By Akoma
LAS VEGAS, February 17, 2000 – Ladies And Gentlemen,
LETTTTTT”SSSS GETTT READDDYYY TOOOO RUMMMMMMMMMMBBBBBBLLLLE!
Welcome to the ‘Fight of the New Millennium’. 1000 rounds of
non-stop action.
In the Blue Corner, weighting in at 30 Million Lines of code,
with an astonishing height of 95% Desktop, he has a track record as
been BSODing his supporters, bullying his partners, crushing his
enemies, recently judged to be a Monopoly, bought/modified
by/hailing from Redmond, Washington, the current reigning cham-peen
of the OS world — The NEW AND IMPROVED Windows… Two…
THOUSAND!!!
In the Red Corner, weighing in anywhere from embedded to
Mainframe/Supercomputer, height varying as weight goes up — he has
been evolving from an itch to become the new corporate darling, he
can run on multiple hardware platforms, he has hundred of thousands
of trainers and possibly tens of millions of sparring partners, and
he now has the backing of the Heavyweight-still-active IBM — he
has a track record of stability, reliability and speed on low end
servers and his marketing symbol, Tux, is a “vicious” Penguin with
a smile on his face — he was. born in Finland and raised on the
INTERNET, with a UNIX World-class-champion legacy — the fast
evolving, always moving, never stopping, Standard breathing,
prodigal SON OF OPEN SOURCE — grudgingly referred to as “that
upstart OS” – the Challenger: LIIIIIINNNNUUUUXXXXX!!!
The referee for this match has been graciously provided by —
the United States Department of Justice!
And welcome the panel of judges for this contest — the Global
Business Community!
Referee: “Ok guys, you know the rules — and Windows, I WILL
WATCH you in the next month, ’cause we have a case to settle…
Now, let’s GET IT ON!!”
1st round… Linux is dancing around W2K and keeps jabbing
on the small ISP side. Hoouuuch!! W2K took HTML and extended it!!
Linux does not seem to be phased by this and keeps on jabbing,
scoring point after point. W2K throws Benchmark after benchmark at
Linux’ legs. The lightweight just moves aside and adjusts his
footwork, he is now dancing on SMP and scaling to 8 CPUs!
Linux corner: (RedHat) OK, you look good. Keep on jabbing and
keep those hands up. This guy is a VICIOUS fighter.
W2K corner:(BG) What are you doing? I Told you to rely on your
FUD Tactics. Don’t forget to change COM/DCOM/COM+, even if our
supporters lose their bets!
2nd round… Linux looks sharp and is still stinging W2K with
SMB blow-over. That’s amazing! Linux just took the PDC control from
W2K and is evolving faster than ever, he can now print/file serve
in the same time. W2K throws an Active Directory in the stomach of
Linux. Linux wisely steps back, looks at Novell in his corner and
replies with NDS in the face of W2K. NASTY, this fight is becoming
nasty. W2K in a desperate move changes the TCP/IP stack for DNS
address resolution and just loses another part of his customer
base. The fans are beginning to see W2K in a whole new light. But
Linux lacks desktop applications! Don’t despair, StarOffice,
KOffice, Applixware, and a few others have trained Linux well and
it shows!
The sequel? On pay per view… 🙂
About the author:
Akoma, 30 years old and employed by a software company specialized
in JAVA development, originally submitted this as a talkback to
CNET News.com:
Linux poses increasing threat to Windows 2000 — LT editors
thought it deserved more exposure than it would get buried away as
a talkback, so we asked if we could polish it up just a little and
post it as a feature.
Akoma has been using Linux at home and sometimes at work (his
employer prefers to use NT workstations and Sun servers) for two
years now and has been following the ePress (as he likes to call
them) ‘going from left to right about the usability of Linux’ — it
amazes him to see the ‘leaps and bounds’ by which Linux has moved
ahead in the business. Akoma has a 15 month old son who was
screaming in his ears as he tried to correspond with us :). His
take on the Linux vs. Windows 2000 is: Whoever wants to use either
shall, because it’s a free world and nobody is perfect :).