[AccessD] OT: open source

Bob Hall rjhjr at cox.net
Wed Apr 7 11:12:35 CDT 2004


On Tue, Apr 06, 2004 at 10:46:34PM -0400, Bryan Carbonnell wrote:
> On 6 Apr 2004 at 19:31, Bob Hall wrote:
> 
> > Linux will never have a standard GUI, because Linux is really only the
> > kernal. Linus Torvalds doesn't do shell or GUI development. All Linux
> 
> True enough. I guess I should have said that the various Linux 
> Distros need to standardise on a desktop. KDE or Gnome.
> 
> > Everything else is whatever the distro teams want to include. They're
> > never going to agree on a default window manager. On the other hand, a
> 
> >From what I understand the windows manager doesn't need to be 
> standardised, ithe the desktop environment.
> 
> There is the XServer, then there is the windows manager and then 
> finally the desktop environment.

twm, blackbox, and fvwm don't use desktop environments. Some window managers require a specific desktop environment. You can't decide on a desktop until you decide on the window manager. I use blackbox, so the desktop decision doesn't seem important to me. There are a lot of differences between window managers. Window Maker is very different from blackbox.

Actually, window managers and desktops seem to run side-by-side, rather than one running under the other. 

> > The immediate threat to MS has been security problems, due to massive
> > numbers of bugs. MS seems to have improved a lot since Gates sent out
> > his famous security e-mail. The three OSs gaining market share right
> 
> I actually don't think that security is high on most peoples list. 
> Otherwise why is my Win2K desktop at work only approved to be at SP1? 
> I have said screw it and installed SP4 myself.

This is true for workstations. Security is a bigger issue with servers than workstations. Breaking root on a server puts more at risk that a trapdoor on a workstation. And the person managing a server box is more likely to understand security than the person using a workstation.

The amazing thing is that people with SP1 think they are secure. (I just upgraded someone from SP1.) And if they were on Linux, they would be equally insecure, and just as certain that they were secure. So if they switched to Linux for security reasons, they would be deluding themselves. But a lot of organizations would do it if the market started to perceive Windows as the insecure system, which is what was starting to happen. The people who understood security would have been the first to switch, followed by the people who didn't and who wouldn't have been any more secure.

> > seats. So I would say that Linux is a threat to Windows in the
> > workstation market, not the server market.
> 
> The problem is that Linux is not making the inroads on the desktop, 
> but in the server room right now.

Linux is gaining in the server room, but not at MS's expense. Both Win and Linux are gaining market share. Sun, IBM, and HP are losing it. Critical apps that once needed proprietary chips and OSs can now be run on commodity hardware and cheap or free OSs.

In Europe, Windows has lost to Linux on some huge workstation contracts. That won't happen in the USA anytime soon because the federal government is committed to Windows. But European governments don't have that commitment, and some of them are actively encouraging businesses to switch to Linux. If the governments switch, many businesses and consumers will eventually follow suit. This isn't showing up in market share numbers yet, but it will if the trend continues.

Bob Hall



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