In article , Larry wrote:

While 95 was better than 3.1, which was simply a gui put over DOS 3.3
with a few toys, they weren't competing with the MAC, a computer I have
no use for because of its closed environment and expensive software.

Sorry, I can't let that just sit there. In what way is OS X a closed
environment? You get free development tools with the OS, more than can
be said for Windows. Also, it's based on Unix, which is far more stable
than anything MS has produced so far ... and they've had plenty of time
and $deity knows how much money to throw at the problem. As a multi-user
environment it's second to none, program install and removal is better
the MS, no registry to foul up, and no stray files around your system.


LINUX is the best cheap OS. Too bad noone ever agreed
on ONE gui for it or finished version 1.0 of any software available for
it.

Agreed on one GUI? Why restrict choice? Why not have multiple GUIs so
people can choose one they like rather than having to use something that
doesn't work how they want to? You might as well say we should all drive
the same cars or wear the same clothes.

I don't like your suggestion that none of the projects are finished or
usable because they're not even out of beta yet. The kernel is pretty
good. I'm posting using slrn, it's only on version 0.9.8.1, I've been
using it since 1997 and it's not crashed on me yet. In fact, I don't
recall any Linux programs crashing on me and I've been using it almost
exclusively at home since about 1999. I even trust both my business
servers to Linux, and I've had up times of over 400 days on both of
those, only going down for hardware or kernel upgrades. To say projects
are unfinished is misleading. There are over 18200 packages in the
Debian distribution, those packages are stable or they wouldn't be
there. But to say they're unfinished, as if it were a problem exclusive
to Linux, is unfair. Projects get superceded or become redundant, that
is why they get abandoned. If a project for which there is demand gets
abandoned by it's originator then, because of the GNU Public License,
others are able to pick it up and evolve it. You certainly don't get the
situation, which you do under the proprietary system, where the
software originators abandon it or go bust and leave their users high
and dry.

Whether software is *ever* finished is estremely debatable. If Windows
3.1 was finished, why was there the need for 95? If 95 was finished why
did we need 98? Is Adobe PageMaker finished? I doubt it, it's still been
abandoned though, and users can choose to stick with it (if it'll run
under Vista) or they've got to upgrade to InDesign.

Your remarks regarding open source software are throwaway, the software
is worth so much more than that remark.


If LINUX
ever got organised under one umbrella, Vista would have never been
written.

It has been tried. But people want different things from their software
and so they do it a different way, and they can do so freely, they
have both the tools and the source code, you only have to see how many
different Linux distributions are listed at distrowatch.com (199 so far).
Try doing that with Windows.

Sorry, got a bit OT there. It's something I'm quite passionate about and
it's easy to get carried away. Normal service will now be resumed.

Justin.

--
Justin C, by the sea.