The man is obviously a Gent and he's doing a good job, Ubuntu is right up there now, and getting better by the day, I've converted quite a few. :-)

* Historically, "Fair play" is not something Microsoft recognise.

That's why I dislike Ubuntu, it's just trying to emulate Windows (including all the annoying bits) instead of trying to innovate and lead with original ideas.

I'm sticking with Mandriva Linux which IMHO has always been and still is the best desktop Linux distro, the 2008.1 edition in particular is next to perfect, I will be sticking with it for quite a while even as newer version are coming out, until a newer version convinces me even more.

I gave the Windows 7 beta a try as well. It decided it was a good idea to install itself on my slave disk instead of the master, and - without any asking or warning - changing the start-up sequence in the BIOS of the machine. The result was that the slave disk, which was the DATA disk used by several different OS's and which held pictures, documents, music, etc... got formatted.

I had to go into the BIOS and change the startup sequence back to what it was before to be able to boot the PC with it's usual Mandriva disk.

Result? That peace of sh*te is not coming anywhere any of my computers again!

Being a heavy Ubuntu user (three machines now in three different versions) I was delighted when Santa bought in a new one for the family. The Acer Aspire one in its HD version looked like an ideal candidate to join the Ubuntu stable. Given that it was a gift, I did not complain about having XP home preloaded and proceeded to install Ubuntu 8.10

Being that I'm as of late trying to be very compliant with licencing and that the seller warned that if the machine is to be returned for a refund it better had the original XP in place, I did a Wubi install first to check if everything was ok.

Man, I'm glad that I tried, otherwise I'd have to rever to install a bootleg copy of XP to be able to use the machine comfortably. After having to compile the WiFi drivers, hack assorted power management scripts and other small annoyances, a kernel update completely broke sound and, I suspect, some sort of interrupt handling that makes using the touchpad look like playing an arcade game.

The SDD version seems to work much better, and I think it's a shame for Acer not to release a Linux version for the HD machine, and for Intel not to release specs of the audio chipset so that at least we have a fighting chance of making it work.

In short, Shuttleworth would do much better directing its efforts at the big manufacturers to actually produce open and decently working drivers. Then, it would be enough to make an Ubuntu version where the configuration dialogs at least fit completely in the screen to make me happy. Also, Acer, withall the money you're making selling such wonderful little machines, I'm sure that your bottom line would not be impacted if you include as part of your agreements with your HW suppliers to provide open source drivers. Plus, you'd be able to offer Linux preinstalled to the upper segment of your netbook buyers.

He has a vision, it's hard to deny it!

That's what Linux community needs - somebody with a vision to tell all the geeks what to do. Without it we'll still probably get to the same place, but rather later, than sooner.

Way to go Mark!

Since when did Microsoft do anything other than fight dirty? Old habits die hard.

On another matter, if they have managed to morph Vista into something capable of giving a good experience on a netbook then there is hope for Windows 7 after all...

Someone sensible not stuck in a war of mines better than yours words. Ubuntu might actually get somewhere. I really hope so.

CLEAN fight? With Microsoft?

HAHAHAHahahahahaha... *gasp* HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAAAAAAAAAAHHAHAHAHAhahahahahahaha...

Linux is more expensive that Windows XP

Microsoft isn't exactly be subsidizing Windows

exclusion of all other operation systems

Again, the pedantic nitpicker in me comes to the fore.

Penguin just coz

Really, I like this guy! When Linux will have succeeded on the desktop, we would all have to thank Mark Shuttleworth a lot! He really is brillant... and, most of all, he has a vision. The vision that Linux on the desktop will succeed and, beyond words, he works hard to make it happen. Canonical hired a lot of usability experts, desktop experience engineers in 2008 and I'm really looking forward to seeing the result. I trust Canonical to come up with a great product, designed for the desktop.

