Re: [PLUG] LBF (Linux Business Forum): Top Arguments FOR and AGAINST using Linux in Business

["Michael Leone" <turgon@mike-leone.com>]

Paul said:
>>
>>
>>Not really ... NT has been pushed as MS's "business" OS since ... 1994
>> or so (NT 3.1). Linux wasn't all that advanced back then, either.
>>
>>And I can recall using Win3.1 in 1991/92. And yes, that is longer than
>> Linux. We were doing desktop publishing of the forms we used in the
>> bank I
>>
>>
> None of the modern M$ OSes are based on Win 3.1.

Immaterial, to a business person. It's still Windows, isn't it? Says so,
right on the box. :-)

> 98 is in XP or 2000?  NT may have the longest surviving code, and you
> said that has only been around since 1994 or so.
>
> Linux started in the early ninties, right?  It is still Linux.  It has

1991. Wasn't really usable then, I wouldn't think (I dunno - I started
using it in 1996 or 1997). Maybe 1993. I knwo that there's no WAY I would
have suggested Linux as a replacement desktop OS back then. It was nowhere
near ready.

> become more advanced and things have been built on top of it.  Same with
>  DOS, except DOS stopped advancing.  New things have been built on top
> and around DOS.  Being new things, how can they claim to share the long
> history of DOS?

See above. Please bear in mind that we are *NOT* dealing with computer
savvy people. The supposition is a small-medium business,with little to no
full-time IT staff.

> Like you said, "in the minds of a business person".  That doesn't make
> it so.

It does if they don't change their actions or their minds. Or don't hire
you. :-)

>>What would you say the first release of a Linux distro with X-Windows
>> that you could do desktop publishing effectively with was?
>>
> Don't know, but I do know that Macs could do it before M$ could.  Come
> to think of it Macs might have the longest life span of a desktop OS
> until just recently when they switched to OS X.

Again, immaterial. We're talking Linux, not other OSes. And specifically,
weaning target market businesses away from MS - or at least adding Linux
into the mix.

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