stefan.waidele.info

If you want to make the step toward Linux, this might be worth reading, too: LinuxBasics.org/linuxbasics/MigrationTips

The Reuters article I havd picked as source of arguments against Linux is not available by the original link anymore. If anybody finds it, please tell me. In January 2004 it was published here: “http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=U1UHKJBHRBA0YCRBAE0CFFA?
type=topNews&storyID=4181071&pageNumber=0″

It mentions many arguments against Linux. I picked it for my ‘rebutal’ just because it came across my way. There are many other sources who also bring forward simular points. The points are always the same. They have been for years.

“As never before, corporate customers are turning to Linux software instead of Microsoft Windows to run big business operations. Now, if only they could get the word processor’s basic “cut and paste” feature to work.”

The ‘cut and paste’ feature is not part of the word-processor. It is part of the OS, or as in linux: part of the desktop environment. Windows and Linux (KDE, Gnome, others) both have the ‘usual’ ctrl-[xcv] cut, copy, paste commands that can also be found in the ‘Edit’ menu of programs.

But Linux has also the possibility to insert ’selected’ text by pressing the middle mouse button (that is the wheel). Combined with the possibility to display a programs output across the network, there are amazing possibilities. Awfully convenient. I miss it whenever I use Windows.

“At the LinuxWorld trade show here this week, advocates said the next big challenge for the loose-knit “free software” movement is to create a reliable way to run desktop computers and perform mainstream office tasks.”

OpenOffice.org is a full-grown alternative to MS-Office. It has excellent MS-Office import, and platform-independant PDF-Export. It’s ready. For some years already.

“It works 98 percent of the time. But it’s the 2 percent of the time it doesn’t that kills you,” Jeremy White, a leading developer of Linux applications, told an audience of network administrators.

If Linux causes minor inconvenience, (almost) everybody screams: “Not ready for prime-time, yet! Never will be!”. If Windows causes inconvenience (almost) everybody accepts it as a basic fact of daily life.

BTW: Windows also does not work in all cases: Did you ever try to take a screenshot of that DVD you bought? Linux can do it. Did you ever try to convince an “setup-wizard” to do what you want? Did you ever try to install XP in the first primary partition of a disk without erasing the second? Why did XP crash…was it the lack of audio-driver or is the latest video-driver not quite ready yet? I could go on forever!

“Linux desktops need a little more work to be consistent,” said Jack Messman, chairman and chief executive of Novell Inc. “I don’t know how much of that will come about this year.”

Windows-Apps are not consistent, either. Every new version of MS-Office “improves” the look and feel of the GUI. Let alone the design of apps like ‘Nero Startcenter’ and the like which throw all known window-borders off the cliff.
Linux desktop environments and window-managers usually are very consistent within themselves. And very different from each other.

Each windows-version hides basic function elsewhere.
Where do you tell the modem not to wait for the dialtone? Win98/Win2k/WinXP…three windows-distributions and three different location for the same checkbox. It has been consistent (and easy to find) in Suse since I first installed version 5.2!

“It’s a big pile of lumber with no agreed-upon standards,” complained White, president of St. Paul, Minnesota-based software company CodeWeavers.

The standards used in free software might not be universally agrreed upon, but at least they are open. Windows-standards are neither ‘agreed upon’, but they are lock-in. Have you tried to get some data out of some MS-application? (http://OpenOffice.org helps :)

Linux relies on a network of independent programmers to improve its software. Its users are required to share the computer code they create.

No, they are not required to share anything! Let me repeat this a little louder: Users of GPL-software do not need to share anything! Users of GPL software do not even need to share their names and adresses! There is a lot that you share if you are using ‘usual’ software. How much data do you need to enter into all those registration forms? What data is being collected from your PC when registering XP or Office? Do you run an OS that sends messages to the manufactorer whenever it crashes? Answer these questions. Then estimate how much it would cost any regular developer to gather that much information about the market and its user-base. So how much do you ’share’ with the richest company in the world? Open source developers might also ask you for this kind of information, but they will not have the power to lock down your PC if you do not register.

Even further: Developers are not required to share anything! They are free to base their programming-work on GPL -licensed source-code. They do not need to share it. ONLY if they redistribute what they have created on the base of GPL-licensed source-code has to be place it under the GPL, too. This is a GPL-FAQ. Have you ever tried to write programs that are based on MS-code? Did you redistribute them? You either paid a lot of money, or you will pay a lot of money as soon as they find out.

– original dated 23 Jan 2004, modification 7 Dec 2004