Re: Too late! Window hasta la vista 5308 is now fully operational.

[Ian Hilliard]

On Thu, 23 Feb 2006 14:37:11 -0800, Rex Ballard wrote:

> Microsoft had to deal with two big threats to Windows 95, one being
> Linux, but the even bigger one was Windows 3.1.  People had to be
> convinced to migrate to Windows 95, including the purchase of new
> hardware which had been secretly designed to NOT run Linux (the PCI
> codes required to configure the hardware were a carefully guarded
> secret), instead of attempting to upgrade Windows 3.1, failing
> miserably, then adopting Linux, OS/2, or UnixWare in desparation.

Microsoft won with Win95, because it was easier to produce eye-catching
graphical application, than it was with Win3.1 or any of the Unix
variants. In fact, I was doing a SCADA Master Controller in 95 on SunOS.
The project ended up working very well and being very reliable, but it was
an absolute horror to program the GUI.

The Borland Graphics Library or MFC made it a lot easier to program GUIs.
The software may not have been as good or stable as under Unix, but it was
a LOT cheaper to program and time-to-market was a lot lower. In the end,
it was the application developers that dragged people to Win95, because
this was the platform that had the cool software. Of course, little did
these developers know that Microsoft was planning to take each and every
market that was in any way lucrative.

I like Linux and it is my preferred platform, but as long as Linux appears
to be anti-CSS, it will not be the preferred platform for commercial
software development. It is the commercial software development, with
their large advertising budgets, that brings the people en mass. Microsoft
knows this and explots it every day to slow the movement across to Linux.

Ian