| |||||||||||||
Porting free software to WindowsPorting free software to WindowsPosted Dec 16, 2004 1:56 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722)Parent article: Porting free software to Windows
I doubt that people would stay on Windows due to inertia if all of the applications they used were available on whatever platform they wanted. It takes a lot of effort in updating things to keep a Windows system working at all, especially for a non-expert. It's faster these days to install Linux than to install a windows update. The inertia people have is really the applications.
(Log in to post comments)
Porting free software to Windows Posted Dec 16, 2004 3:00 UTC (Thu) by bryce (subscriber, #16388) [Link] Agreed. The assumption seems to be that people will be choosingthe OS based on the applications. I think this is a faulty assumption. Honestly, most open source apps are still struggling to catch up with their proprietary counterparts. In a way I think it goes the other way round. Linux itself can win fine on its own merits. People consider switching to Linux for philosophical, monetary, quality, or other reasons but then pause and ask, "Uh oh, what about all the apps I'm used to? And are my files going to port over correctly?" If the applications they use are available everywhere, then this becomes a non-issue and it smoothes out the transition costs for them.
|
|||||||||||||