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Villager Senior
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Posts: 1,749
Join Date: May 2005
Location: , Wisconsin, USA
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29-07-07, 08:14 PM
That was a very interesting article defyfear, thanks.
These are a couple of interesting points.
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PCs are ludicrously powerful compared to what they were when Linux first booted in 1991, but that's an issue of increased speed, not increased functionality or innovation.
Inferior but dominant: familiar story? The technology inside the PC was inferior and poorly architected compared to other competing systems of the day, but Microsoft's clever business tactics ensured its success in the long term because it ran Windows.
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Linux had won. We were now the biggest competition in the server and database market out there and all the big names cared about Linux. Money was pouring into development from all these big names into developing Linux's performance in these areas.
The users had lost. The desktop PC, for which linux started out as being development for, had fallen by the wayside. Performance, as home desktop users understand performance, was gone. Worse yet, there was no way to quantify it, and the developers couldn't care if we couldn't prove it.
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I built my first computer in 1978. IBM introduced the 3033 mainframe that same year. I have an article from 1983 with benchmark tests from dozens of computers in I don't know how many languages. The 3033 running assembler beat everything else. But now I have a device that fits in my pocket that I have tested myself running compiled C that is faster than that $3,000,000 mainframe running COBOL.
In many ways Windows and Vista and Linux are crap. But not being perfect isn't the issue. The question is what are we going to do with this stuff and how are we going to change society with it? Society is going to change, there is no doubt about that but in what direction and under whose influence?
I never thought about watching videos on my computer in 1978. I didn't even have a VCR. But this Archos PMA400 uses Linux and it can do the job of a VCR and fit in my pocket.
The reason to go to Linux is to escape from Microsoft and stop paying these palefaces forever. The OLPC is a way to spread knowledge cheaply and it runs Linux. It is about power and freedom.
BBC NEWS | Technology | Factfile: XO laptop
umbra
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Why I quit: kernel developer Con Kolivas
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