Posted by Mike on Aug 2nd, 2006
He, which I say because the article isn’t signed, nor does the blog have an about page noting who the author is, starts off his article with a title that he, no doubt, feels is some radical statement: “Why Linux needs to bite the bullet and become Windows”.
He immediately backpedals, however, going on to say that Linux shouldn’t be a Windows clone, but it should merely offer “migration” of data and settings for the user, which is, in his opinion “against the principle of Linux”.
He goes on to write, “But what about corporate image? An ironic term for open source free software”, as if he’s never heard of IBM, Novell, Oracle and the like. Perhaps these corporations are too small for him?
If moving in this direction, getting the right mixture/combination would prove the most difficult aspect to tame. How does one balance Microsoft migration with Linux-typical innovation? Obviously, not an answer I need to find but one that would be required if (for some unknown reason) my ideas were worth something.
Thank goodness he doesn’t have to come up with an answer for it, because the question is completely meaningless.
Deep down, both Linux and Windows operate very similarly. They are both “modern” operating systems, and both use a system of privilages, seperate “user” and “kernel” space, extensions, dynamically loadable libraries, so on and so forth. This innovation that’s included within Linux is, for the most part, in the “userland” applications.
Why is this the case? I’d venture to say that many programmers who create ideas for these innovations are using Linux because it comes with a vast development platform for free, or because they, personally, would rather run an OS without having to sign away the rights to their first born.
Just take a look at what’s out there. Firefox, the first real browser that’s challenged IE, can run on Linux, OS X and Windows. Gnome and KDE, the core of what most users see in Linux, really has no place in Windows.
The FUSE filesystem is a great development for Linux, and could be replicated, with some effort, in Windows.
I could go on, but I hope my point’s been made. It’s not a matter of Linux or Windows being better to innovate on, it’s a matter of developers choosing one platform or another to work on.
He concludes his article asking, “A good idea or unreachable operating system utopia?”
What idea? The idea of making migration from Windows to Linux as seamless as possible? That’s not exactly revolutionary or controversial. Could a conversion program be made to take an NTFS drive and make it ext3? Perhaps. Would that make any sense to do? Probably not.
Now, what would be interesting, but perhaps difficult to do, would be to show users a directory listing of their NTFS partitions and allow them to “save” selected directories, copying them to some far off reaches of the drive before creating the Linux partitions, and then pulling the information back at the end of the install.
But you know us Linux guys and our principle of “Separate but Equal” filesystems…
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migo
August 2, 2006 at 7:17 am
Xandros is boasting a new linux user migration tool. Not sure if it’s from NTFS to ext3 or not or even if it’s what you’re referring to, but it seems to be a step in the right direction.
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