OK, I'm not "top-posting" altho I think it is usually better. (See previous post.) At 20:54 10/14/2002 +0100, Dallam Wych wrote: /snip/
People deserve the O/S (and the mailer) that they *deserve* perhaps?
I deserve something at least as good as Windows--I paid good money for my computer. The mailer I prefer, I am using--under Windows--Eudora 4.0.
So, based on that, what you are saying -- by badmouthing Windows users in general -- is that you prefer to keep Linux in the minority ghetto. You don't WANT it to make its way onto the desktops of the business drones of the world. That would destroy its cachet of "specialness" or whatever.
Again, people use the O/S they deserve. I realize that it is to the various distributions benefit to dumb linux down to attract new users, after all they are profit motivated. I just dislike seeing windows users bringing their bad habits into the linux world. I don't think it is right to expect linux to become increasingly more like windows, sorry.
You know, it's like 1965, and CB'ers were bringing their "bad habits" to the radio world. The CB'er was using cop calls (10-20) as against Ham Radio's "qth." We may deplore Bill Gates's business ethics, and how he got to where he is, but the truth is, MS Windows pretty well WORKS! What the LINUX community is trying to do is to make an open operating system that works AT LEAST AS WELL, and NEVER CRASHES, and MULTITASKS EXTREMELY WELL, and SPIT IN BILL GATES'S EYE. I think we have to realize that there is that last component that takes part in all of these messages. Now don't get me wrong. I certainly, under no circumstances, want the computer world to be Bill Gates's backyard garden, but bashing people for using "the O/S's they deserve" is not a way to put his system aside. (And it doesn't hurt to remember that he's trying to get people to run _his_ software on line, and pay him a little bit, via credit card, every time they do. .NET, anyone?) Perhaps the way is WalMarts's? I don't know. I don't think it is, in the end, but anything that puts an end to the monopoly--AND WORKS-- is worth while. The way to compete with--I would never say defeat, because that is ridiculous--the way to compete with Microsoft may very well at the beginning be Lindows. I don't know, I haven't tried it. It costs almost as much for the software as it does for the whole computer. But the way to compete is to have computers that will do what Windows computers do, and in very, very similar ways. Otherwise, nobody will learn to use them. (Yes, I reallize that if someone were to come up with much superior ways, whoever did that, and had a little money behind him, could bury Mr. Gates. But that is a long way away, if I don't miss my guess.) Just as an aside: Who really wants a computer they can talk to, or that talks back? None of us are captains or first officers on a starship, and if I remember, even Mr. Spock only got answers when the captain asked. (For myself, I would break any system that talked to me: "The door is not closed." "The window is open." "Deck door open.") And I work for a company that makes devices that do just those things. But I don't own any. --dm