Quote:Original post by andrewk3652
They'll know, because as long as there are commercial operating systems, there will be free operating systems that will compete with them, and therefore the commercial operating systems will advertise as to how much better they are than the free ones. This is not to mention the commercial competition BETWEEN the various commercial OS's. So of course people will always know what OS their computers run, because they will always have a choice. What a silly thought.

People don't know if they don't care. That's the implication of what I'm saying here.

It starts with assumptions. Linux gets a nice gui interface similiar to windows', so that it's easy enough to go from using one to using the other.

Then it's emulation. Linux gets wine so that programs the user wants to use CAN be used. (albeit wine sucks for a lot of software, but it continues to improve)

Then it's replacement. Firefox displaces IE, even on IE's platform. The OS you're running continues to not matter, since you're still using the same software, only now major parts are natively running.

Then it's market power. Programs are written to seamlessly run on either platform, without emulation. NWN and Doom3 were supposed to be like this, but both ended up making the user download stuff in order to run on linux. Eventually I think you'll start to see this kind of thing directly on the DVDs.

Then it's market forces. OEMs don't see any good reason to jack up the price of their machines by 70ish dollars by including an expensive OS, when they could just use the free OS, which works just as well.

Throughout this whole theoretical "world domination" plan, the user never really has to ever care what OS he's running. When you don't care, you don't know.

Quote:

Quote:Oh yeah, excellent subtlety on the bolded part, too.[smile]

The emphasis was yours, not his.

No way! You mean I emphasized a subtle jab in order to compliment him on the subtlety? Why on earth would I do that? [grin]

Quote:Original post by C-Junkie
It starts with assumptions. Linux gets a nice gui interface similiar to windows'...

That's one hell of an assumption, and the constellation of involved organizations - and, more importantly, egos - makes that highly unlikely.

But you can dream [smile]

Quote:Original post by Oluseyi

Quote:Original post by C-Junkie
It starts with assumptions. Linux gets a nice gui interface similiar to windows'...

That's one hell of an assumption, and the constellation of involved organizations - and, more importantly, egos - makes that highly unlikely.

But you can dream [smile]

I honestly do not understand how people get away with this claim. The GUI is fantastic! Have you tried the ubuntu live CD? Apple should be sweating.

The assumptions part was with how the user expects the interface to act. Click on a button, and the button gets pushed. There's a file menu in the upper left with "save" and "quit" in it. Right clicking on things gives you a context menu. That's the assumptions I'm talking about.