Ian Semmel wrote:
> There appears to be some confusion in this newsgroup as to what open
> Source entails.
Not as much as you might think.
> Schestowitz and his ilk seem to think that because someone advocates open
> source programs, they are advocating linux.
Linux is actually just a tiny little kernel. The kernel itself is
probably less than 1% of the total code included on a Linux
distribution. The kernel is about 1.6 megabytes of a 4 gigabyte DVD.
> The platform which runs most open source programs is Windows.
That probably could be true. Windows can run cygwin, which means that
most OSS programs can be compiled for it using a gcc compiler. Other
OSS software can be implemented using common languages such as PERL,
PYTHON, RUBY, and Java.
It's ironic that you are arguing that Windows has the ability to run
Linux applications.
It's a bit ironic. You are arguing that if I install software owned by
Red Hat (cygwin), that Windows can do what Linux does. There are a few
problems though. First, Windows normally doesn't support X11 Windows.
Cygwin has an X-Server that calls Windows routines for rendering. It's
slower than real X11 because Windows GDI is synchronized to the display
refresh, but it's good enough for limited X11 use.
> There are
> thousands more windows os programs than are available for linux, and
> because it is easier to write gui programs for windows, and there are more
> development tools, they are usually of a better standard.
One could probably make the argument that Visual Studio is "better"
than Linux tools, but
most of the other competitors have pretty much been wiped out. On the
other hand, I can use eclipse with CDT (on either Windows or Linux),
and have industry standard libraries. The GCC compiler is the key.
Windows supports GCC, but Microsoft doesn't like to reccomend it.
Other UNIX vendors often encouraged the use of GCC, since it opens up a
wider set of tools to their platform.
On the other hand, Microsoft does everything they can to discourage the
use of OSS, and very strongly discourage the publication of benchmarks
using OSS software and technology.
> Linux may be open source, but open source is not linux.
Partly true. As I said before, Linux is just a little kernel, less
than 1/10th of 1% of the total distribution. On the other hand, a
Linux DISTRIBUTION is a massive collection of thousands of OSS
applications, libraries, and standards. The kernel was optimized to
run these types of applications.
Windows is better at "hand-holding" the user. But the real question
for 2007 is "Microsoft has been holding our hands and dragging accross
the streets and through busy traffic for 17 years now. The 5 year old
just learning to use Windows 3.0 in 1990 is now 23 years old. The high
school kid who first used Windows at 15 is now almost 40 years old.
In 1995, Windows 95 rendered millions of PCs "obsolete". Many of those
computers found their way into the hands of young teenagers who
couldn't afford to buy the drand new PC machines. They wanted the
Internet. They were able to install Linux on these old machines, and
have an internet-ready system. Those kids were 12-15 years old in
1995, today they are in their 30s.
And speaking of Internet, remember that early Web designers had to
write their applications in C, C++, or PERL, as a plug-in to Apache.
As a result, many of them got very familiar with Linux. Most web
authors had their PCs configured in "dual boot" mode, booting into
Windows for correspondence and printed documents, and booting into
Linux for web layout and evaluation.
Java of course is also often used for OSS technology. And again,
software written for portable Java will run on both Windows and Linux.
In fact, many Linux distributions include both Java JDK environments as
well as a number of OSS applications written for Java.
Where Windows has a slight advantage is in the domain of shareware.
Even this is shifting however. Remember that most shareware uses
common libraries, which means that Linux WINE can even execute many of
these shareware programs on Linux. The main difference is that if the
application is a trojan, it's ability to do damage is severely limited,
and on Linux, attempts at hacking are more easily identified.
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