[cumbria_lug] New distro advice

[Schwuk]

Michael Saunders wrote:
> Uhm, I don't know if you're referring to hardware or software compat,
> but I still don't see your point. Neither of those have a significant
> effect on performance. BeOS failed for a number of reasons; that's
> totally irrelevant to this discussion. I'm saying that BeOS attracted
> plenty of attention thanks to its speed (both booting and running),
> and if Linux performed similarly it'd fare SO much better.

Software compatibility. Unless the OS can interoperate with existing
(typically MS) systems, then it will not get its foot in the door within
the enterprise, and unless people are using it at work, they won't want
to use it home.

Yes, we all know that there is nothing stopping the millions of
knowledge workers out there switching to FLOSS for their daily computing
needs, apart from the lack of software compability and inertia from
their IT department.

Performance really doesn't come into it, unless you're talking about
workstations (which you've said we're not). If BeOS "attracted plenty of
attention" why did it die? Lack of take-up, driven mainly by lack of
compatibility.

> Yeah, Windows is integrated to such an extent that security holes are
> a nightmare to fix, a single bug can have a catastrophic effect on
> many aspects of the OS, and it's a disaster zone. Yes, more desktop
> integration would be a bonus, but let's keep things neatly layered.

I mean the integration of the computer into the infrastructure, not
within the desktop itself. If you've ever seen a properly designed (and
executed) Active Directory environment, you would have to admit that it
is an impressive beast. Unfortunately, they are very rare outside of
text books...

I can see Sun and their Java Desktop and Java Enterprise System doing
far more damage to MS than a better performing OS would.

Cheers,
--
Schwuk