People blast ITunes for DRM, but until a year ago, all you had to do was burn it on a CD and the DRM was gone. Not MS or RIAA’s idea, that’s for sure. The major labels wanted price increases, stronger protections and ITunes dropped some labels. They focused more on independents – which worked for me even better. People are boycotting RIAA-associated music.

I have no desire to understand a computer more than doing what I want to do. That’s not understanding how it works, seeing the inside, or even understanding what half the words mean. I still crash it, hit wrong buttons and it’s still ticking, 2 years later … no data lost and from what I can tell, it’ll be supported for years to come without weekly updates, patches, viruses, and most of my time trying to figure the thing out!

I know my comments won’t sit well with PC fans but I think there’s a lot of people like me out there. Linux just isn’t plug and play like a Mac is and now that it can run games (Window side), MS has lost a big market share. There is an option and even without advertising, it’s not obsure anymore.

Vista was just MS adding the nails to thier coffin.

“I pity the big business (M$, apple, etc) who get blamed for the requirements that they’re forced to put into their products.”

Do you really believe Microsoft could not say no to the content providers. These providers are desperate for the PC to be a delivery mechanism for their content. Microsoft only have to put their foot down and say “fine we won’t have premium content in Windows” and hey presto…this would all go away.

1. For premium content, read HD content. You suggest that few people are interested in this content. Is this like the few people who were interested in DVD content when it was first released? It will not be too long before HD (Premium) content will be the only content available. If you want to step outside the sealed box consumer electronics world – your only choice will be Vista and that’s no choice at all. The open world of the PC stops right there.

2. The main driver for linux on the desktop is business. What people use at work, they use at home – simple as that. It has nothing to do with gaming (which will soon be dead on the pc anyway – who wants to upgrade their video card for $1000 when you can by a PS3 for a lot less than that?)

It will not be this year, or next year but the linux/open source desktop will arrive eventually. Once businesses do the math, and that takes time, it will happen.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=119871

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oZGYb92isE

http://rapidshare.com/files/8318838/BackupHDDVD.zip.html

And I still don’t like Linux.

The average home user in need of a good desktop OS though, folks whom make up the other half of all OS sales I’m sure, simply do not have this luxury. Hence why Windows is the success it’s been for over a decade now, even if the reason behind it’s simplicity is the same reason why it is so insecure. People desire that which is simple to understand, easy to use, and above all doesn’t take a lot of time or effort. For example, a driver installation that takes less than a minute in Windows should not take an entire day (or week if you’re really stuck like I currently am in Ubuntu) to get up and running properly in Linux. Yet that is exactly the way things are right now, and have been for some time. And while the average computer user may try Linux, which I think is great, in the end they’ll all wind up using Vista eventually. Sad, but inevitable.

What I find really funny, and should have noticed sooner, is how Linux actually pertains to the context article. Should you be one of those few whom are actually interested in using “premium content”, well at least you’ll be able to with Vista despite the drawbacks involved. Switch to Linux and you’re pretty much screwed entirely. If and when the DRM that all “premium content” uses is broken, then, and only then, will Linux be a viable option for playback of such content. I pray that it will happen quickly, especially when it comes to HD-DVD and Blu-Ray since this would mean an end to the format war. Considering how good copyright protections/restrictions are getting, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Still think Linux is the answer now?

As some have pointed out, the problems having to do with Vista only matter if one has an interest in actually using “premium content”. P2P has never been more popular than it is today, and this is what leads me to believe as I do; that “premium content” only matters to a small minority, and thus isn’t nearly as big of a deal as the author of this article is making out.

“I think it’ll be a while before gamers switch over, but that’s only a slice of the population and as the author states can be handled by dual boot.”

The problem with a dual boot situation is that you’ve now just doubled your troubleshooting and maintenance work load for each PC you own. I don’t know about you, but one single PC running only Windows XP is enough work as it is. It is only the truly nerdy that don’t mind this type of torture so much. For some of them it’s actually fun lol.

The three major issues I think Linux will need to address in order to even compete in the non-techy desktop market are video drivers, multimedia, and “windows” hardware support.

The video support has gotten better over the years, but it still comes down to being very sensitive to the combination of motherboard, graphic card, and monitor. Some configurations work clean out of the box and some really suck. My current system has integrated nVidia graphics and depending on the distribution and it seems the specific monitor I’m using, I can get flicker free high resolution. Sometimes the nVidia provided drivers work, sometimes not. I recognize that partly this isn’t Linux’s fault (some companies do not provide or maintain Linux drivers and don’t open source enough of the specs to develop drivers) but it still dampens universal acceptance.

