• You know what Linux is and you just don' t like it.
• You don' t know what linux is and you have no desire to learn about it because
  • You are perfectly satisfied with your Windows OS
  • You are terified because you heard a rumour that when you install linux you' ll have to face a thing that you must type to.... what' s it called... a prompt
  • You heard somewhere that Linux is the devil's work.
  • Don' t want to upset Bill
  • Think that OS World domination is a good thing cause everybody' ll be running the same thing.
  • Think that crashing every few hours is kind of fun (makes you take a break too)
• Have Linux installed (just to get on IRC and not get nuked every 10 minutes or just because you heard that all the hackers use it) and think it just "takes up space".
• "OS?? What does THAT mean??"
• "Ok, I' ll just put linux on a directory at my C: and if I don' t like it, I' ll make the wizard uninstall it."
• "Who needs a server at home."
• "So... hummm I' ll have to login EVERY time?"
• "What are you talking about maaan. Back home at NY they' re reaping those Unices from the machines and changing to NTs"

If you are still here and reading this then it must mean that you are a pretty nice chap or a dirty dirty liar.

So now lets get to the point (I' ll make it as brief as possible). What about Linux- Windows and what do I think is going to happen in the future.

First of all I' m no future teller nor a person that can directly intervene in the future of our planet (like Mr Bill) but I am entitled to my own opinion ain' t I? (After all opinions are like assholes, everybody has one).

Well. I don' t know about the distant future but right now Linux is the hottest thing there is in software. If you ask me Linux and the OSS are the best things that happened to the software world since I don' t know when (probably since ever)

The current situation tells us that with the number of Linux users doubling each year and with publications and favourable articles in the most renounced magazines, I don' t believe that anyone (reading this far :-) ) will doupt that Linux has entered the mainstream.

But the true question is: "Will that pace continue or will it fade out with time?
My guess? The way things are going I' d say that the worst case scenario is for Linux to have a dedicated group of users consisting 5-10% of the computer market, most popularly among servers. Of course the best case scenario is for Linux to totally dominate the OS market with a 70-80% of the computer users running it. These are all speculations of course but I find them to be close to reality.

One thing that I "know" for sure is that Linux is the only OS that can drive Micro$oft out of business.

Perhaps some of you might think that it' s ok for M$ to dominate the computer market if they have a better product. If you are one of them, and succesfully pass the criterias at the top of the page the you are either stupid or irrelevent with computers or brainwashed or all of the above. In either case I' ll try to make you see the light :-). One first good step is the Halloween Documents 1 and 2 which are documents describing what do high executive officers of M$ think about Linux and what should they do about it. For those that are too lazy to read it, the summary is that they are very concerned about the growth of OSS and that among other things (not including making theis software better) is making closed protocols that other OSs can' t support in order to prevail. Read it. It' s long but informative.

Someone would think that with all those great minds that M$ has working for her, their software should be great. Well it isn' t, and everyone that has ever used Windows and knows something about computers can tell you that. If you have used Windows, think that you know enough about computers and still think that Windows is great then you have the wrong idea about OSs. I have my Linux-box for over 1.5 years and can say in all honesty that it has crashed just once. I have also had uptimes exeeding 20 days, all terminated by power-failure or normal reboot. How often did YOU crash over the last year?

If you are not convinced then you damage could be permanent and I don' t know if there is any hope for you. Now many people out there should wonder how can M$ with all those "great" mindsworking for them could write such a sluppy and buggy code. Well I' m (still :-))not an expert in the field but I can figure out two reasons. And guess what. I' m gonna share :-).

First of all IMHO it is the "backwards compatibility". You' ll ask: "Is backwards compatibility that bad?".
Answer: It is when it goes THAT far backwards... (MS-DOS) :-).

Otherwise sure... M$ would like to have a fully 32-bit OS (talking about 9x)...

Reason no 2: I heard that there are about 50 people working on the Windows kernel (yes yes windows have one) without M$ letting the one know what the otherone is doing. The reason is obvious. (actually the reason is that in the case that an "outsider" saw the code, M$ should: 1) pay for the medical expences 2) deal with those new exploits made by actually looking at the code and not randomly sending "weird" packages 3) have to process any new patch send by *real* programmers out there (and you know how much work that is) 4) would probably have to kill him and they 're already busy in court.)

Well it' s not easy to write a respectable OS under these conditions so soon.

Ok so we put out a new OS that has the GUI of 3.1 and we have a fancy name like NT and we propose it as a replacement of other "obsolete" OSes like Solaris. It was at first kinda cheap (but not cheap enough) but you could nuke it and have lot's of fun with it. But still companies would buy those wintells instead of a Sun that (as a friend of mine says) in order to crash it you must break his motherboard. Marketing at its best.

That' s just about all. But if you wanna do yourshelf a favor go to a search engine and search for Linux/Unix vs NT and you' ll know what I' m talking about. Or even better get Linux.

PS: I will propably not answer to stuff like:
-hey.. Gates' good. Really. I read his book. He' s one cool dude
-May not know a lot about computers but I know what I like.
-Why can' t we all have one OS.