Free/FLOSS makes Windows Usable?

[johnnywtllts]

Okay, let's say I had this friend, and he bought one of those bottom o' line DELLs for $300.00, and it came with a 1 year in-home warranty and he wanted to check it thouroughly out.

But being an Above Average Joe (with average income apparently), he knew he had to secure it and get some programs that would work for him.

He gets Firefox, Filezilla, Thunderbird, the Gimp, a free CD iso burner, a free anti-spyware, AVG anti-virus, uses Webmin to interface with his Linux boxes, downloads VMware with an Ubuntu appliance, etc etc.

And before he knows it, he realizes....he's just made Windows usable .....with free software and on the backs of the Open Source community.

Ethically speaking, am I...I mean...is he worse than an Apple user?

I don't think so, we both kinda suck equally. The Apple guy just doesn't have to do as much work to make his usable.

What is most unethical about Microsoft is the fact that they sell this same product to Average Joe, who doesn't have the faculties to make it useable.

[Patrick]

He gets Firefox, Filezilla, Thunderbird, the Gimp, a free CD iso burner, a free anti-spyware, AVG anti-virus, uses Webmin to interface with his Linux boxes, downloads VMware with an Ubuntu appliance, etc etc.

And before he knows it, he realizes....he's just made Windows usable .....with free software and on the backs of the Open Source community.

Well if he likes all these applications then tell he can also get rid of unwanted crashes, viruses and spyware if he switches to Linux. Tell him he can get MORE stability by using Linux. Why not install vmware on Linux and run Windows in the virtual machine? It's safer that way. This is actually a good way to get Windows users to switch over to F/OSS. Give them a taste and tell it can be even better if they completely switch over.

[CptnObvious999]

Well if he likes all these applications then tell he can also get rid of unwanted crashes, viruses and spyware if he switches to Linux. Tell him he can get MORE stability by using Linux. Why not install vmware on Linux and run Windows in the virtual machine? It's safer that way. This is actually a good way to get Windows users to switch over to F/OSS. Give them a taste and tell it can be even better if they completely switch over.

I agree, which is why I think it is good that a bunch of KDE apps are getting ported to Windows. I someone is already familiar with Amarok, Kopete, and KOffice making the switch will be a lot easier.

[Tsuroerusu]

Well if he likes all these applications then tell he can also get rid of unwanted crashes, viruses and spyware if he switches to Linux. Tell him he can get MORE stability by using Linux. Why not install vmware on Linux and run Windows in the virtual machine? It's safer that way. This is actually a good way to get Windows users to switch over to F/OSS. Give them a taste and tell it can be even better if they completely switch over.

I agree, which is why I think it is good that a bunch of KDE apps are getting ported to Windows. I someone is already familiar with Amarok, Kopete, and KOffice making the switch will be a lot easier.

Plus, on Linux all those apps will integrate very nicely with each other, thanks to KDE's Plasma, Solid and Phonon layers.

[Wally Balljacker]

I'd like to see him switch over to Linux, but if Windows + OSS is working for him, than good for him. He has all the software he needs, plus he gets to play all of the Windows only games, and use Flash 9. It's not something I would do, since I prefer the stability, and security of Linux, but I don't really see the harm in it.

[shopRatt]

"I'd like to see him switch over to Linux, but if Windows + OSS is working for him, than good for him. He has all the software he needs, plus he gets to play all of the Windows only games, and use Flash 9."

Agreed. Any OSS is better than no OSS. He is smart enough to get some of the apps working, he is smart enough to know when to make the switch, if at all.

[johnnywtllts]

Okie Dokie.

I think I've reached the following from talking about this here and elsewhere:

It's easy to get stuck in the rut of thinking that getting people to switch to Linux is the key to stopping Microsoft from taking all choices away.

Remember the interview with the guy from LXer last year - someone asked him to name the best thing to happen to Linux in the last few years - he quickly replied - Firefox. I remember wondering what the hell Firefox on Windows had to do with Linux, but Gomer_X made the point that Firefox accomplishes the following: it puts standards compliant software out there that keeps Microsoft from dictating all the standards.

You can get Average Joe to run good open source software in Windows, Above Average Joe is doing it anyway or either using Linux or a Mac.

Question: are there any arguments similar to this that say that OSX being built on BSD accomplishes similar anti-M$ goodness?

[Tsuroerusu]

Question: are there any arguments similar to this that say that OSX being built on BSD accomplishes similar anti-M$ goodness?

NOPE, OS X is a freakin' proprietary OS, just as bad as Windows in my opinion. The only thing I'd say is that Apple at least has a pretty good browser included out of the box, of course that thanks to the code from KHTML they stole.

[Linc]

Question: are there any arguments similar to this that say that OSX being built on BSD accomplishes similar anti-M$ goodness?

NOPE, OS X is a freakin' proprietary OS, just as bad as Windows in my opinion. The only thing I'd say is that Apple at least has a pretty good browser included out of the box, of course that thanks to the code from KHTML they stole.

You referring to Safari? I think Safari is a horible browser. The first thing I did on my mac was to get Firefox.

[Tsuroerusu]

Question: are there any arguments similar to this that say that OSX being built on BSD accomplishes similar anti-M$ goodness?

NOPE, OS X is a freakin' proprietary OS, just as bad as Windows in my opinion. The only thing I'd say is that Apple at least has a pretty good browser included out of the box, of course that thanks to the code from KHTML they stole.

You referring to Safari? I think Safari is a horible browser. The first thing I did on my mac was to get Firefox.

Please allow me to clarify what I meant by "a pretty good browser", I meant in terms of standards compliance, Safari is certainly better than IE, of course that's all thanks to the code Apple stole from Konqueror, which by the way is a great browser, been using it a lot lately.

[DaveQB]

[
Please allow me to clarify what I meant by "a pretty good browser", I meant in terms of standards compliance, Safari is certainly better than IE, of course that's all thanks to the code Apple stole from Konqueror, which by the way is a great browser, been using it a lot lately.

Yeah, me too for some reason. Its always getting better.