Multimedia is another pain. Most people seem to want, at most, 2 media players: audio and video. Again it’s hard to get a media player that supports most popular video formats well out of the box. Usually you have to find some mixed bag of codecs and depending of the media player and distribution you’re using, install them in one of several places. Even then I’ve still had problems. I’ve mostly tried mplayer, kaffeine, and vlc.

The hardware support problem is much tougher. For legacy hardware, it’s hard of not impossible to create drivers. For most new hardware, drivers for Linux lag Windows by at least 4 months, often much more. I personally have had problems getting USB devices to work with Linux. You almost need to follow some Linux highly supported HW list if you want it to work out of the box.

For distros, I’ve found Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and Mepis to be the closest to install and go.

Aside from those three pains, I think many Windows users wouldn’t be bothered by switching to a Debian or Red Hat based Linux. Most of the apps that most people care about (web browser, office suite, instant messaging, email) work really well. I think it’ll be a while before gamers switch over, but that’s only a slice of the population and as the author states can be handled by dual boot.

IMHO

In this case, Microsoft brags that Linex is quirky and geeky…so use Vista. Vista shags up a bunch of people and the aforementioned programmers proceed to fix up the Linux interface and get it going. The more restrictive Microsoft goes the more Linux will erode at their base.

My reason to keep at it is due to the fact that I know without a doubt that XP won’t last forever. Just look at 95, 98, Me, etc. One would be truly naive to believe that Microsoft and the vast majority of third parties will support XP past one year from Vista’s official release. After all, the sooner Microsoft can obsolete XP, the sooner everyone will be forced to buy Vista and thus fall under “their” control (the dreaded “them” of the world lol). I definitely don’t want to be caught with my pants down when the time comes to move on because I don’t have any other choice in the matter.

The wife said that perhaps I should buy one of those ‘For Dummies’ books, and while they can occasionally be useful, I’ve found that this is not quite always the case. For example, I tried to learn C++ not too long ago. I was sick of being told to ‘do it yourself’ if I wanted a certain plug-in ported to the newest version of foobar2000, a plug-in that many others would have been extremely happy to get their hands on as well besides myself. My hope was that perhaps I could help everyone out, something I like to do and why I enjoy forums. Hmm, perhaps I am a really big dummy after all, because the book didn’t help me to gain even the most basic of grounding on the subject. Same problem; an assumption on the authors part that you have some clue as to what is being outlined for you. Man I wish I had started learning how to program at a much earlier age. If only I knew then how valuable it would be later in life lol. But I digress.

Like I said before, my plan is to stick with XP for as long as I can before facing the decision of which path to take, Vista or Linux. I’ve been a PC gamer for a long time and have tons of games, at least ten of which I haven’t even touched yet (Oblivion, Splinter Cell Double Agent, Civ IV, Brothers In Arms, etc). It’s a bad habit of mine when I know my time is limited, but they’re hard to resist, especially when something I’ve been wanting to play for a while can be found in the bargain bin. This is one of my reason for liking the PC over the console actually. PC games tend to drop in price far faster than console titles do. Except where Microsoft is the publisher of course; then they stay relatively expensive forever lol.

My love of gaming means that even if I choose Linux, I’m still going to be shackled to some form of Windows at least. I have three computers to maintain, and it’s a huge pain that I don’t enjoy as much as I used to when I was younger. Somehow the hobby became work at some point along the way. This means that dual booting isn’t really an option I want to consider, and so I might as well just stick with Windows from the beginning and forgo Linux altogether. That would certainly be the easiest path to take, and as a bonus I wouldn’t have to learn how to make Linux work for me the way I want it to. I know I’m not the only person out there that feel this way sadly.

Despite how frustrating Linux tends to be to folks just starting out with it, and how hard it is to find truly good unbiased support, I would still like to eventually know it inside and out like I do XP. Despite everything I’ve said up to this point, I can honestly say that Vista isn’t something I want to support if given a choice, but down the road it may be inevitable. Sigh, it sucks to feel so screwed no matter what I do. In fact I think I’m starting to hate the PC altogether lol. If only our lives weren’t so intrinsically linked to technology, life would be so much easier, a funny paradox because technology is what is supposed to be making our lives easier. Without a doubt, technology has become the ball and chain of our generation. To even consider living without it in this day and age is unthinkable though. Man, talk about depressing.

