome. It's a nice piece of software. It's not like Google will make a locked up version of Linux. I think Google + Linux = a good thing.
- ProKid, on 03/12/2009, -1/+5That would be a power move by Google if they could pull this off. Aside from Apple they're the only viable candidate capable of putting a serious dent into Redmond market share. I'm sure it would be incredibly fast compared to Windows and far more appropriately priced.
- ArthurSucks, on 03/12/2009, -0/+4Yes, Like OS X, but without vendor lock-in. Plus it'll be based on a budget market that Apple simply has no interest in.
- wrobin, on 03/12/2009, -0/+3"Microsoft needs a powerful competitor to force them to make a better product than what they've making and they need to do it in a way that Microsoft can't muscle them out the market."
Exactly!
That's the thing that the Microsoft fanboys simply can't or won't see... Microsoft being forced to compete based on the qualities of it's product, instead of just it's overwhelming install base, is good for everyone.... but most of all for Microsoft's customer.
Keeping down competition is ONLY good for Microsoft, everyone else loses. - FlareHeart, on 03/12/2009, -0/+3Firefox installs very easily into any Distro with KDE thank you.
- clockdist, on 03/12/2009, -0/+3true, except for the part about it taking a long time to achieve quality/usability.
you underestimate google. - lvizon, on 03/12/2009, -3/+6i'm not sure about ubuntu being agenda-free. don't they separate proprietary things like some drivers from the rest of the system in a restricted device manager and require extra work to enable them simply because they're not open source or something? if so, that qualifies as an agenda.
/mac user, outside looking in; probably wrong :) - monkeyboy7706, on 03/12/2009, -0/+3OSX is not really a direct competitor to windows and won't be until you can install it on any generic PC without hacks/workarounds.
- Frostek, on 03/13/2009, -0/+2I Dugg you up, even though you were mistaken, because I thought it was an interesting question and was worth viewing.
(I do get annoyed when people bury anything they don't agree with - sometime the opposite tactic is better in the long-term.) - benologist, on 03/12/2009, -3/+5Google has never been able to translate their success as a search engine and advertising platform into other ventures. Only a fraction of their many attempts to do so have met with even moderate success. Releasing an operating system is even less likely to gain traction since it requires much more effort and understanding from the end user.
- Frostek, on 03/13/2009, -0/+2Don't worry - Microsoft are working hard to make sure you never even have to make a decision about which OS you get to use on "your" netbook.
Personally, I'll be getting a Linux netbook as Windows would be pointless where I work. - 7aji, on 03/13/2009, -0/+2"smart phone market player"
what the hell does that mean?? And if you meant the smart phone market, then no they don't. - DougVitale, on 03/12/2009, -0/+2"Steve Balmer would ***** bricks if Google began developing a desktop Linux OS"
Microsoft fears...Goobuntu:
http://www.desktoplinux.com/files/misc/Everex_gPC_ ... - esc27, on 03/12/2009, -0/+2Competition is good, but I don't see a Google OS being anything more than a higher profile Linux distro for a while. Outside of netbooks, its main competition will be Ubuntu, not Windows. On netbooks it is hard to say what will happen until Windows 7 debuts.
- skyshock1, on 03/13/2009, -0/+1@ ArthurSucks
So like Linux? There's already a bazillion fantastic distros to choose from that you can customize in every way imaginable. There's no sense in making another. - somethings90, on 09/08/2009, -0/+1The trademark but that is about it.
- nimbosa, on 10/17/2009, -0/+1i think it would do Adobe good by leveraging open standards (ECMA+Flash+WebKit/Mozilla), availability and interoperability in truly open systems like today's Linuxen and BSDs,
UP AGAINST Microsoft's truly closed systems and technologies
AND i do hope, too, that it is all for the better:
Adobe's + Google's technological and financial muscle is definitely a welcome addition to the Free Community at large, thank you!
and please, no nitpicking, hairsplitting arguments from free-software purists VS open-source pragmatists, FOR NOW, it is all a matter of strategy, we need all the help we can get..
get it? - BingoPower, on 03/13/2009, -0/+1If you think having your data in a "cloud" from your OS is a good thing, then you need your head examined.
