Microsoft Readies a 'Lean' Windows Client

[bb_matt]

Raithlin, what sort of games does your son play ?
What age group ?

I would say that a P1 200MMX won't handle anything more demanding 3D wise than Quake1 or QuakeII and that it wouldn't handle much more than the early releases of WarCraft ?

It may be more trouble than it's worth ?

I guess we'd need more info on the games he currently plays.

 

[Darth Garth]

Linux is not an utter failure on the desktop by any stretch of the imagination, in fact, it's highly functional.

It has even less market than even Apple ... in the single digit percentile ... if that is a measure of success then let me drink some more of that Linux Kool Aid.

What IS the problem now is the lack of industry standard applications that run natively on Linux.

There are good alternatives available to the well known brand names (RoseGarden, Inkscape,GIMP) but instead of consolidating collective efforts and going forward we have the infantile bickering over political manifesto's and what programming language to use.

I mean WTF is GNU still spending time on doing Hurd while Linux is readily available and working ???.

Sometimes "freedom" carries a price.

If companies like Adobe step up to the plate and start delivering thier application range to Linux, not much will change that.

Why should they bother with a platform with such a low market share ???.
It does not make economic sense.

It's entirely possible that it may happen, with larger companies taking Linux into more commercial areas

Oh really ???.

We recently spent a few million on an IBM eServer and guess what OS they pushed for the sale ... AIX even though Linux was qualified to run on the hardware.

I reckon that many of these commercial companies are merely paying lip service to Linux and open source as to get good PR out of it but when the chips are down they look after their own interests.

Just because you may find working in a terminal a nightmare, it doesn't mean that everyone else does - I enjoy it for what I use it for just like millions of other sysadmins.

You misread my point ... there is nothing wrong with using the terminal but doing general sysadmin duties via editing arcane config files is just dumb and stupid in this day and age.

And end user should not be a sysadmin.

I can recompile my entire Linux kernel however I wish to, you cannot do that with Windows.

I am actually amazed that you call this as a benefit to the end user.
Oh I forgot how much the device driver infrastructure in Linux sucks hence the need for rebuilding your kernel every now and again.

They created a single set of standards just good enough to beat off the confusion of multiple types of unix that were being used prior to windows taking off

bb_matt you don't know your history too well ... unix never featured in the personal computing space at that time because it only ran on spesific hardware platforms (Altos, Sun, Apollo, HP, Prime) or/and it cost a bundle (SCO, Xenix, A/UX etc).

Windows really only took off in 1990 with 3.0 and later 3.1 (it laid the initial groundwork for the massive success of Win95) because OS/2 was such a dismal failure for various reasons.

The first bare bones linux kernel was released in 1991.

 

[Raithlin]

Raithlin, what sort of games does your son play ?
What age group ?

I would say that a P1 200MMX won't handle anything more demanding 3D wise than Quake1 or QuakeII and that it wouldn't handle much more than the early releases of WarCraft ?

It may be more trouble than it's worth ?

I guess we'd need more info on the games he currently plays.

Games he plays:

• Midtown Madness (Voodoo2 card)
• Tarzan
• Educational maths games
• Disney activity packs (Toy Story, etc)
• Various shareware demos - pre-2000

Hope this helps. I'm looking at BeatrIX with wine added on ATM.

 

[bb_matt]

Linux apparently currently has more market share on the Desktop than Apple - fact is, it's difficult to actually know how many Linux desktops are running.

http://www.google.co.za/search?q=li...ient=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

You would obviously have to differentiate between those "dabbling" with it and those using it as a primary platform.

There are good alternatives available to the well known brand names (RoseGarden, Inkscape,GIMP) but instead of consolidating collective efforts and going forward we have the infantile bickering over political manifesto's and what programming language to use.

I mean WTF is GNU still spending time on doing Hurd while Linux is readily available and working ???.

Sometimes "freedom" carries a price.

C'mon - that's over exaggerating by a long shot !
Besides, Inkscape is really not that good and the Gimp just can't compete with Photoshop - for professional usage, you have to go with industry standards.

yes, OSS definately carries a price - nobody would deny that.

Why should they bother with a platform with such a low market share ???.
It does not make economic sense.

How can Linux gain market share without industry standard applications ? - as I said, it's a catch 22 that will require a single linux distribution to be brought forward and heavily invested in. Get it running on Office desktops and take it from there.

