The Linux Extremist

My father, in his travels, has met Bill Gates. I don’t think I’d be creating a problem for him now (as he recently retired) by saying that he was unimpressed. Apparently Gates was rude, he was distracted, and when he sat, he rocked back and forth in his chair, an action which reminded my Dad of people with dementia.

The only similarity between Gates and my father is that Gates is apparently going to join the ranks of the retired. This is good news. However, we have a pretty unappealing legacy to deal with, namely, the Microsoft business model and continuing dominance.

The Microsoft business model is inherently wrong. It’s akin to Donald Trump’s building strategy and just as flawed: namely, that things simply have to get bigger and more gaudy. Trump wasn’t satisfied with having big and splendid casinos in Atlantic City; he had to build the Taj Mahal. Microsoft isn’t satisfied with building Windows 2000 or Windows XP - they have to build Windows Vista. The only difference is that the Taj Mahal bankrupted Trump; because of the aggressive (abusive?) relationship that Microsoft has with hardware suppliers, they’re likely to get away with it.

But no one is asking the question - do we, the consumers, really need Vista? Recent estimates show that some 16 percent of users are still happily running Windows 98, Windows 98 SE and Windows ME. In 2005, it was estimated that some 48 percent of businesses were still running Windows 2000. Given this, there is no logical, obvious requirement to upgrade, except due to Microsoft discontinuing support for legacy OSes.

Or rather, there is no obvious logical reason for those who use the OS. For Microsoft (and to a lesser extent, Intel and AMD), there is a very logical reason - a new, larger and more resource hungry OS drives a cycle of hardware as well as software replacement, a never-ending money making machine.

The arrival of Linux as a desktop OS shows that there can be an end to this cycle, or at the very least a modification. Firstly, Linux is not like Vista, in that the kernel is separate from the applications - system tools are small and specialised, not bundled into a giant mess like Vista or XP. Thus there are distributions that suit both the most powerful and the most aged machines - yet the distributions for either are not “legacy” or “backwards” variants. Furthermore, being able to add components at will gives the customer choice in what kind of OS they want to have - one that does everything, or one that does a few things. With Vista, as with its predecessors, this level of control is simply not available.

Perhaps Gates, in spite of being obviously not entirely living on the same planet as the rest of us, does understand on some level that the new Linux model is proving more robust than the ever expanding Microsoft OS model. Perhaps this is driving him into retirement. Perhaps with his departure, there will be some serious thought at Microsoft as to how their philosophy and practices need to change; if not, there is likely to be an erosion of the viability of their business model. And perhaps one day, once Linux has gained sufficiently in PR to challenge Windows on the desktop, Microsoft will at long last meet their Taj Mahal.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS