Michael Lankton wrote:
Hmmm, first Sun offers Solaris 2.6 for the cost of shipping and the media,
Pardon me, SCO has been offering OpenServer and UnixWare since January (maybe earlier), with free download of SCO Merge (runs Win95 programs under OpenServer). I think they were first. I talked to their VP of Marketing, and he said that given the circumstances (imply: Linux and Free Software movement), "it was the right thing to do."
now SCO is integrating linux binary compatibility, what's next? It's nice to see the commercial unices start exercising some of the practices that the open source os'es proved to work, I hope the moves prove successful for both Sun and SCO.
So do I!!! On the topic of successful desktop OSes (yes, I'm beating a dead horse), look at where MS-DOS was just 10 years ago. At that time, a few people used it, and I only knew one person who used Windows (2.something). His system was the hardest to use - nobody could use that point-and-click thing. Now MS-DOS has a really glamorous GUI and it has a new name, but it still walks like a duck and talks like a duck, therefore it must still be a duck. Where am I going with this? Linux can very well become a desktop OS. Just like Win 3.0 and 3.1 took days to configure (and Win95 takes days to reconfigure after it crashes 2^10 times) Linux takes a little bit of tweeking. If someone (and I hate to suggest Yet Another Linux Distro - see Linux Journal Sep 98) could combine the best features of the major distros, and throw in KDE, you would have a system that the *average* computer user could use without too much hassle. Point: Linux (like other Unices) needs considerable administration. Counter Point: NOT!!! (But in the interest of keeping our jobs, we'll say it does). Like was mentioned previously, YaST does a great job of shielding the user from what it is doing. When a user decides to travel the road to be a guru, they can learn what's under the hood. Even very accomplished Win95 users don't know what the registry does (except get corrupted). Summary: Like MS-DOS was 10-15 years ago, like Win3.1 was six years ago, Linux is now. Like Win95/98 is now (IRT admin not stability), Linux will be in two years or so. Look at the advances Linux has made in three years (back then I couldn't fix the stair- stepping of prited text without editing printcap, now YaST and RedHat's PrintTool take care of that for me). As advances in Linux' admin tools are made, Linux will make its way onto the desktops. I use it in a desktop environment on two PC's and in a server environment on two servers. I'll be adding another Linux-based desktop at work when our new computers come in (I'll get the *old one* of course). George - To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e