Where is Red Hat ? They abandonned this market! Where is Novell ? They're not interested beyond enterprise IT... Where is Mandriva ? Well, I don't really know where they are :) Go Canonical go! You have an enormous window of opportunity today to become the defacto leader on the Linux desktop and you'll deserve it because you're the only ones brave enough to actually push for the Linux desktop momentum to happen. The others are watching the market move... like if suddenly everybody would wake up one day and say "huh I want Linux on the desktop today!". It does not work like this and this is one the main reason Linux is not yet on the desktop. Lack of willingness, lack of guts!

I also want to push for Linux to final succeed on the desktop. And I think one of the thing Linux is missing is a completely user-friendly tool to help normal users search, find and install new applications on their system. This is why we've launched with a friend of mine about 2 weeks ago a website called allmyapps ( http://www.allmyapps.com ) which we want to position as an app store for Linux. That is an extremely nice and easy to use interface for users to find applications and install them easily. I encourage you to check it out... feedbacks are warmly welcome!

Linux on the desktop, you have to believe it to see it!

lovely man he is :-)

So... according to this guy, is it not fair for Microsoft to lower its prices to compete?

Here's news to you, Mr. Spaceman: it is you who is compiting on price, not quality. You are an hypocrite.

Whatever the technical merits of Linux may be, it is simply too difficult for the average user to use. Just look at all the netbooks being returned for the "upgrade" to Windows. And now Shuttleworth says Windows 7 is a good product! The naïvity is staggering, and it's that same naïvity that keeps Linux confined to the niche, l33t h4x0r crowd.

Also you have to consider the pressure MS will bring to bear in order to distort the market. Companies that do sell Linux boxes only sell low-spec P.O.S. systems and barely advertise the fact. Why can I not got to (say) the main dell page, select and box/lappy that tickles my pickle and then select Ubuntu as my OS? Because MS says "no" (well, that an nod one wants to buy Linux boxes it seems).

FIGHT!!!!!!!!!

You're missing the point Gordie me boy. Now be a good lad.. sit still, close your trap, get your nose out of Microsoft's ass.. and listen.

Microsoft is "selling" Vista at a loss in order to move Vista in the notebook market. Why? Because they do not want to loose market share and if they cannot sell the shit, they can give it away at a lost. Good business? Microsoft is prepared to take that knock as they can cross subsidize that loss by profits made in other markets. Market share is more important than short term gross profit in that market. Then there's also the legal view that although a monopoly is not illegal in itself, it is illegal to use that to monopolise other markets.

Paris.. as she knows about marketing (and a lot more than Gordie by the looks of it)

You'll get no flames from me. I completely agree with you.

+5 insightful !

Former user of Mandrive myself, nothing against it, but it is a bit daft of a fan of a KDE system to have a go at Ubuntu on the lines of matching Windows.

I show KDE to my Windows loving pals and Windows is immediately what they think of.

IN any case the thing that suprises them is how Linux can be basically the same under the hood, but you can change the hood for different purposes, like Gnome that I use on my home machine and Xfce for my Asus EE

He is not criticising Microsoft for lowering its prices to compete

He is criticising it for cross-subsidy. Taking a LOSS to try and dominate a market. By the way, that is something that a company convicted of abusing a monopoly position is supposed to be wary of doing.

XP should be dead now, accorindg to Microsoft. It is now being kept going because they cannot face the alternate, a readily available machine using Linux, taking market share and perception away from Windows, and they are willing to take a loss on the prodiuct to stop that happening

I'm sorry to hear you lost your stuff but I'm afraid you sir, are and idiot.

If anyone is going to install Windows 7 beta or any other OS for that matter onto a computer with anything important on it whatsoever (including a working OS) please do yourself a favour and disconnect all your drives first (including external). Use an old spare drive for the new OS you want to play with. Then you will avoid all possibility of *doing something stupid*

Do install the Beta only on a dedicated test computer.

Don't install the Beta if you're uncomfortable troubleshooting your own PC problems

That said only a numpty would have missed the Where do you want to install Windows screen and it changed your BIOS settings???

