open...: Of Microsoft, GNU/Linux and Boiled Asses' Heads

08 April 2008

Anonymous said...: [Glyn]: Microsoft simply cannot afford to let people avoid that “natural transition”. Once people start using GNU/Linux on systems like the Eee PC, and find it almost trivially easy to use programs like Firefox and OpenOffice.org, they are going to wonder why they should pay the Microsoft tax when they buy a notebook or desktop. Microsoft can't let that knowledge get out into the general user market, which means that it must offer a Windows product here to plug the gap in the barbed wire that guards the perimeter.
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This is true to my experience. To the handful of friends whose computers I switched from Windows to GNU/Linux, they were stunned they had not heard more about the progress of Linux on the desktop. (These are also people who barely knew what Ubuntu was.) Of the six who did since last Fall, half of them kept their Linux distros — Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, and sidux. Also, an IT friend very recently bought an Asus Eee PC with XP on it, and despite his hopes, it didn't come close to the nimble speed of the GNU/Linux version. Its flash drive was mostly filled with the XP OS!; 12:38 pm
Glyn Moody said...: Thanks for the corroboration.; 12:45 pm

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