Time: The Little Penguin That Could
Aug 20, 2002, 18:00 (22 Talkback[s])
[ Thanks to David
Harper for this link. ]
"Imagine dining at a restaurant where there are just two dishes
on the menu--and because one is being eaten by 90% of your fellow
diners, the waiter advises you to order that. That was the choice
facing computer consumers throughout the 1990s. You could select
from a few relatively pricey Apple computers that ran Mac OS on the
one hand, and a horde of cookie-cutter Windows-based PCs on the
other. A third operating system, Linux, has been available for free
since Linus Torvalds created it in 1991, but for years it was too
complex to make it into the mainstream. For most users, Linux was
like having to go back into the kitchen and cook a gourmet meal
from scratch.
"Finally, that is starting to change. Linux is still the
preserve of geeks, many of whom showed up last week at LinuxWorld
in San Francisco. But some of those geeks have realized there's
money to be made from selling user-friendly versions of this
powerful and supremely stable software to those who yearn for
something better than Windows. Now Wal-Mart's website is selling
$299 PCs that run on an operating system called Lindows (Microsoft
is suing over the name), while another Linux brand called Lycoris
Desktop LX is about to hit the shelves at CompUSA. The ubiquitous
Linux logo, a penguin, is already a hit at places like IBM and much
of the U.S. government. Should the rest of us tune him in
too...?"
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