I reckon that many of these commercial companies are merely paying lip service to Linux and open source as to get good PR out of it but when the chips are down they look after their own interests.

Granted, but you've given me one example. There are many examples of Linux making large inroads into Unix territory - why do you think SCO attacked Linux so viciously ?
Plenty of people are paying far more than lipservice - but again, your mixing Desktop with Server usage.

You misread my point ... there is nothing wrong with using the terminal but doing general sysadmin duties via editing arcane config files is just dumb and stupid in this day and age.

And end user should not be a sysadmin.

Firstly, there's nothing arcane about configuring something via a text file !

Secondly, current Linux desktops don't require you to do this for day to day office usage !

Thirdly, I challenge an average user to install windows from scratch onto an unformatted hard drive - they wouldn't have the foggiest how to do it, let alone install all the required drivers and software.

Linux is just the same - it requires somebody with knowledge to set it up for a user !

So don't use that bit of FUD to confuse issues !

Heck, you get CD Bootable Linux distributions people can just drop into thier CDROM drive and boot up thier computer and use.

I am actually amazed that you call this as a benefit to the end user.
Oh I forgot how much the device driver infrastructure in Linux sucks hence the need for rebuilding your kernel every now and again.

I never mentioned anything about the end user !

For crikeys sake, the average end user has problems remembering thier login password, let alone compiling something from source - I was pointing out the flexibility of Linux.

bb_matt you don't know your history too well ... unix never featured in the personal computing space at that time because it only ran on spesific hardware platforms (Altos, Sun, Apollo, HP, Prime) or/and it cost a bundle (SCO, Xenix, A/UX etc).

Windows really only took off in 1990 with 3.0 and later 3.1 (it laid the initial groundwork for the massive success of Win95) because OS/2 was such a dismal failure for various reasons.

The first bare bones linux kernel was released in 1991.

Fair enough - my history knowledge is slightly out there - but the concept is there, Unix was overtaken by Windows servers in many areas due to the fragementation of Unix.

If anything, this is the achillies heel that Linux faces, which is why I indicated it's going to have to be one Linux distribution that gets adopted by leading software vendors, should they decide there is enough market share.

I'm not sure why you would have such a negative attitude to something as liberating as Linux - something anyone can pick up and experiment with free.
An OS you can setup for your granny to perfectly suit her needs, or one which can run mission critical servers.

 

[Darth Garth]

Unix was overtaken by Windows servers in many areas due to the fragementation of Unix.

Windows NT attacked from the bottom end ... from the desktop into the market that once belonged exclusively to Novell Netware ... initially the file and print services that could also function as an application server which Netware was truely dismal at (those crappy VAP or NLM).

Unix never aimed for that low end of the market and in some respects NT is still have to match Solaris/AIX/Linux where it comes to mission critical, clustering and scalability.

That said .. Microsoft is working on Windows DataCenter or "High Availability".

I'm not sure why you would have such a negative attitude to something as liberating as Linux - something anyone can pick up and experiment with free.

I applaud the concept and the work involved but they are building stuff for fellow geeks and simply forgetting about ordinary users.

 

[bb_matt]

I applaud the concept and the work involved but they are building stuff for fellow geeks and simply forgetting about ordinary users.

It's hard to say "they" with Linux, due to it's fragmentation. Linux is actually the kernel when it comes down to it, whatever is build on top of that depends on the distribution - there's a core set of daemons and libraries common across most distributions and that's where it ends.

SuSe is driving thier distribution from a desktop POV with Novell backing - taking what exists and making it not only user friendly, but better in terms of configuration.

You only need to look at YaSt to see how far SuSe has come - you can configure any aspect of your Desktop/System - it's essentially the same as windows control panel.

Mandrake is doing similar things, although I feel it's far too bloated.

Both are working from a KDE base.

 

[Perdition]

It's a free setup and all you need is your copy of winXP and the program can remove components from the windows install files and then create a new install CD ?

Not sure if this is the program you were talking about but does what you mention :

http://www.nliteos.com/

 

[bb_matt]

That looks pretty interesting Perdition, must see how it compares to xplite

Tibby was right with the xplite thing :- http://www.litepc.com/xplite.html

As far as I remember, it used to be a free project when they started off with win98, unless that was another project ?

I must give it a spin - my current C: ghost image is 800mb and I can't get it much smaller unless I remove some of the windows bloat - like a lot of uneccessary drivers.