While reading the "Does Linux have a future? section of the document (1.3), I was reminded of my impressions of Wikipedia from week 2 readings. The Open Source initiative is a wonderful development in computing; though it's not a single "place" on the internet as is Wikipedia, the idea of a community of experts of all levels contributing to shared and free information is the same. There is even a similarity in the expectation of a level of standard; developers are expected to retain the POSIX standard (section 1.1.1) but are allowed to add their own revisions. I agree with the author that the continued existence, growth and acceptance commercially of Linux is a testament to its reliability, but I'm not completely convinced that it's for any user. I still think a certain amount of comfort with and knowledge of operating system concepts would be needed for the average computer user to turn in their Windows or Apple platform. Still I was impressed with the desktop application sample shown in section 1.3. It looks a LOT like Excel...how can they get away with that?
Unfortunately, marketing dollars expended by commercial vendors like Microsoft and Apple will probably ensure that only those really looking for an alternative will find Linux and its applications.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment