Comment Re:Ubuntu Instead? (Score 5, Interesting) 351
Businesses don't run based on ideals, they run based on productivity. If applications like Open Office fail to open an Office document even 1% of the time then they're useless if that document is really something you need to open. Gimp still isn't a satisfactory replacement for Photoshop. Sound in flash still doesn't work correctly out of the box on Ubuntu systems, there's no mp3 support by default, nor does Quicktime really work. There's still not a decent movie player.
This doesn't even begin to take into account that most businesses I've come across use some kind of custom industry application. CAD applications, specialized accounting applications, lending an loan applications, guess what they're all written for? Windows. Linux still doesn't work for those customers.
If the Linux community wants to advance they're going to have to give up on some of their ideals and actually provide what people are looking for, which is a stable operating systems that run applications people actually want to use with a consistent look and feel everywhere. I ran Ubuntu for over a year and reverted to XP because I couldn't deal with the slowdowns for no reason, application crashes, incompatibilities, mystery feature additions and removals based on the whims of the developers (what's pigeon going to include or disable this week!), and decisions that were made purely for philosophical reasons (no mp3 support by default? please.)
Most of my machines still run some kind of Unix (mostly FreeBSD and OSX) but when I need Windows, I really need Windows and nothing else will do.
Besides, Outlook is still the best email/productivity/calendaring application out there. Nothing I've seen on UNIX even comes close, especially when I need to share data with others.
And just because XP will be end of lifed, the security updates for it will continue for a few years, which is all anyone really needs. If 75% of the market is still on XP, developers aren't going to move to being Vista only any time soon because it'd kill their sales.
This doesn't even begin to take into account that most businesses I've come across use some kind of custom industry application. CAD applications, specialized accounting applications, lending an loan applications, guess what they're all written for? Windows. Linux still doesn't work for those customers.
If the Linux community wants to advance they're going to have to give up on some of their ideals and actually provide what people are looking for, which is a stable operating systems that run applications people actually want to use with a consistent look and feel everywhere. I ran Ubuntu for over a year and reverted to XP because I couldn't deal with the slowdowns for no reason, application crashes, incompatibilities, mystery feature additions and removals based on the whims of the developers (what's pigeon going to include or disable this week!), and decisions that were made purely for philosophical reasons (no mp3 support by default? please.)
Most of my machines still run some kind of Unix (mostly FreeBSD and OSX) but when I need Windows, I really need Windows and nothing else will do.
Besides, Outlook is still the best email/productivity/calendaring application out there. Nothing I've seen on UNIX even comes close, especially when I need to share data with others.
And just because XP will be end of lifed, the security updates for it will continue for a few years, which is all anyone really needs. If 75% of the market is still on XP, developers aren't going to move to being Vista only any time soon because it'd kill their sales.