A quick comment regarding applications. In days gone by I actually used to rely on quite a lot of pirated software, but these days a good portion of it is now free open source stuff. There are heck of a lot of really great, and more importantly free, applications for Windows these days. Just as many as, if not more than, Linux. Taking a count right now, only 5 of the 38 applications installed on my PC are pirated, and 2 of those pirated apps I don’t really need actually. Over the past year I’ve been trying to work towards having to reply on zero, and it’s been going pretty well. My point is that one does not have to switch to Linux in order to reap the benefits of the open source movement.

When I first heard of TCP, Longhorn, Pallidium, etc. I thought I had better try linux just to see what it was about. My very first run was a live cd of knoppix. After that I tried various flavors just to look at the pretty colors and graphics. Along with a really tough trying to figure it out and with a “what the heck do they call this or that program” to do whatever it was I was after at the moment.

It was a nightmare for me at first. Every step was not helped by the older hands of linux. All of them want to point you off at some computereze text and if you can’t figure it out from that, well go back to windows. A very snobbish attitude and one that doesn’t help at all. Most will throw up their hands and say screw it and go back to what they know.

I finally discovered the RPMs, APTs, and other “make it easys” to get the programs. I never have figured out how to compile. As the above poster mentions, the text for help all assumes you got gobs of linux experience and just need to final points. So there is a glass ceiling there and one that isn’t easy to break through. Fanboys don’t help at all. I’m very familiar with the Ubuntu forums. Were it not for that particular forum, I don’t think I would ever have gotten to where I could do a few things in linux.

My point here is this. Finances drive what is used and why. The linux crowd isn’t helping their cause with all the snobbishness. I love the security of linux but can’t stand the complications involved with it. Dos I know, used it for many a year and still do. So command line I can deal with after a sense. Yet the biggest turn off has been the linux crowds attitude as a whole. It’s one of the largest turn-offs to making the change is seeking help and running into that wall.

Still money is money and whether I adopt it or not, it is coming as a main driver as to why to jump ship from the ever increasing costs of running windows. This is not to mention the hidden costs of maintenance needed for windows both in time invested and in programs needed to clean up the mess. Almost everything worth a hoot is charged a pretty penny for in windows programs while in linux its for the most part free. Those are the kind of things that will drive the changeover. Again, costs as the driving factor.

In fact, I just gave Ubuntu 6.10 a renewed effort yesterday. I installed it on one of my older machines, a P4 1.6 (overclocked to 2.4 stable), ASUS P4S533 motherboard, 1GB memory, MSI Ti4600 video card with Dell 24″ LCD widescreen monitor, LiteOn DVDRW drive, D-Link gigabit card, and a USB 2.0 card. Pretty basic stuff. The first thing I did was set up the network configuration and Firefox, so that I could at least browse for help. The second thing I tried to set up was the video driver from Nvidia, so I can run at my monitors native resolution of 1920×1200. I’m stuck at 800×600 if I don’t (1024×768 goes off the screen).

Getting my video up and running the way I want is where I get stuck pretty much every time, and it frustrates the hell out of me. The problem is that even if you find good noob level instructions, they still always assume you have a basic understanding of Linux. Nobody switching from Windows is going to have a basic understanding of Linux folks! Even with no brainer step by step instructions, installation of my video drivers always fails, and that includes other PC’s of mine I’ve tried it on in the past. I think I’ve only managed to get the drivers installed once, a long long time ago when I first tried to use Linux (Fedora I think), and even then I failed because I needed to edit my xconf file, which immediately killed the OS and left me utterly lost and confused. It’s why I now choose to play with Linux on an older system actually. Don’t want to mess up anything important. Just read the Ubuntu forums and you’ll see I’m not the only noob that is thankful for such precautions lol. Anyways, compare trying to get your video driver installed and working correctly in Linux to how it’s done in Windows, then ask yourself why one is so damn hard and the other so easy. Security is a small part of why, I know, but honestly it shouldn’t be this hard to to something so simple.