Oh and Don't install the Beta if you're uncomfortable troubleshooting your own PC problems, lol

1) You installed a beta OS on your PC and didn't backup your files.

2) You formatted a volume and didn't double check it was the right one.

You fail at IT!

Oh and Windows 7 is great - it is what Vista should have been.

Gordon, you're a muppet - you need to learn how to spell correctly.

@Gordon

"So... according to this guy, is it not fair for Microsoft to lower its prices to compete?"

That's *your* words not his.

According to the Reg here's what he said:

"We are in an awkward situation now because they are giving away XP in the netbook market - they are literally giving it way to OEMs," he claimed.

Nowhere does he say that's "not fair". All he says is that is Microsoft's price-dumping with XP is causing him problems. But notice that, as well, it is causing MS problems: MS have to discount XP heavily just to shut Shuttleworth et al out. That's not good news for MS since their business revolves around charging OEMs as much as they can possibly get for pre-installed Windows.

But - according to the Reg - Shuttleworth is speculating that MS will no longer be able to afford to subsidize Windows for netbooks in the future - presumably he thinks it will need to recoup the cost of developing Windows 7. Maybe yes and maybe no.

But don't accuse the man of being a hypocrite for saying something he never said - because *that* is both "unfair" and dishonest.

Good luck, it will be owned within a week - it's just too old and leaky now.

Better than chucking chairs around and calling people rude names, like some bald headed billionaires we could name!

Read: Yes, we want Win7 to be great, but also to be bloody expensive so people think twice based on whether they actually need such a behemoth O/S just to browse and receive email!

Reality check time, linux in some of it's flavours is not a terribly bad OS nor it is Terribly good OS but it will never be able to compete properly in the Desktop or notebook market until it understands that 95% of users need idiot proof interfaces and End user support that does require hours of net trawling to find an answer or half an hour hacking at a cmd line to get things to work.

I have used unix based systems for years in the back end and used linux as a web server but as a desktop it is just to much hassle and always has been, hardware and application vendor support is better these days but still lacking and poor, so mr shuttleworth real problem is not MS but vendor support and the oh so many flavours of linux distro's.

The funny thing is linux was designed as a open source freeware the current pay for distro's are just another operating system on market and reading shuttleworths comments it is like MS is just catching up with W7 .....very puzzled maybe shuttleworth is reading his market share figures upside down?

And the truly funny thing is that when eventually someone does get a linux Distro in to a form which the majority of people can use, it will almost certainly be be full of wizards,installers and no input from the user bar a click much more like a Win or Mac OS and all the current fan boys will be crying foul that their beloved OS has been nerfed.

So a word to the wise , you linux fanboys better be careful what you ask for and dream about as you might just get it.

He wasn't saying that at all. He didn't say it was wrong.....

I'd like to see a genuine Linux threat to the desktop market. If OO can start to be a completely viable option to Office (which its becoming) and more 3rd party app developers develop for Ubuntu (the Linux flavour with the most minstream potential) then there will be a genuine fight on our hands and that can only be a good thing.

Has anybody here tried installing the W7 beta on their netbook? I run Vista on my laptop (P Dual Core with 1GB RAM) and it runs, but it's a hog. I can't imagine running Vista SP3 on a netbook... Let us know.

Yawns.....Fanbois of Operating Systems discussing the merits of what is in essence is a tool.

If it works -> use it; if it doesn't -> don't!

Is it really that complicated?

For my own (and contraversal) OS, the hacked XP Lite that's around some torrent sites is the best I've used....mind you it's not really secure and there's no updates, but it's fast and all the crap is taken out. The difference is amazing on my dual booted laptop between it and OpenSuse 11.0.

MS should employ the gang who "lite'd XP" on Windows 7 and see how good it'll go.

My opinion and that'll never change!

...be willing/able to take the hit of giving away Win7 to the OEMs as they have XP, in return for locking-down the market that they only don't own already because it came late onto their radar? Is that your assertion, Mr Shuttlewit?

