Linux is a threat to Windows

I don't think it was ever British policy to change the religion in any colonial possession. Certainly not in India. The suppression of slavery and other practices that shock the conscience should not be interpreted as a requirement for a religious conversion, although it may have been regarded as such by those affected.

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8

I don't think it was ever British policy to change the religion in any colonial possession. Certainly not in India. The suppression of slavery and other practices that shock the conscience should not be interpreted as a requirement for a religious conversion, although it may have been regarded as such by those affected.

Maybe Linux it's not yet ready, but the Firefox example got them off guard, and they can't reverse the trend.
Linux can't compete yet thanks to monopolic efforts from Microsoft, but the hardware makers shouldn't be so receptive to limitations now.
Linux has got some steady improvement, every year gets better, so it's a win-win for users.

Threat no. Healthy competition? Oh Yea..

I'd hate to think what crud we'd have for a Windows OS if the only alternative to Windows was to experience mass sticker shock and buy an Apple..

Keeps MS listening to the end users and fixing/improving things. Win-7 still looking to be a good step up from XP but is not capable of replacing XP on older hardware. (Still too darn resource hungry)

For those that don't play the newer 3D games, Linux is an excellent alternative, and with every new release of from the distros mentioned in the story, it gets easier and easier for the novice user to make the switch from windows and keep their old Athalon or P4 going for a couple more years.

Check another history book, and tell that to the Tasmanian Aborigines. Wait you can't, they seem to have been exterminated by British colonists. Oh well..

Well then, they can hardly be said to be converted, can they? They can only be said to be dead.

I think that the Tasmanian Aborigines would beg to differ on your point. Otherwise, how is we can we hear their loud voices and cries of ancestral injustice?
Are they ghosts of the dead? What a miracle! Spectral figures who work and shop and pay taxes and marry and produce little spectral offspring!

Having said that, they are no more Aboriginal than I am a Scottish Highlander.
That being said:
Britain! I want compensation for my ancestors being forced off their land during the Clearances.
Norway! I want compensation for my ancestors being raped and pillaged by your Viking hoards.
Germany! I want compensation for my ancestors being occupied and my other ancestors having send you packing back to the Fatherland in both World Wars.
France! I want compensation for having to endure your existence on the globe. And I think that compensation should extend to everyone else as well.
Rome! I want compensation for my ancestors being occupied and enslaved. You haven't given me anything! Well, except for aqueducts...and sanitation...and medicine...and irrigation...and maybe roads...but apart from that....OK, Rome has paid me compensation.
But the rest of you, PAY UP!

"Microsoft's operating system products face substantial competition from a wide variety of companies. Competitors such as IBM, Apple Computer, Sun Microsystems, and others are vertically integrated in both software development and hardware manufacturing and have developed operating systems that they preinstall on their own computers. Many of these operating system software products are also licensed to third-party OEMs for preinstallation on their computers. Microsoft's operating system products compete with UNIX-based operating systems from a wide range of companies, including IBM, Hewlett- Packard, Sun Microsystems, and others. Variants of UNIX run on a wide variety of computer platforms and have gained increasing acceptance as desktop operating systems. With increased attention toward open source software, the Linux operating system has gained increasing acceptance as well. Several computer manufacturers preinstall Linux on PC servers and many leading software developers have written applications that run on Linux. Microsoft Windows operating systems are also threatened by alternative platforms such as those based on Internet browsing software and Java technology promoted by AOL Time Warner and Sun Microsystems."

from Microsoft 10-K filing in 2001, https://investor.shareholder.com/msft/EdgarDetail.asp?CIK=789019&FID=1032210-01-501099&SID=01-00

I don't know when Microsoft started mentioning Linux as a competitor to Windows, but the difference in the 2001 filing and the current is largely that Linux has swallowed up all its UNIX competitors.

to my hotmail account which I had before M$ bought them out using my Mandriva Linux with firefox..just to let em know!

As cloud computing (including gaming like OnLive) starts to dominate the OS will become less important and Linux will finally win on PCs (or MS would stop selling stand alone PC OS as a main product and instead release 'free' client-OS to cloud subscribers and make their money from Server OS).

Windows does things in a non-standard way. If they did things in a standards compliant way, Wine would have made Linux a gaming possibility a very long time ago.

It's simple, If Windows wasn't mucking( or the rhyming word) around with the standards constantly, Linux would be around 5-10-20% penetration by now, maybe higher.

Another possibility is to convince the gaming companies that they're missing a major opportunity by playing ball with Microsoft and should pay more attention to making standards compliant stuff.

