"Who cares?" People who want to run iTunes, that's who

Story: Linux On The Desktop: Who Cares!Total Replies: 3
Author Content
Steven_Rosenber

May 28, 2008
6:35 PM EDT
He tossed off the iTunes problem rather quickly. I'm sure Amarok or Banshee would do great, but there's a lot of educatin' that has to go on before the above-average person can wrap their head around a music player that Apple doesn't control.

The Firefox thing, that's a given because FIREFOX ALREADY RUNS IN WINDOWS AND OS X. Firefox is FOSS' best weapon. OpenOffice is just about as good because, again, it runs on damn near everything (with version 3 supposedly able to run on the Mac without adding X11).

That's why I want to cut Sun a lot of slack on this OpenSolaris situation, because without OpenOffice, FOSS operating systems wouldn't have nearly the traction they do now.
r_a_trip

May 29, 2008
2:16 AM EDT
He tossed off the iTunes problem rather quickly. I'm sure Amarok or Banshee would do great, but there's a lot of educatin' that has to go on before the above-average person can wrap their head around a music player that Apple doesn't control.

I have to politely disagree. Mr. Powers is not talking about us entrenched "Dinosaurs". He is talking about the current crop of youngsters.

He observes that they don't care if they are using MS Office, Google Docs or OpenOffice.org. "Aren't they all the same thing?" This indicates that "new" computer users are learning to think task centric instead of application centric.

So iTunes itself is not a requirement, iTunes functionality is.

The Firefox thing, that's a given because FIREFOX ALREADY RUNS IN WINDOWS AND OS X. Firefox is FOSS' best weapon. OpenOffice is just about as good because, again, it runs on damn near everything (with version 3 supposedly able to run on the Mac without adding X11).

They are asking for Firefox, but will they balk at Opera or Konqueror? Is the demand for Firefox a brand thing or an association with the functionalities of Firefox?

Mr. Powers points to the fact that the underlying OS is not perceived as important anymore as a few years back. Of course this is an effect of applications becoming increasingly cross-platform.

That's why I want to cut Sun a lot of slack on this OpenSolaris situation, because without OpenOffice, FOSS operating systems wouldn't have nearly the traction they do now.

Sun is not malignant, but they are not ready yet to give up their baby Solaris. There is about 20 years of investment in Solaris. It must be killing them to see Solaris fading into irrelevance, because a "hobby system" took off and has become the worlds largest OS joint venture.

Once they accept that Solaris (open or not) has been practically obsoleted, they will let go of it. Until then, give them the time to mourn their loss. Eventually Solaris will go GPL and Sun will use the "merged code" to build their stack upon.
helios

May 29, 2008
11:39 AM EDT
Eventually Solaris will go GPL and Sun will use the "merged code" to build their stack upon.

probably the most profound and accurate prediction I've ever read.

h
Steven_Rosenber

May 29, 2008
1:50 PM EDT
Quoting:They are asking for Firefox, but will they balk at Opera or Konqueror? Is the demand for Firefox a brand thing or an association with the functionalities of Firefox?


The whole point is to transition people from proprietary OSes to FOSS OSes. Since Firefox is something they know -- and OpenOffice something they can get to know -- on Windows, they need to have Firefox in the Linux or BSD environment.

Sure you can put Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Dillo, Lynx, Netsurf, Elinks or what have you on there, though anything but Firefox is putting the cart way, way before the proverbial horse.

Quoting:Will they balk?


Yes, they will.

Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]

Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!