On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 18:31:25 -0400, Toshio <toshio@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Mike, I definitely can agree with the portion of your argument shown here:: One of Window's selling points is its compatibility to old versions. It is, in fact, the center of the Microsoft business model. If Longhorn were to totally break compatibility with previous versions of Windows, how many shops do you think would decide it made just as much sense to break compatibility and move to a better OS than to stay with an incompatible "Windows"?
Microsoft has another motivation for keeping binary compatibility.
If a new version of Windows breaks a major application that competes with a Microsoft app, they'll have the DOJ on their case.
Someone pointed out that many of the Loki Games no longer run on Fedora because of kernel changes. No amount of keeping old libraries is going to overcome that. If someone wants to fork a version of Fedora that gets updated applications but keeps a stable base down to the kernel layer and vet all potential changes there for things that will break user apps they might be able to garner market share from people wanting to run third party binary apps forever. OTOH, they may find that corner of the market (game and app-rich, API/ABI stable, binary and proprietary-license friendly OSs) is already filled with more mature competitors.
The guy who lives in our other house is mad because an upgrade to Win2K broke his favorite games that ran just fine on Win98. I dread installing a DirectX game on any of the Windows machine I use because the odds of it working aren't that good. A lot of times it's a problem with the video card, drivers, and all that, but these problems aren't easy to fix.
Back in 2000, I caught the USB bug and started getting USB peripherals of all types. I had much better luck plugging USB devices into Linux than I had plugging them into Win98. With mplayer, I can play just about any video file I get off the net. I've installed all sorts of libraries on my Windows and MacOS X systems and neither of them reliably and correctly plays XViD files.
Windows and MacOS X have a lot to teach Linux about having a better desktop experience, but don't kid yourself into thinking they're perfect.
