[NTLUG:Discuss] Any open source success stories?

[Daniel Hauck]

I'll second that.  I've got developers where I work and even in my family
that are rather shy about Linux or any non-Windows environment.  One VB
coder even went so far as to say that MS is his bread and butter and that he
wouldn't feel right abandoning it.  Bizarre...

There is still hope for my older brother as he still plans on learning how
to code for GNOME but he's still working on learning C++...and now he's
considering this C# as well.

I remember the old DOS world.  What I remember about it most strikingly was
how primitive it has always been.  My first "OS" was OS-9 on the Color
Computer.  Multitasking, multiuser, pseudo-windowing...all in a 64k
environment though at some point I had it up to 512k.  I rather miss that
old stuff, but the hardware just wasn't powerful enough but for the power
that was present in that old 2MHz box, it ran circles around PCs of the same
time period.  If only there was a TCP/IP stack on the platform back then...
*sigh*

Anyway, so abandoning OS-9 in favor of the more commercially viable
DOS/Windows platform was a hard thing for me to do.  Linux restored me.

I still use Windows but mainly for compatibility and language support --
Linux SUX for unified handling of non-English language support...especially
for asian languages like Japanese.  I hope some serious work is done in that
area soon, but for now...I'm not done with Windows yet...plus, MS pays my
bills...I'm a network admin and everyone here uses Windows...except for
important things like the internet and mail servers.  We just couldn't live
without them.  (The prior Windows solution was incredibly unstable and
REALLY kept me busy.)

Anyway, yeah -- being Windows-only REALLY hurts the level of education of
students.  Without knowing multiple platforms, I wouldn't be nearly as
employable today.  It's a serious issue.  It's an issue of quality.  It's
definitely not about flag waving.  Even if you think of Linux as a "baby
Unix" that's fine!  It's still VERY portable knowledge into the other
*NIXes.  It would be crippling our future to leave other OS's out of the
curriculum.

Besides, anyone can learn Windows.  How can you NOT know it?  Linux, in its
present form, requires knowledge and/or the will to discover.  I can guess
my way through Windows, but not through Linux.  So obviously, there needs to
be more focus on the *NIXes and less on Windows -- Windows doesn't need it.


----- Original Message -----
From: Chris Cox <cjcox at acm.org>
To: <discuss at ntlug.org>
Sent: Friday, February 23, 2001 9:38 AM
Subject: Re: [NTLUG:Discuss] Any open source success stories?


> Kyle Davenport wrote:
> >
> ...
> > the price of the software is definitely not the total cost.  releasing
students
> > into the real world with only windows experience will definitely cripple
their
> > success in the market place.
> >
>
> This is probably the most compelling reason.  Linux isn't like Windows
> in that with Linux you configure the platform to do whatever you need
> it to do.  This means that there is learning involved.  Hey... I'd love
> to learn Windows, but Microsoft has chosen not to share with me the
> things I'd like to learn (what I have learned makes me not want to
> learn anymore btw).
>
> People who aren't challenged to learn new things ... well... they
> end up being stupid.  Students will be more motivated to learn
> if you use Linux.... and isn't that what it's all about?
>
> Regards,
> Chris
> _______________________________________________
> http://ntlug.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>