In message 
<[log in to unmask]>, 
Peter M. Eggers <[log in to unmask]> writing at 12:50:54 in 
his/her local time opines:-

>I've been around since the "No one ever got fired for buying IBM!" era.
>The HP3000 at the time was better at the small to departmental size
>computers at the time, but you had to be a geek to understand the
>advantages.

I was always impressed about who bought HP3000s in the UK at least. It 
was by no means the cheapest computer to buy, and they always seemed to 
be small-to-medium companies who were pretty careful with their money.

It was usually a technical-led sale, but HP were nevertheless very good 
at getting the message across about cost of ownership to the management 
of those companies, and they were managements who also listened to their 
internal 'geeks' who got pretty fired up about how good life was going 
to be if they bought an HP3000. And by and large, they weren't 
disappointed.

> Most just bought IBM because computers were too hard to
>understand, and "everyone else" bought IBM.  I was truly disappointed that
>by the late '90s that HP3000 users were using the old IBM reasoning when it
>came to Microsoft.  I just didn't want to believe that the HP3000 community
>had become that enamored with the new IBM!  Of course, there are major
>differences between the 2 companies, but the mind set and mentality to buy
>IBM had been transfered to Microsoft, and the independent thinkers in both
>the HP3000 community and HP itself had been grossly out numbered by sheep.
>Oh well, I can't complain because I was off doing other things and missed
>the transition, not that I think that my input would have made any
>difference, but I would have felt better at least weighing in at that time.

Sheep, eh? I think you'll find people bought into Microsoft because it 
was the best thing going in those days. Certainly, when my then company 
bought Windows 2.1, it was a toss-up between that and Gem. And the first 
Windows show I went to was probably smaller than the show where I bought 
my Sinclair Spectrum a few years earlier...

But who now remembers Gem? And Microsoft didn't misstep until the rise 
of the Internet caught them out. Macs and Unix/Linux machines were two 
different, other, communities even then.

Microsoft buyers weren't sheep, buying the wrong thing because they 
didn't know any better. They were buying the right thing, for the vast 
majority of people at the time. Of course, it wasn't a perfect thing, 
and it was easy to find flaws. But they wouldn't have thanked you for a 
Linux machine at that time. And even the much-vaunted Mac - well, I 
coded a business plan generator for Excel 4, originally on Windows, and 
got lent a Mac to port it for that as well. It was a lovely looking 
thing - very elegant - but I had to program my way round all sorts of 
memory, font and pixel-shape issues I hadn't even had to consider on 
Windows.

>Linux is technically only the OS kernel, and the many distributions and
>derivatives create full OSs by combining Linux with the GNU OS utilities,
>other "free" software, and sometimes commercial software.  There have been
>good end user distributions for at least 10 years, that with a little
>technical help to setup, would run without problems until the hardware
>failed.  For more than 5 years, the installation of a good end user Linux
>distribution did not require technical help, and was easier to install than
>Microsoft.  Compatibility with Microsoft Office in all of its many flavors
>over the last couple of decades is very good, and old versions of MS Office
>can only be read by default by the OpenOffice and LibreOffice, last I
>checked (which has been a few years).  Plus, a Linux distribution can mimic
>any other GUI with an adequate desktop (you have choices) and the proper
>theme.  You can go for very simple and lightweight, or exceed MS in bells,
>whistles, eye candy, 3D interface, voice control, and just about any whiz
>bang UI idea you can think of!  The fact that it is the core of most
>routers (don't know the percentage) to the top 500 supercomputers (as of
>June 2012, 92.4% of the systems, 94.2% of all of the Gflops by all 500
>systems), and is the core of all Android phones and tablets, give you an
>idea what the computer geeks choose!

Oh yes, my Sony BluRay player seems to be a dedicated Linux device, and 
I expect our washer/drier is as well. But they keep that well under the 
hood.

>An Ubuntu installation will grab your MS documents, photos, videos, and
>whatnot, and add it to its installation automatically for an end user.
>With Gentoo Linux distribution, you can really geek out and compile every
>bit of your operating system, utilities, and applications (assuming you
>don't choose any proprietary software), and therefore know exactly where
>every bit came from that is running on your computer!  Well, assuming you
>have the time and patience to wade through millions of lines of code.  The
>ability to recompile the Linux kernel, throwing out everything you don't
>need, is why it can run on small appliances like home routers.

Much as internal combustion engines can power anything from a model 
plane to a giant earth-mover. Whereas mostly, we just want to get into 
our cars and drive....

>Why anyone would wear the Microsoft yoke when there are good or better
>alternatives, is beyond me.

Because (i) it's not a yoke. Everyone is free to choose. And (ii), the 
good or better alternatives people see, for home/consumer devices, are 
iOS and Android ones, not Linux ones.

(And yes, I know Android is Linux-based. But how many Linux commands do 
you need to operate an Android smart-phone? And how many would they sell 
if you did need to know such commands?

>  But then, I was never part of the flock.

If I'm coming down an escalator, and I meet someone running up it, I'm 
going to say 'Hi Pete'. And I bet I'll be right :-)

>Pete

NB: Thanks for the push-back from you and Mike - shows me what to 
expect.

There's a guy in the grc groups whose answer to *every* problem posted 
there is to push Linux, and it's getting old now.

I'm practising to give him both barrels :-)
-- 
Roy Brown        'Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be
Kelmscott Ltd     useful, or believe to be beautiful'  William Morris

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