techradar.com — As a Linux user, you'd have been an uber-geek, someone with an obsessive interest in computing and far too much time on your hands. But things have changed. Linux is now an operating system anyone can install and use, and it's growing stronger every year. Here's how it happened.
Dec 27, 2009 View in Crawl 4
fr33th0tDec 28, 2009
"It's incorrect to state Windows is an evolution of DOS. Windows 95 and DOS worked extremely differently."Semantics--MS was in the business of providing an OS for the IBM PC in '75. Their flagship OS was MS-DOS. In the mid '80s they added the Office suite but they were still in the OS Business their flagship OS was still MS-DOS though it had a GUI--a Win shell. Sure that shell ultimately was divorced of it's underlying DOS, but that means little to this thread. For at least 20 years Microsoft's flagship OS was MS-DOS. Over that time it evolved to treat the underlying layer that handled hardware calls as less of a distinct OS and more of a layer of the GUI.
piddlydDec 28, 2009
Because, WolfHook, Linux hasn't changed *any* game in the last decade. These stories come around every new year, and every new year, Linux fails to make any significant impact on the market, and tech journalists, including Linux-friendly tech journalists, are starting to take notice of the lack of traction that Linux has. Arthur, enjoy your *nix distro as much as you want. I'm not evangelizing PRO-anything. I run Ubuntu on three different machines, I use a Mac Mini for a lot of my personal computing, and I've got a number of Win32/64 machines - and work in a Windows shop. I'm OS neutral. As far as game-changing is concerned, Linux is "game-changing" within the closed, *nix ecosystem - but very infrequently do "Game Changing" Linux developments have any significant impact outside of the hallowed halls of uber-nerdism. This article suggests that this isn't the case, that Linux has had significant impact outside of the world of the super-nerd. That simply isn't true. When *nix pundits make outrageous claims, I'll dispute them. Linux is * irrelevant* to the *majority* of mainstream PC users.
gerrylazloDec 28, 2009
It's pretty damn important to me.
mattbdDec 28, 2009
I use Chrome, that's pretty good on Linux.
tmsbrdrsDec 29, 2009
@PiddlyDHave you been in to do some shopping in any of those stores with those "massive" return rates?I was in a Best Buy just today asking about the specs on a certain machine. I thought it might be a bit easier to ask the sales staff was clock speed the CPU had (very common question) rather than to look it up myself. The salesperson had to look it up on the machine, something I could've done without asking or, better yet, looked up online along with all the user reviews. My point is that return rates are often not about the product so much as the perception of the product. Those early return rates were based on customers being misled to thinking they were purchasing a machine with built in support for .exe applications. When they couldn't install iTunes, they went straight back to the store and returned the machine. They never got to know just how good that machine could be, they simply returned it. That's not a downfall of Linux, it's a downfall of the sales staff.
gerrylazloDec 29, 2009
There is a third option you are overlooking. And most of the bitterness I've had is this song and dance I've had over the past ten years of installing linux hoping it would be easy and useful and didn't cause a problem I would have to spend 6 hours attempting to understand, let alone solve. I have made the switch 3 times in that period and it always gets about 2 or 3 days before it doesn't do something I need it to do that Windows would have done without me even thinking about it. After a while one just gets tired of it all and wishes linux dies in a car fire. Linux is great for people without complicated setups or (very specific needs and the time to get elbow deep into the OS for a couple weeks). I wish I was one of those, but I'm not, so Linux can kiss my ass all the way to hell.
fireashesDec 29, 2009
digging you from linux
fr33th0tJan 2, 2010
Thats a better way to put it.