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Dream on about alternatives to the often frustrating Windows OSes all you
like folks, but it ain't gonna happen. For every UNIX customer a software
developer might attract, there are 96 or more Windows customers whose
demands for enhancements to the WIndows version of the product are going to
be delayed. It is just too expensive for almost any software company with
pretensions to produce anything more complex than a basic text editor to
support alternative OSes. That's why Microsoft became such a run-away
success.
Before Microsoft, most software packages were very limited in scope and
very expensive. There were no off the shelf productivity products. Many
applications that today are whipped off in an afternoon by the end user
using a spreadsheet's macro facility used to require months of custom
programming. The microcomputer revolution could not happen until a
standard OS emerged which provided a large enough potential customer base
to support off the shelf software development. Apple had its shot at
becoming the standard platform, but blew the opportunity by ignoring its
customers' needs (primarily the need for backward compatibility between
generations of hardware and software). IBM blew its shot when it gave
control of its original PC OS to Microsoft. Gates picked up the ball and
ran with it. Does that make him a bad person? IMHO, he was just acting
in his own and his shareholders' best interests.
You can argue all you want about the technical merits and stability
comparisons between Windows and every other OS out there, but the fact
remains, unless Microsoft pulls some colossal blunder, it has not only the
inside track, but almost all the tracks in the race for the next OS.
I've looked at various flavors (there must be hundreds that have come and
gone) over the years, and each time I asked myself 'Do I really want to
spend all this time dicking around with a new computing environment just to
run a few applications in a possibly more stable environment?" Each time
the answer has come back: "Nope."
-uf
At 5/11/2001 10:09 AM, Jeff Haferman wrote:
>For an alternative to MS under Linux take a look
>at http://www.freemarket-project.org/
>Still under development at this time....
>
>
> >
> >
> >Erwin,
> >
> >If metastock would run under Linux (without the Windows emulation)
> >we wouldnot be depending on microsoft or ?
> >( for the moment i donot think equis (metastock producer) will develop
> > a linux version because they are too microsoft oriented)
> >
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