A distribution bytes the dust!

[John Chambers]

| Johannes Ullrich <jullrich at euclidian.com> wrote:
|
| > Well, they will still have 'Fedora', which I guess is going to replace
| > the current consumer RedHat distro.
|
| Doesn't sound like their CEO has much faith in it for the imminent future,
| though:
|
| http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39020390,39117575,00.htm

When he said that home users should choose Windows instead, he was of
course wrong.  They should choose OSX.

Recently my wife, a long-time Windows user for  job-related  reasons,
decided to try a Mac laptop and see if that would decrease her use of
obscenities.  She tried one in an Apple store, and ended up  carrying
one  home.  Within a few hours, she was saying how much she loved it.
Now, a couple of months later, she has come up with a few things that
she  thinks  Windows  does  better, but she reacts with horror to the
idea of "going back".  I've heard a lot of questions  while  she  was
using the Mac, but no obscenities.

I have wondered at times whether having a long-time unix user in  the
house that can help her puzzle out problems is part of the story. I'd
guess that it's a small part, but not all that significant.  She  has
rapidly figured out lots of things that I didn't know.

She's especially happy that her Powerbook does such a good  job  with
video and sound. Our use of both our TV and CD player have dropped to
near zero since she got it.  The DVDs she gets from Netflix work just
fine on the Mac, and the iMovie controls make a lot more sense to her
than the TV and DVD-player remotes ever did. She also figured out how
to access TV shows via the internet, which with the airport gives her
access to the few shows she wants  to  watch  from  anywhere  in  the
house,  not  just  the couple of places where there are TV sets.  Now
we're wondering if we should  look  into  terminating  the  cable  TV
service,  and use it only for internet access.  Or maybe DSL would be
cheaper, if the cable  company  refuses  to  supply  internet  access
unbundled from TV.

One example:  When there were weather questions, she used to turn the
TV to the weather channel. Now she grabs her Mac and uses weather.com
instead. Not the same, but just as useful. Our radios still get a lot
of  use,  but  with  wireless  laptops, sites like npr.org, wbur.org,
nytimes.com and news.google.com have started to cut into that, too.

If the linux gang could come up with a laptop package  that  includes
full  support  for CDs and DVDs, plus all the common online music and
video formats and painless wireless  access,  in  a  form  reasonably
comparable to what the Macs do, it could be a real winner.  As far as
I can tell, this isn't really close, but I'd be happy to be wrong.

The GUI issue is a red herring.  KDE and Gnome both have a Start-menu
lookalike,  which  is all there really is to it other than cosmetics.
The Mac doesn't even do that, and users hardly notice, as the  "dock"
is  intuitively obvious and works just as well.  Show most users some
downloadable themes, and they think it's a big improvement  over  the
Windows look.

So why would RH's CEO think that home users should use Windows? Maybe
he hasn't seen a recent Mac?  Should we try to show him one?


--
   O
 <:#/> John Chambers
   +   <jc at trillian.mit.edu>
  / \  <jmchambers at rcn.com>