Firewall Wizards mailing list archives
RE: MJR on Linux/OSS
From: "Bill Royds" <broyds () rogers com>
Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 22:47:46 -0500
I think Marcus is perfectly correct. But the real advantage for Redmond is the fact that almost every Intel box sold at retail runs Windows XP out of the box. Who wants to install any Linux distro when they have an OS adequate for what they want to do already for "free". The fact that you pay for Windows in your purchase price is irrelevant when Dell and HP/Compaq and IBM and ... etc. come equipped with Windows unless you go to GREAT EFFORT to avoid it. Microsoft beat the U.S. government in the anti-trust case when it was not forced to unbundle Windows and sell it only at retail. If users had to go to Best Buy and chose between Windows or Red Hat (or Debian, SUSE, Gentoo, Mandrake etc.) to install on their new machine, they might make the OSS choice, but they don't get that choice. Software publishers aren't stupid. They make products for the marketplace and the marketplace for desktops is mainly Windows, with a bit of a specialty niche for Apple. -----Original Message----- From: firewall-wizards-admin () honor icsalabs com [mailto:firewall-wizards-admin () honor icsalabs com] On Behalf Of Devdas Bhagat Sent: Monday, March 07, 2005 1:17 PM To: firewall-wizards () honor icsalabs com Subject: [fw-wiz] MJR on Linux/OSS http://www.ranum.com/editorials/divide-conquer/ Summary: Diversity in interfaces is bad. Microsoft's consistent interface is good. I thought we went through this during the discussion on the personal firewall day (firewall-wizards, Sep 30 2003 by Paul D. Robertson)? Which consistent interface would suit everyone? As opposed to users saying "I know this interface, and I don't want to learn anything new", which interface would be acceptable? KDE? GNOME? WindowMaker? Windows? MacOS? The command line? Oh yes, you can run any distro with no big real difference between them. The major lines: Debian, Redhat, Gentoo. The rest are clones, or similar enough to transition easily between. The trouble with a single dominant monoculture is that it does increase the damage caused by a single hole. See blaster, and the long thread which was spawned by *that* on this list. I guess this is one of those things on which I disagree with Marcus. Hopefully, this leads to another good discussion on what would work best for what requirements (as opposed to the /. threads). Oh, and Marcus: DLL hell ;) Devdas Bhagat _______________________________________________ firewall-wizards mailing list firewall-wizards () honor icsalabs com http://honor.icsalabs.com/mailman/listinfo/firewall-wizards _______________________________________________ firewall-wizards mailing list firewall-wizards () honor icsalabs com http://honor.icsalabs.com/mailman/listinfo/firewall-wizards
Current thread:
- Re: MJR on Linux/OSS, (continued)
- Re: MJR on Linux/OSS R. DuFresne (Mar 12)
- Re: MJR on Linux/OSS Devdas Bhagat (Mar 12)
- Re: MJR on Linux/OSS R. DuFresne (Mar 12)
- Re: MJR on Linux/OSS Devdas Bhagat (Mar 12)
- Re: MJR on Linux/OSS Marcus J. Ranum (Mar 12)
- RE: MJR on Linux/OSS Bruce Smith (Mar 17)
- Re: MJR on Linux/OSS R. DuFresne (Mar 12)
- Re: MJR on Linux/OSS Marcus J. Ranum (Mar 12)
- Re: MJR on Linux/OSS R. DuFresne (Mar 12)
- Re: MJR on Linux/OSS David Lang (Mar 17)
- Re: MJR on Linux/OSS Crispin Cowan (Mar 17)
- Re: MJR on Linux/OSS Marcus J. Ranum (Mar 12)
- RE: MJR on Linux/OSS Bill Royds (Mar 12)
- Re: MJR on Linux/OSS Kevin (Mar 12)
- RE: MJR on Linux/OSS Paul Melson (Mar 12)
- Re: MJR on Linux/OSS R. DuFresne (Mar 12)