LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Brian Astill <brian.astill@flinders.edu.au>
  To  : linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au
  Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 15:12:46 +1000

Re: [Fwd: Funny Stuff]

At 13:55 14/02/00 +1030, Mark Newton wrote:
>On Mon, Feb 14, 2000 at 01:33:57PM +1030, Matthew Geddes wrote:
>
> > Can anyone enlighten me as to why someone *would* go with Windows 2000?
>
>The usual:  Microsoft will no doubt bring out a swag of software which
>either requires Win2000 features, 
   ......  <snip>  .....

I think the question is wrong.  Let me put it into another context:
"Why would anyone who is using RH6.1 be interested in RH6.2 (currently in
Beta)?"  The _real_ Q. is "Why wouldn't they?"

Why would anyone imagine the situation is any different for someone using a
M$ GUI system?  If YOU were a SysAdmin using WinNT, and who knew nothing
about *nix except that it was a good OS, would YOU be prepared to make a
great leap into the dark by changing your OS?  A major problem would be
your need to keep the existing system up and running while you prepared the
new one, so you would have to be running your old system while you learned
the new one.  In addition the new one, in the case of GNU/Linux, comes with
woefully inadequate documentation.  Wouldn't YOU be more interested in a
system very similar to the one you have and which promised greater
stability and functionality?

That's why Bruce's daughter's question is so naive.  M$ knows its system is
unstable just as well as its users do.  Why else would Word have autosave
and an excellent document recovery system?  Why else would W2k server hype
emphasise its ability to examine client systems and repair where necessary?
 But people tend to stay with what they know, and in some cases their
investment in their current system is seen as too large to abandon.

My whatever-number-of-c's-worth it is.

Brian

 


Brian Astill,  Visiting Research Fellow
Flinders University Institute of International Education

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