- toxictonic, on 03/12/2009, -3/+3Like OSX?
- inactive, on 03/15/2009, -0/+0Yeah, how do you like the Linux version of Chrome? Oh, there isn't one? Nice try, moron.
- GMH24, on 03/12/2009, -4/+4Except the fact that there are 23435123.91 ways to do everything. KDE suffers from, what can only be described as hyper-preferencesism. I like the look of some things, but the windows are still hideous, and inconsistent with everything else in the system.
- gubatron2, on 03/12/2009, -2/+3Hmm, just imagined Google buying Ubuntu, I'm not sure if that would necessarily be good. Google is getting too big.
- inactive, on 03/15/2009, -0/+0That's not accurate and the same does not apply. Windows checks what updates are installed verses those that are available. The information is not usable or valuable to anyone else except Microsoft, and used simply to be sure the machine is up to date.
The anti-phishing filter in IE checks the URL of the website verses a database of "known" (key word here) phishing websites to verify if a site is safe. Again, the information has no relevance to advertising.
You are severely misguided and probably one of those people who spends half your day deleting cookies because paranoia has got the better of you. The rest of your post is just tinfoil hat *****. - Wreckage, on 03/12/2009, -5/+6Nothing wrong with the KDE desktop.
- RobotBuddha, on 03/12/2009, -4/+4The big secret of all that is the fact that nobody cares what you're doing online. Or me, or most anyone for that matter.
- Frostek, on 03/13/2009, -1/+1The Google brand name has HUGE recognition - as they say, stick it on a computer and it'll sell like hotcakes. They can easily put out a huge advertising campaign very effectively too.
- strangeman, on 03/12/2009, -1/+1Buried for being stupid. Google putting out an own distro would NOT be the best thing ever happening to Linux. First of all they already have their own distro and it's called Android. Secondly a desktop-version of android would take a long time to achieve the quality and usability of current distros.
- RobotBuddha, on 03/12/2009, -2/+2The only thing wrong with kde,to me, is a distinct lack of a modern web browser. khtml/kjs just isn't cutting it and the webkit kpart is pretty buggy.
- tux11, on 03/12/2009, -2/+1thats for a lame phone though. apple owns the smart phone market player.
- carlosgs91, on 03/12/2009, -2/+1Did you know that Google Earth 5 fails in Linux?...
- FyberOptic, on 03/12/2009, -3/+1You're just like every other person out there. "IT WORKS RTFM". Yet you've never tried to do anything outside of basic file sharing apparently, which is about all Samba is really good for.
Try to make Samba receive messages from a Windows client. Then get back to me on how great Samba support is. - inactive, on 03/12/2009, -4/+1So anyone using windows is going to get their identity hijacked? The single most used weapon of phishers is exploiting internet explorer. The most common exploit is to abuse a poorly written activeX control. The most common activeX control exploited is Adobe's PDF reader. Do you use any adobe products? This isn't completely a microsoft problem. ActiveX worked well for a time.
As soon as you switch to a different browser most of your security risks are halted, a majority of the remaining problems come from poorly coded websites and malicious websites and people who know how to exploit common scripting pitfalls (and retarded users).
You're whole comment on how windows will cause major harm is completely the kind of linux trash talk that we dont need. if a friend comes over and sees you on a linux machine, and asks why would you use that instead of windows, explain some key features and you'll have an infinite amount more times the persuasive power than saying "dont use windows because your identity is going to be stolen." no one will listen - it just doesnt happen to that many people. - bashmohandesx, on 03/12/2009, -4/+0If I had to choose between Google (Linux) OS and Windows 7 for my netbook, I would choose Windows 7
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