[plug] 64 bit machines

[Cameron Patrick]

David Lloyd wrote:

| > Why exactly does Linux want to aim for the Market? 
| 
| The obvious answer is "because it can". 

:-)

| > The whole idea behind OSS is freedom of software with all its Linuxy
| > goodness. Bugger the market. They can go and buy their inferior products.
| > Once people realise that the best things are free, perhaps Linux will be a
| > little more mainstream (it already is in a way).
| 
| No, the best operating system for the market at the moment is Microsoft
| Windows.

If you weakened that to say "for some segments of the market" I would
agree with you.  For others, Windows is quite obviously not the best
choice, as is suggested by the hoops that people jump through (e.g.
buying expensive Apple hardware, going through the often rather frustrating
experience of installing an `alternative' operating system) to get away
from Windows.  Admittedly it is a very small proportion of people who do
this, because for most people Windows is good enough (if not optimal),
and/or they don't really care /what/ system they run and accept whatever
came with their machine.

| It's proven by its sales and by the fact it *is* almost everywhere.

Its /popularity/ is proven by its sales and ubiquity, not its quality.
Your argument is like claiming that McDonald's is the best restaurant at
the moment because of their sales and the fact that you can find them
everywhere.

Windows's ubiquity is due more to accidents of history combined with
good business tactics[1] than it is to its quality.  That isn't to say that
it's inferior for all purposes.

| It's only inferior on the grounds that you [and maybe even I] believe that
| it's inferior...

*rolls eyes*  That doesn't necessarily make those grounds invalid,
though.

| The whole idea behind OSS is freedom of software with all its Linuxy
| goodness. Therefore you can have your version of Linux while someone else
| makes a marketable version. This type of freedom is difficult to achieve
| with proprietary software so maybe we don't really disagree with each other
| and maybe we're just talking about where we'd like our individual Linuxes to
| go?

I think so.

I'm not sure that the notion that just /one/ particular Linux should
achieve world domination and mass market appeal is the right way of
looking at it.  After hearing a lot of talk about different "flavours"
of Debian, I can imagine that different Linux distributions (or products
from a single company, or flavours of Debian, or whatever) customised to
some extent for a particular audience would be a more likely way for
Linux to achieve a significant market share than a "one size fits all"
product.  Ideally I'd like to see a situation where the operating system
you run doesn't really affect what software you run, and several systems
(including Windows! - competition is always good) own less than half of
the market, and people are using appropriate tools for whatever they're
using their computer to do.

Simon Scott wrote:
[...stuff which, unusually, I agree with...]
| As soon as you religiously align yourself with any technology, you've
| lost. 

Precisely!

Cheers,

Cameron.

[1] "Good business tactics" in the sense that the tactics were good for
Microsoft's business.  Some of them seem a little unethical to me, but
that's probably why I'd never make a good businessman :-) and it's also
worth noting that other companies have done a lot worse than Microsoft
in that regard.