[Gllug] Microsoft was distributing Ubuntu

[Richard Turner]

On Mon, 2007-06-25 at 12:52 +0100, John G Walker wrote:
> given that some people are using Linux, I would
> have thought that MS could have increased their revenue by selling
> their own distro and including Linux versions of MS applications
> therein. 

What software though? Even assuming that MS would be happy to undertake
all the extra development to do this, even just for a single piece of
software, is there anything in their portfolio you'd buy?

Generally Linux is used on servers, correct? What server software could
MS provide for which there isn't already a good free alternative? I can
only think of Exchange, but I'm not really up-to-speed on MS software.

As a Linux desktop user part of the reason I use Linux and other Free
tools is to avoid proprietary stuff and advocate Open Source* - I endure
sub-optimal support for the MS Word docs I frequently see floating about
because of this, and try to tell people about the alternatives, so I'd
not buy MS Word for Linux.

I know MS released Internet Explorer 5 for HP-UX and Solaris, but
considering that MSIE 7 on Windows isn't a very good browser, what
chance that MSIE 5 for UNIX was any good? It was discontinued because of
lack of demand for it, they say.

* I know I'm using the terms "Open Source" and "Free" interchangeably,
and probably shouldn't, but I've not quite got it straight in my head
which is which yet, or what the differences are, and I don't suppose
that's important to this discussion :)

R.

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