The Register: How many MS OSes does it take to change a lightbulb? PC2001 "legacy free" spec & Linux

[ Thanks to AMIGA2000 for this link. ]

"In Microsoft's vision, the PCs of the future are easier to use, harder to break, and their software is difficult (preferably impossible) to pirate. One of the problems with this, from the user's point of view, is that these PCs will tend to be much more constrained environments, achieving Microsoft's notion of simple (Windows) computing, but sabotaging the techie's desire to fiddle around with the stuff and break it."

"Screw it, just shove Linux onto it [as answer to question in headline]
I thought of this one, and it was our second most popular solution. As Microsoft Windows bootable CDs that will get you at least a Dos prompt are clearly a controlled substance, and it was Sunday, what about that bootable Red Hat 6.0 CD you took off the cover of Linux Answers a couple of months ago, meaning to do something about it?"

"More morals though. Here we have Linux sliding neatly into the position of a mechanism for running multiple operating systems on a machine designed (largely by Microsoft) to run one Microsoft operating system. It's doing so in my case because the old Dos methods weren't available, because it was free, and because there was nothing else to do at the time. If operating systems that can install easily, and that can run alongside Windows, come free on the covers of magazines, and they can allow users to break free of some of the restrictions of Windows, then surely people are going to start shoving them in the drive and giving it a try."

"A cool looking legacy free PC running Linux? Not quite what Microsoft intended, but as I keep saying, it's really Microsoft's fault I started off in this direction in the first place."

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