The fact of the matter is that no matter how pretty a GUI you slap on it, Linux is still a command line OS at heart, much like DOS is. I didn’t care much for DOS either, but at least it was relatively useable. As such Linux simply isn’t friendly to noobs like me in the slightest. If I could only understand the many command lines given in all the tutorials I’ve read on getting things up and running, that would likely help immensely. Someone wanting to use a new GUI based OS should not have to jump through so many hoops though. Whatever happened to the whole concept of being intuitive?

Like I’ve said in previous posts, I really would like to switch to Linux, honest. It just isn’t going to happen any time soon though, and if someone like me can have this level of difficulty, imagine what the average Windows user has to go through. They make up the majority, and based on my experience I’m willing to bet that most will either stick with XP until they can’t anymore (because of forced obsolescence), or switch to Vista. I’m sure many will give Linux a try, and good for them. But in the end they will stick with whichever is easiest to use, and that doesn’t even cover all the other issues one has to face if they choose to move to Linux (goodbye games, learning replacement apps, finding drivers, etc).

As long as things remain as they are, which they will because the Linux crowd refuses to accept the fact that they should have to change anything in order to be more like Windows (foolish pride), there will never be a mass exodus of Windows user over to Linux. Not ever. But it is fun to dream, and you Linux folks do so like to dream.

At another level, salesmen will miraculously show up on the doorsteps of the department in charge trying to consume valuable time needed to set up the change as a preventer of sorts. It’s gotten so bad in this tactic that many corporations and businesses aren’t telling M$ until the move is almost over to prevent these sort of tactics.

Say what you will, when I see the price tag telling me that it is a couple of hundred bucks more to have the necessary extras to make use of the full capacities of the OS, it gets me considering just how bad I need the OS to begin with.

Sony is discovering this with their newest gaming console. The words were put out that cost would not be a driving factor as far as Sony was concerned as they thought they had the cats’ meow in gaming consoles. Funny thing was the first batches of consoles will be loss leaders to attempt to get the console established at consumer level. If cost were not a factor they would care less about the sales price. They aren’t giving those game consoles away cheaper out of the goodness of their hearts.

Microsoft is commiting suicide. Itis that way with everything. THe more you try to control things, the more it costs and the more it costs, the more you create opportunity for other competitors to get a foothold.

Open source will get a big boost from this.

Claiming Vista “IS” DRM has no more or less true than claiming XP IS DRM.

Although you’re right about the costing extra part. Consumers, in the end, wind up paying for the DRM features of the OS, even if you choose not to use it.

I’m actually not opposed to the IDEA of DRM. It’s just in its early stages, where content providers are saying “Look what we can do! Lets do it”. Over time, as the technology becomes more mainstream, hopefully less restrictions will likely find its way into the content. Well, I hope

Vista will tell you what you’re going to do today, and it will likely
cost extra.

Switching was easy as hell, I am so happy to be away from the nightmare that is Microsoft. The apps that come with Ubuntu kick the crap out of XP stuff. It took me ONE DAY to get full configured, and I’m no computer genius.

Open Source is going to bury MS crap. Only the last flat-earth types will be using Vista.

Every sentance in this article can be started with “If you choose to play protected content, …”. For those of us who never plan on buying/hacking/stealing/using protected content, then nothing in Vista degrades your quality, or gets in your way. Well, I’ll rephrase. It won’t get in your way any more than windows ordinarily would

I actually commend M$ for giving users choice in this matter. They can either be like linux, and not support it at all. Or put in the work required to support it if the consumer wants to drink the coolaid. Vista isn’t forcing your hand. They’re not requiring you to buy a new TV to play regular DVD content. If the consumers don’t want it, then don’t buy it! I promise you, if it flops (which it won’t, unfortunately), it won’t be in the next version of Windows.

I think I’m done ranting now. I guess all I’m trying to say is that I hate the rules that content providers force on the content, and I pity the big business (M$, apple, etc) who get blamed for the requirements that they’re forced to put into their products. Reminds me of the FCC.

And it could even be things like DVD movies at some point since they are copyright protected. I watch DVD movies on my computer all the time.

Also, its things like music CDs. Remember Sony and the rootkit they installed to try and stop people from doing fair use things to the music? (like putting the music on an ipod).

So if you decided to listen to a music CD that was protected your entire system could be degraded while you listen.

Oh and what about streaming videos? You can bet that any streaming video content provider will want to protect thier video. What if youtube was able to set all thier videos to appear as “premium” content?

So, you dont think most users ever listen to music cds, or watch movies, or youtube videos on thier computers?