[PLUG] Rumors that Windows 7 will kill Linux...

Tim Slighter tcslighter at gmail.com
Mon Mar 16 20:22:09 UTC 2009


Paul is on to a very valid point, most places I have worked or consulted
at already have an extensive Microsoft Office suite backplane.  So good
luck to any users that wish to use Linux in a Windows and MS Office
environment but it is possible.  Some users will want to use OpenOffice
and discover that they will need to have a WebDAV connector to integrate
with Sharepoint or they find out that only exchange connections are
allowed for email, forcing the user to rely upon Evolution.  If all else
fails, install VMWare or Win4Lin and use your Windows environment when
you have to.  So there are options and it can be done but the point here
is not whether someone can get away with using a Linux platform at work
but if it will ever be the standard platform and my guess is with so
much money tied up in Microsoft Office integration suites that it is
very unlikely to happen.  The data center could be an entirely different
story however.

If we are talking only about home users then I am way off topic.

Paul Heinlein wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Mar 2009, Quentin Hartman wrote:
>
>   
>> Some good responses in here, but most of them (including the original
>> suggestion that 7 will "kill Linux") are missing a crucial point. The
>> platform is beginning to matter less and less as each of them are
>> overcoming their shortcomings, and none of them are likely to ever
>> "kill" any of the others. All three of the big platforms (Windows,
>> Linux, OSX) are roughly equal when it comes to core functionality.
>>     
>
> The big exception is MS Office. My intuition is that, broadly 
> speaking, MS Office addiction drives Windows sales, at least in the 
> business environment. You can get Office:mac, but it's not 100% 
> compatible with the Windows version.
>
> There are speciality applications that will always tie certain 
> businesses to certain platforms -- but MS Office is the de facto 
> standard for production of business documents. As long as that's the 
> case, Windows sales will remain relatively level.
>
> As long as internetworking is not 99.5% accessible or reliable, 
> locally run applications will have a large influence on OS choice. 
> Google Docs and its successors will all face the internetworking 
> bottleneck. Unless my bedroom, plane seat, remote conference room, and 
> all places in between have reliable, fast internetworking connections, 
> I'm going to rely on local applications, not cloud apps.
>
>   



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