Windows 7: "The Linux Killer"

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Operating+Systems&articleId=330846&taxonomyId=89

by adnam • 18 years ago

17 66 18 years ago

computerworld.com

iamdave• 18 years ago

So the argument here is that Windows 7 is a Linux "killer" because it's got high yield possibilities for netbooks. Is that what we're supposed to believe?

astine2• 18 years ago

Maybe it should have been "Linux for the masses killer." I don't think there is anyone who thinks it will be kicked from the server realm any time soon.

sdurkin2• 18 years ago

But if the article was named that, I doubt it would be front page on HN right now.

pwoods• 18 years ago

Yes well, all that Linux work and Now Windows 7 for Netbooks kills it. I guess I can retire as a wealthy opensource programmer as my work is now done!

yan• 18 years ago

I am so tired of the "X killer" meme, it really is the time to put it to rest. Has it ever proved true? Ever?

What does it even me? Taking over market dominance? Completely eradicating from existence?

gaius• 18 years ago

NeWS didn't kill X11 and DPDF won't either!

Anon84• 18 years ago

Maybe the world would be a better place if it had... ;)

mechanical_fish• 18 years ago

It's a figure of speech. When you refer to X as a "Y killer", what you are really saying is "the market has concluded that Y is a better product than X, and the guys who make X really want to change that".

It has nothing to do with actual killing. Consumer products rarely get killed. [1] Most of them never live in the first place. The others go out with a whimper. They get gradually shuffled to the back of the shelf and are eventually thrown away in disgust. [2]

What this article is really claiming is that Linux is now the OS to beat in the netbook market and that Microsoft is showing signs of recognizing this and trying to catch up. Of course, this is just a pundit's opinion at this point, not Microsoft's stated position. If you ever hear a Microsoft rep describe a future Microsoft product as a "Linux killer" it will be a big moment. That's as close as a marketer is likely to come to saying "we know you think our current product sucks".

---

[1] As some have pointed out, the only company that routinely manages to literally kill successful products is Apple... which kills its own products by removing them from the market and replacing them with new models. E.g.: the iPod Mini.

[2] Or eBayed, which is the recycling-conscious penny-pincher's method for throwing something away.

nailer4• 18 years ago

It means X is really strong.

I feel good about Linux right now.

zack3• 18 years ago

Oh man, this is great.

dotcoma• 18 years ago

remember: we're gonna fuckin' kill google.

and the fuckin' ipod, too, by the way.

Ballmer: just shut the fuck up.

mdasen• 18 years ago

I'm not the type to say that Linux isn't good. I use it on a daily basis. However, if you're in a large enough non-tech firm, you know that there are people who really don't get tech. Any difference (even difference for the better) is bad. That will prevent Linux adoption.

While I don't work in tech support, I'm the next office over from the ones who do and they'll face problems as silly as people thinking that their printer didn't need to be plugged in (to the wall) to print things or that you can un-send email. For many people you just can't change things without a lot of retraining even if it should be obvious.

dcminter• 18 years ago

"...they'll face problems as silly as people thinking that their printer didn't need to be plugged in (to the wall) to print things or that you can un-send email..."

They're wrong, but there's no law of nature that says they must be wrong, and in fact I would contend that they are perfectly reasonable assumptions, not "silly." There's nothing that should be obvious about either of those examples.

likpok2• 18 years ago

Exactly. Iff you understand tech, it it obvious what to do in those cases. If you don't it is much like magic. You don't have a sensible baseline of how things should behave. So you make assumptions, and are occasionally wrong.

rufius• 18 years ago

I'd rather be running something not Linux on a laptop... and I do. I use it on the desktop, but its shite on the laptop. Awful wireless and less than stellar performance as far as battery life goes compared to Vista (and likely Win 7).

Meh. All the OS's suck, its just a matter of choosing one that sucks the least for your use case.

cosmo7• 18 years ago

The point that Linux enthusiasts become Linux realists is when they realize they are afraid to put their laptop to sleep by closing the lid.

icefox• 18 years ago

Bingo! That is why for the past few years every laptop I have bought has OS X on it. The hardware works, in particular sleep suspend. Close the lid and it goes to sleep, open the lid and it wakes up in moments, not thirty seconds. On the desktop I run Linux, but for a laptop it is all OS X. Everything I do is c/c++, unix, or web related so working in OS X doesn't matter.

nailer4• 18 years ago

The point that Linux enthusiasts become Linux realists is when they realize it doesn't magically work on every computer, and buy something to suit.

I hit the power button, choose suspend or hibernate.

Later I hit the keyboard to resume, enter my screensaver password, and resume work.

Edit: I play music and download files with the lid closed. So I don't want my computer to turn off when I do that. And OS X uses screensaver when resuming too - I own one.

olefoo• 18 years ago

uh, suspend/resume works fine on both my laptop and my netbook under linux...

But keep telling yourself that Windows is the future; it's part of my competitive advantage ;-)

DarkShikari• 18 years ago

Are you serious? I had to reinstall Windows on my laptop the other day, but since I didn't have a Windows CD with me, I installed Ubuntu to use in the meantime until I got back home to reinstall Windows.

Ubuntu worked fine out of the box and detected all the drivers perfectly, and the wireless worked fine. The battery life applet in particular was extremely nice, providing a watt-by-watt breakdown of power usage over time. To put it simply--everything Just Worked. Now, I had a huge number of pet peeves about 8.1 which I discovered soon after I installed it--but despite the various minor but annoying problems I had with it, it worked.

