On Fri, 2002-11-01 at 07:04, Joe & Sesil Morris (NTM) wrote:
After having been an OS/2 user for several years before SuSE linux, I can tell you that this idea is also non workable. IBM had Win/OS2, which was more stable than native Windows 3.1 (I guess that wasn't too hard ;-) ), but Microsoft will constantly change the goal post to make something break. A better idea is to build native apps that outperform M$. That is something M$ can do nothing about, but fear.
That should be the real emphasis on effort sure. However, every successful OS has had some sort of compatibility layer to help people make the move to the new OS. Max OSX has Mac 9 compatibility. Win 95 had DOS compatibility. I know this is different in a sense because linux would have to emulate not an older version of its own software base but another companies software base. This is different and I do understand this. However, it is necessary to wean users from their MS ways as well as make up the time until Mr. Project matches MS Project's capability or DIA matches Visio's feature set for examples that go beyond the OpenOffice can open Word files debate. The failure of OS/2 which I worked on for a time as well was due first to bad marketing and a failure to produce applications in native format at all. IBM's Office suite was about the only commercial native app I even remember. The ad campaign gave no clue about what Warp could really do and why anyone should buy it. I swear sometimes the best way to make a software project fail is to give to IBM. Lotus Notes and its success is the only example I can think of where IBM from a business sense got it right in terms of placing the product to corporate america. Plus, at that time, people in corporate IT were still more afraid of IBM than they were MS. linux since already has plenty of wonderful native apps available for the platform. It was not planned but it turned out in my opinion to be the best formula for success. Get the native apps going and then focus on integrating a compatibility layer to reel in more users. -- Johnathan Bailes BAE Systems ESI "UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things." - Doug Gwyn ---