[gameprogrammer] Re: yawvlff(yet another windows versus linux flame fest, yawn) Re: Re: OTP: deleting porn

On Sat, 2004-08-28 at 14:20, Neil Griffiths wrote:
> Hello Bob,
> 
> BP> Ok, this one bugs me. Why does it bother you to have more than one
> BP> window manager? It just do not understand that?
> 
> Because when we're talking about ease-of-use, having choice of window
> manager does not help, it makes things even more complicated as there
> is not necessarily a standard way of doing things.

Interesting point. I hadn't thought of that. If what you say is true,
then a GUI/Window manager will become dominant and the others will
wither and eventually die. That is the way these things work out.

> 
> BP> Anyway, time to dial it back a little bit. This is getting to be a flame
> BP> fest rather than a constructive discussion. Try to keep this topic on
> BP> something that affects game programming or drop it.
> 
> I disagree about it being unproductive and it's no flame fest yet, but
> this whole topic has had nothing to do with game programming.
> 
> BP> My take on the whole thing? People like what they are used to. Windows
> BP> will stay popular in the US for many years. The rest of the world is
> BP> another question. As the cost of computers keeps going down the price of
> BP> the OS becomes a larger and larger portion of the cost. That means that
> BP> by the time 50% of the people on earth can afford a computer the OS will
> BP> have to drop in price to only a few dollars, or be free. Microsoft can
> BP> not afford to give away its OS, so most of the world will learn Linux as
> BP> their first, and only, OS.
> 
> This viewpoint doesn't take into account broadband and the fact that
> it's very likely that storage, as well as your OS, will be remotely
> stored. In this case, you won't own the OS but will rent it... A crazy
> world, but do you really think that this is wrong?
> 
> I don't like it - it even scares me from a big brother POV - but it
> looks like this is the way computing is going.

Not a chance in hell. I spent a lot of time (years) working on business
plans for exactly that business model for a $50 billion telecom company.
To do what you describe you have to provide enormous bandwidth from the
server to the home and be willing to upgrade it almost continuously. It
costs the telecom comapany orders of magnitude more export the desktop
over broadband than it does for you to buy a computer.

It looks good on paper until you try to factor in games and video. I
have done lab trials of running games on remote servers on a fiber (OC3)
network, and it didn't work. 

The economics are all wrong. The telecom infrastructure costs to much
and the ROI (especially the rate of return) is unsustainable.


> 
> BP> The more people that use Linux, the more developers will work on the OS
> BP> and the applications and it just keeps getting better. 
> 
> This is true, but you need people using Linux - creating a market -
> before most developers will develop for it. The problem is that
> there's already a huge market in Windows and I don't see this
> disappearing anytime soon.

You are thinking near term, I am talking long term. The number of Linux
users is growing surprisingly fast and we are already seeing the effect
I described. I believe we are just past the tipping point. Give it a
couple of years. Just take a look at the major players who are offering
their products on Linux. Where the major lead, the small guys will
follow.

> 
> BP> Eventually most US corporations will be forced to switch either to be
> BP> compatible with their foreign customers or their foreign divisions. They
> BP> will also start to see MS as an unneeded cost. 
> 
> Perhaps, I think it more likely that broadband will play a much bigger
> role in remote storage...

Do the math. A gig of storage is now less than 50 cents US and going
down every month. The cost of laying a foot of fiber is still so high
that you can't justify doing it unless you are a monopoly. 

> 
> BP> This will all take at least 10 years to play out. But, you can see it
> BP> happening right now.
> 
> Unfortunately enough you can see what I'm talking about too. Most
> companies would prefer to have you lease their products than own them
> for many, often legal, reasons.

Sure, rent seeking behavior is well documented by the economists. OTOH,
a rational being will not pay rent for something that is available to
own for free. Therefore, rent seeking companies that compete with free
products are doomed. It just takes time. Look at what IE did to
Netscape. A MS spokesman once said something like "Free is a compelling
price" it was true when they released IE and it is true now.

> 
> BP> One thing that people forget about Linux is that it is not a product
> BP> with point releases. It is a process. When you say "Linux has such and
> BP> such a problem" it doesn't mean that much because it may not have the
> BP> problem now and it won't have the problem next year, or maybe the year
> BP> after that. Every Monday I check to see if there are enough updates to
> BP> justify updating my OS. Once or twice a month I download all the patches
> BP> that have been applied to all the software I use. My systems just get
> BP> better every time I do that. 
> 
> This is why I personally use Gentoo, but this is true of most OS'.
> Linux will have to adapt to viruses and all the other things that
> people dislike about Windows as more and more people use Linux.

Not the same way. When you update Gentoo and I update Debian we don't
just bet a few critical bug fixes and security patches. We get whole new
versions with new features. When I update a windows box, the
applications may work a little better, and the OS may be more secure,
but I don't get new features. If I version 1.0 of an application, after
and update I still have version 1.0. But when I update Linux, I might
move from version 1.0 to version 2.0. 

And that one about Linux viruses? Unix has been fighting network based
intrusions since long before Windows had network support. It is nearly
impossible to create a virus for a UNIX/Linux heritage system that can
do the sorts of things that an MS virus can do. Sure, you can write viri
for Linux, its been done. It is just a lot harder to make it do the kind
of things that a Windows virus can do. UNIX/Linux has a long history of
paranoid developers.

> 
> BP> It used to be that using Linux on a desktop was a hardship. Now that you
> BP> can buy a Linux computer at Walmart or Fry's that just isn't true
> BP> anymore.
> 
> I disagree about it not being a hardship, things have improved but there are 
> many
> things - such as installing GL drivers - which are insanely difficult
> for the average joe. Luckily, the average joe normally doesn't use
> Linux...

Yes, installing things like GL drivers are hard. But, people who buy
machines with GL drivers already installed don't face that problem.

Last time I had to reinstall a print driver on my daughters computer it
took me 6 hours. An average user could not have done the job at all. It
is a myth that installing drivers is easier on Windows than on Linux. It
may have been true once, but it isn't true now. It is true that it can
still be hard to get drivers for Linux, but even that is changing.

> 
> Neil

                Bob Pendleton
> 
> 
> 
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