Never underestimate the power of the Dark Side :/

"And the truly funny thing is that when eventually someone does get a linux Distro in to a form which the majority of people can use, it will almost certainly be be full of wizards,installers and no input from the user bar a click much more like a Win or Mac OS and all the current fan boys will be crying foul that their beloved OS has been nerfed."

All you have to do is switch to another distro, or make your own.

You have a CHOICE.

-------------------------------------------

"...If you choose not do decide,

you still have made a choice."

- Neil Peart

i love windows 7.

linux looks lame.

Eclipse? A decent enough IDE (I use it for J2SE) and plenty of helpful plug-ins available. Runs on Windows too. Although if you think MS are going to help anyone build a competeing IDE, you are clearly going insane! :o)

As for VB...eww...stinky (and I speak as an old VB5 MCP), although it is good at what it was intended for (rapid prototyping of Windows GUIs). .Net is a marked improvement, but is still non-portable, and if a Linux desktop does gain traction in the enterprise (which is exceedingly unlikely, applications dictate the OS you use) then this is going to become a serious problem for MS and their partners.

Which is why MS will not permit any Linux distro to get that traction and why they continually strive to lock their partners into using their proprietary languages and OS as it keeps the money rolling in.

First off: Windows as a client can be secured against future threats and vulns quite simply. See that Services applet in Administrative tools? That's your key to being secure if you know the uses to which the machine you're securing is going to be put. Simply disabling server on a client machine that should not be sharing files locally anyway closes more holes than I care to count. Then get your arse to the ADC and set a decent security policy. Learn to use the OS you're crticising before slamming it as insecure.

Secondly: XKCD's world-view: Make me_a_sandwich. Get stuffed. Sudo make me_a_sandwich. OK.

The real world: sudo make me_a_sandwich. Please run configure. sudo configure. configure: not found. sudo ./configure. Yay! Output. sudo make me_a_sandwich. More output. What? libbranston.so.3 not found? Ah, fuck it. I'm not hungry any more...

Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of Windows, but I'm not going to be seen to use the security crutch as an excuse. My contention with Windows is lock-in, interoperability, banging useless shit that has no place on a corporate network into its OS (why the fuck a server needs a GUI, leave alone a bloody media player, is beyond me and please do NOT mention remote desktop. ANY OS worth its salt will sandbox such as that, keeping it separate and away from the core system) and lack of standards. Anyone clued-up enough is going to know how to secure a Windows box to the same standard as he or she can secure a *nix box or use things like the border gateway's firewall and ADC to make up for the shortfall. Linux, BSD and Solaris are not ready for widespread desktop use by the AOLers, but make pretty decent desktops in "enterprise" situations (buzzword alert). That's an unfortunate (for some) fact. There again, some of us know that ./configure --without-mayo LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/lib" CFLAGS="-I/usr/local/include" will get you a fucking sandwich, my friend. That our mailing lists are not full of "my internet doesn't work"? Just call me Mr. Grateful.

Speaking of Internet on Gn00/Loonix boxen (since M$ was just so frigging hilarious), when are you going to put eth0 in /etc/network/interfaces like a normal person, Mr Shuttleworth? If some clown "accidentally" removes the network manager from startup, guess what he starts bleating about? You think it doesn't happen? Think again, smarmy boy. It does, and that is just the tip of the iceberg. Oh, and on the netbook? Linpus is about the best of a bad bunch, including XP, for a noob in my opinion. Why? Because it exposes, in a simple manner, everything a noob needs to run the system within its limits without promising things it can't do. Feel free to have your own, but don't try to force it on me without some very cogent, reasoned arguments.

No, let's be honest here: As a monk would say, ALL software sucks. It's selecting the application with minimal suckage for your target usage that makes a sysadmin. To be quite honest, this blind faith in one OS over another, as if it really matters if you were doing your job properly, is starting to get on my tits (OK, moobs), hence all the swearies.

Coat, because I'm not going to be drawn into discussing the merits of Slackware's run control system or why Gentoo's portage shits itself with fortnight-at-a-time regularity.