> Also sprach 'Sander Vesik' :
>
> >Now that woudn't be wise - tell Intel run DEC, but otherwise... They
> >might even agree (if someone realy said them with the proper arguments) :-)
>
> If intel wasn't so in bed with Microsoft they could run a killer marketing
> campaign aiming for the power user (running linux or BSD or something).
> But alas, they instead tune their chips to run windows code quicker.
Most probably at least some of it sounds like market share - there are
much more people running micro-products rather than normal. Perhaps they
just think it pays to have processors which run windows as quickly as
possible even if they loose otherwise. A pity - as most probably the
sides for which they are optimising the processors against are not
actually those for which they should optimise for...
Anyways - what will the future be? Currently, the picture seems to be:
1) One mega-corportaion (MS) with hyper-advertised products which doesn't
quite seem to be up to their stand but which are widely bought and used
instead of it.
2) The hardware market fully supports that mega-corporation
3) Instead of all beliefs, there are contenders offering more stable
products (some of them are free) which run or will be running most of the
programs that run on the hyper-advertised platforms. They are however,
less widely known.
4) Most of the hardware is actually also supported on the contending
platforms
5) MS does not currently have a "real" POSIX compiliant server OS - I
know this my cause a flame war, but MS themselves is saying "don't
develop for the POSIX part of NT" and neither is NT a real good OS and
even worse - it ain't real multiuser either.
6) Contrary to also widely spread thoughts, there does exist native
software for every-day use on the contenders, which is at least as good.
So what will come of the race? Alternative OS-s and free OS-s -
OS/2, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, etc. do exists and I have reasons to
believe that the numbers of their users are increasing no matter what MS
tries to make people think. Also, there are signs instead of that what
used to be, there will be increasingly more end-user software available
for those platforms.
And they seem to be a bit less power-hungry. Lets consider the following
case:
1) Set-up - a network of, let's say 20 486DX2-66 computers, 8MB ram.
Running, lets say MS Win3.1. (Machines like that were suppsed to be real
quick running Windows, weren't they?)
2) What would the MS/Intel cenario be? Would anyone argue saying that it
would be upgrading to Pentium and at least 16MB of ram and Windows 95 (it
so easy - except for those who have to re-learn quite some things- it so
powerful (in eating resources), it helps in multi-media, etc.). There is
not much benefit if you aren't running number-crunching programs in
exclusive mode.
3) Any alternatives? How about -
a) No memory upgrade to the computers - you save 8*20=160 MB worth
of RAM.
b) No motherboard upgrade - just upgrade to AMD x586 - you save
20*(N+X) (N and X do depend, but it's not going to be
too few for not to consider)
c) You buy 1 (one) Pentium computer (by the end of the year, a
Pentium Pro, or a MP system if you don't like AMD
or Cyrix next gen. chips) with let's say 64MB or more
of RAM.
d) You through out Win and install FreeBSD and XFree86. You do
the same on the brand new Pentium (you buy no software
with it. The 486-s will keep up with the speed as you
won't most probably be running anything bigger than the
Xserever on it.
e) You buy WP for X with 20 licenses (the BSDI version works).
Result: 1) No money to Microsoft (or almost no)
2) Almost no or no money to Intel
3) Same performance as before
4) Better overall security - actually, you didn't have much
security before
5) More stability than any Win* would give you, as well as more
network speed
6) Better privacy - if users want they may at least be the holders
of the root password to their computers. If you need do
some maintance, you ask them the password for the time.
No more just switching the computer on and reading other's
files or making copies of them.
7) Better privacy even if you are the holder of the root passwords.
It might not seem so good, but it might avoid quite some
snooping on the network.
Actual implementation - I can't give my head for it, but it should work.
Waiting for the views,
Sander
PS. Yes, it did become a bit technical and didn't take into the picture
the most popular Free OS - Linux.
>
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>