On Wed, 2002-10-30 at 00:16, Dan Coalman wrote:
Chris,
As I read your post, I was immediately reminded of the endless hours I spent rebuilding NT & Exchange Servers because of failed Service Packs and other "upgrades". This was doubly frustrating because, once we repaired the server(s), we would usually discover that 3rd party vendor apps (print tracking, time&billing) were incompatible with the current SP. The most damaging "upgrade" was Exchange Server 5.5, SP 2, which corrupted - well - everything and I got to sit on the phone with the "Evil Empire" for 14 hours straight and manually change the entire registry. *shiver*
Then there was IE 6, which hosed all our JavaScript procedures provided by 3rd party vendor portals - such as Streaming Video. They simply wouldn't load at the front-end anymore. Not a good thing for a media-based corporation on a global landscape.
Regardless, even if Windoze doesn't crash as much as Linux - I can live with it, especially right now. Why? Because of the cost. I gave six presentations last week which required illustrating timelines, resource usage, and other aspects of ERP. I used StarOffice 6.0 and Mr. Project: total cost = $60.
Had I used MS Office (2k or XPee) - I would have to shell out $400 clams (USD). Oh! Wait! MS Project is not part of the Office suite, so that's another *gulp* $600(USD)! ...and don't forget about extra licenses for my staff.
I'm a consultant nowadays - and those prices are simply not justifiable to me, especially now that there are more economical alternatives.
Linux is evolving, as it always should - I look at this as a very exciting time. It reminds me of the mid-80's when 486 fever began sweeping the U.S. The difference is that there's a huge knowledge base this time around - accessible to anyone and everyone at any time.
Linux is stepping into the ring with Goliath. I'm bringin' my slingshot.
These situations will get better imho, think about how the community works, most programs aren't written by one persons vision at work and in secrecy. Thats the thing with OS X 10.2, its nice to look at and is better than XP in almost everyway, but always feel that something is missing from that platform, plus too much added too from third party vendors. Lots of people buy Nortons Anti-Virus, yet no virus bar macro ones (macro ones through MS Office) exist on this platform...Yet people there spend $100 on something that is useless to them, but it sure likes to get in the way. This is why I believe MSFT is wrong, its not that the community doesn't like to spend money on software, its just we tend to be a lot more savvy when it comes to product purchases (well illustrated above). The "downside" to OpenSource is much like shopping in a bazaar, a lot of good that haven't been specifically written to use one particular feature set as it depends on what the developer felt was the most necessary addition at the time. The point of the distribution seems to me to be one of integration, but with SuSe its integration of bleeding edge components, think about test pilots 30 or 40 or more years ago when it was at its most dangerous, yet most exhilirating. Its an exciting future ahead, what with the gift HP are giving to the community with the ability to switch resolutions on the fly in X. And there is certainly a ton of interest in fonts right now, which no doubt will be improved and fixed pretty soon...Wonder if anyone is going to make an extensis suitcase or an Adobe Type manager type of application? I doubt Adobe will, nor extensis, being proprietry and based on the size of the Linux community they will miss out, because by the time they realise they could have made some money from it they would have been too late. Matt <snipped for brevity...was a great post>