I think one of the folk at Mozilla said it clearly that even though they'd eeked out a 20% share against Microsoft on Microsoft's terms (though Microsoft attained it's market-share to quite a few illegal activities) free software isn't equal to competition by any means. It shouldn't be up to free software to make up the gap.

Essentially, even with free software available such as Linux and Mozilla's Firefox it's not really competition.

Microsoft is using this as a means to try to convince the antitrust regulators that there's competition (reference to threats by other companies is a cloudy veil at best).

When it is possible to attain software on equal footing at equal cost and people can choose freely and be knowledgeable of those choices, then you have competition.

@Fred

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp

I believe this site has been collecting statistics for a long time. Somewhere between 20,000 sites for more than 5 years.

"Linux is a threat to Windows"

LMAO in your dreams. I know this website thinks Linux is god but you should really stop dreaming

We can clearly see that you have no idea what you talking about.
So just find a shrink to listen to you instead of posting stupid things.

As in 'the defendant threatened the toe of my boot with his groin before attacking it'?

nonsense, I'm not the one living in cuckoo land. Linux will never be anything more than a platform for geeks who dream alot

That probably the reason that I'm among the few that have dual boot for gaming.
The rest left MS camp completely.
All FUD is not working anymore.
average Joe does not need games (consoles), FF is there, all your software is always at the stage of latest and greatest. No drivers hunt.
And the more important, there is no viruses to worry about. No "this machine is too slow again, i have to spend this weekend in reinstalling OS and my porgs and F***, what was the name of that little important add-on, and how to configure that things will work like they did before".
Of course "the rest" around me are educated people that can make decision based on facts, not PR bs. All of them can afford to by any SW license and they do in some cases (Nero for Linux for example).
The advantage of Linux is not the cost (all INQ readers can spent 50-200$ on OS license), but the fact it just works as you want it to.
As for Geeks
No self respecting Geek will ever touch Ubuntu or similar mainstream flavors.
Geeks use Slack, Gentoo, LFS, Debian and other less "illiterate user friendly" distros.

Wireless still isn't working 100% (or like it does in Wintoss). Two different cards and every distro of Linux and everything else and it still doesn't work acceptably. What's up? It's disgracefull having to reboot after a hibernate etc..

Linux is a threat to Windows as a desktop OS in the long term. Currently Linux is not much of a threat due to driver problems (wireless cards, and to a lesser extent video, as who plays good games on Linux anyways?). Also, I really do like my Windows now that i have 2GB ram.

Though most should see with the rise of the netbook, the threat to Windows grows a bit. You won't (not saying you can't) be playing good games on your netbook or rendering large image/video files. And lets face it, software has not really kept up with the hardware so as times goes, netbooks will become even more satisfactory. Therefore, a good foundation for Linux as a usable OS is progressing. Don't forget the possibility of ARM-based netbooks, which Linux supports.

Linux is quite viable. Been using it for some time now, and a lot of people I know have been using it.

It takes a bit to get used to and you do have moments where you need to 'geek' it out, but otherwise, it's been excellent. I have Heroes of Might and Magic 5, Quake4, Starcraft and a plethora of other games running on it without a hitch (Wine has improved a fair bit).

It's kinda hard to discredit linux when it has been steadily gaining momentum for some time- not to mention working with unfair disadvantages at times. What is absolutely amazing about it is that it's propelled by the will to create something from passion. Not much money involved there.

MS has not played fair for a good while with some aspects. Windows API had disgustingly bad and nearly non-existing documentation so WINE had a long road to travel down. For an OS which is not very standard, and has pushed the market to conform around itself, it simply gained a foothold in effect that not many alternatives could deal with too well at times. If you're a vendor creating hardware and you know 80% of the market (or whatever the bloody number is) is Windows, wouldn't you wish to follow in it's footsteps and conform to make more $ off it?

Linux is a threat to Windows, and an exponential one- we're still at the bottom of the curve- and the funny thing is that people really don't realize that.

But, cheers to MS, the BSD/Linux/'nix community, Apple, Solaris, etc etc. It's nice to have many flavors to choose from :)

Maybe I'm just a simple guy. I like the things I have to work. And work fast. Ergo, Linux. Did I have to tweak it a little? Yes. But that made it feel more like 'mine'. And everyone- let me repeat that- everyone that I've introduced to Linux has adopted it wholeheartedly. No looking back. I don't know about you but, to me, that makes it a threat a MS. Probably why MS mentioned it, huh? Now project 5 years into the future... That's a lot of people not looking back. And Ubuntu makes us non-geeks feel '1337'. 'Nuff said.