So then I installed Windows when I got home, since that's the platform I develop on.

It didn't have any LAN drivers, so I had to grab a USB thumbdrive to install those.

Nor did it have wireless drivers. Or graphics drivers. Or sound drivers. Oh, and it bluescreened when it tried to install the webcam drivers, so I had to force it not to. It had basically nothing out of the box.

It took me an entire day to get Windows working with a basic development environment, all my drivers, and all the latest updates. By comparison, this took 30 minutes on Ubuntu.

Laptops seem to be Windows' week point with regards to drivers: it seems as if Microsoft has completely ignored them with regards to hardware support. Given this kind of experience, it's no wonder Linux is making inroads in the laptop market!

likpok2• 18 years ago

Laptops seem to be the weak point of a lot of things, and it makes sense: nonstandard hardware, heavy use (movement), batteries, suspend...

In the end, it's all dependent on your hardware. Some laptops work well with linux, some do not. Some have buggy ACPI, some do not. Forex: my laptop works great with suspend and hibernate. My wireless card has OSS drivers. Not all laptops do.

mseebach• 18 years ago

> Laptops seem to be Windows' week point with regards to drivers

I disagree. I had the exact same experience with a 2002 IBM ThinkStation. Intel Chipset - as standard as anything comes. Ubuntu worked out of the box, Windows had nothing. It booted in 640x480 (IIRC, maybe it was 800x600) for crying out loud.

KevBurnsJr• 18 years ago

"Windows Senior Vice President Steve Sinofsky showed off Windows 7 on his Lenovo S10 and said it used less than half of the netbook's 1GB of RAM."

o rly? Only half the system's resources to sit and do nothing?

andreyf2• 18 years ago

Windows Senior Vice President Steve Sinofsky...

What do you expect from a guys with a title four words long? snicker

hello_moto2• 18 years ago

This guy is 4 times smarter than you. You should definitely check out his resume and his work. And perhaps if you're lucky, have a conversation with him to actually know how smart he is.

greyman• 18 years ago

>>> o rly? Only half the system's resources to sit and do nothing?

If Windows 7 will really run swiftly on 1GB RAM and Intel Atom, that's actually a rather big thing, strengthening the MSFT domination in desktop OS's even further.

Taking different perspectives into consideration, it still seems to me that Steve's remark was spot on...

reitzensteinm• 18 years ago

Actually, it's worse than that. Windows should consume ALL available memory, since unused memory could potentially be used as cache. Same thing that Linux does - if you've got more commonly used disk files than memory, your memory should be full 100% of the time after your machine is running warm. This can only increase performance, there's no penalty for caching something from disk (if the disk would be otherwise idle).

It's kind of like claiming that disabling Intel's SpeedStep is a good thing, since it makes the computer run faster all the time...

old-gregg• 18 years ago

Windows job is to occupy about 128MB of RAM sitting in an invisible VMWare window, assisting Linux and OSX users at launching Microsoft Word to prepare that stupid TPS report every Friday.

medearis• 18 years ago

If the issue is really the resource consumption of the OS, I'll believe it when I see it -- thus far every iteration of Windows has been more bloated than the last.

Is XP still shipping on most low-power notebooks though? Not from what I've seen... From what I've seen, most "email, word and internet explorer" users are using vista and getting along OK.

symesc• 18 years ago

"The threat to Windows comes entirely from 'netbooks'"

Do I really need to read any more of this reasoned argument?

nailer4• 18 years ago

Article already pointed out this is the biggest growth area in computing. But I gather you didn't read that.

swombat2• 18 years ago

The threat to Windows comes entirely from "netbooks"

I stopped reading here.

imgabe• 18 years ago

It seems like the Windows tax would have an even greater effect on the netbook market. People will pay a lot more attention to the difference between a $350 and $400 netbook than they will between a $1950 and $2000 laptop. Why spend 12.5% more when you can get Linux for free and still do everything you want?

grouchyOldGuy2• 18 years ago

I also think that netbooks appeal to a different buyer too. Windows still has strong appeal to hardcore gamers, but no serious gamer is going to use a netbook for gaming. Firefox on Linux looks and feels like Firefox on Windows, so if all you want is web browsing, why not Linux? Why pay the Microsoft tax just to get IE instead? I'm sure Windows 7 will find willing buyers on netbooks, but a "Linux killer"? I don't see that. Netbook buyers are more utilitarian and value-concious, so Linux will continue to grow in that market.

StrawberryFrog2• 18 years ago

So Microsoft is planning to make software that's targeted at popular hardware? And then promote it?

Is that supposed to be surprising?

grouchyOldGuy2• 18 years ago

I have a dual-boot home-built P4 machine at home with a Logitech wireless multi-media keyboard. Under XP, the device functions as a standard 102-key keyboard. None of the extra buttons work (mute, volume adjust, etc.) Under Ubuntu, most of the keys work as designed (and this was autodetected during installation. I have not done any post-install customisation of the keyboard). I can mute volume, adjust it up/down, scroll windows with the little scroll wheel, etc. Nearly all of the extra keys work under Ubuntu that XP ignores. I could install the special software Logitech shipped with it to make those keys work, but it's slow enough already under XP without adding extra software to run. The machine is limited by motherboard design to a max of 2 GB RAM (which it has). Under Ubuntu, I very rarely see any page file swapping going on, but XP swaps frequently even with no applications open. Windows 7 better have superior memory and process management if they want to run in a low-RAM environment.

Windows 7: "The Linux Killer"

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