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"and above all continuity with what they are used to""and above all continuity with what they are used to"Posted Aug 20, 2006 21:07 UTC (Sun) by withaar (guest, #4201)In reply to: "and above all continuity with what they are used to" by dns Parent article: Free software's secret weapon: FOOGL (Linux Journal)
"Boy, I couldn't disagree more! I've been involved in changing the way
Indeed. I helped some people transition, and the greatest frustration is in not being able to do the simple things directly, like starting an application. More people are helped by the start menu on the bottom-left than you know.
Word-Perfect was a far superior product, but was undercut by MS who copied it feature by feature and pushed it with all the marketing power they had. The competitor had limited access to changes in the API and would always be late in updating its own code. How long has it been since MS made significant improvements in IE, since the demise of Netscape?
If you want to see mass adoption, make linux look as similar to XP as you can. Embrace and extend. The desktop is now very configurable, so that is not very hard to do. In fact, it is what major distros do. Once in, you can look at the cool screenshots and decide that you want more. Openoffice is also very similar to MS office in features, and I am sure MS office is being followed. The ODF is a great example of embrace and extend.
The release of vista will be interesting. MS can not change the interface too much, in order to avoid estranging its customer base and opening an opportunity to alternatives. There will likely be configuration options to modify the UI that are off by default, like the active desktop was/is? They will use vista primarily to hammer on "technical superior" and "more secure".
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