Desktop Linux is Windows piracy aide (Silicon.com)

Posted Oct 1, 2004 7:50 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
Parent article: Desktop Linux is Windows piracy aide (Silicon.com)

And Windows will be replaced with pirated copy or Windows - what's the difference ?

Of course Linux will be often replaced with Windows but Windows is sometimes replaced with Linux as well. It's all relevant only for notebook market anyway: it's not a problem to buy desktop PC without any OS here and then you can install anything you want there.

So yes, most copies of Windows are illegal here but "PCs sold as PCs with Linux then converted to Windows" is such a small percentage of PCs overral that it does not really even worth mention. Even if it's 80% of "PCs sold with Linux" - if you need Linux you'll install it yourself since supplier does not have tech support for Linux anyway even if Linux installation is an option.

Why anyone will replace legal copy of Windows with illegal copy ? Simple: if you'll replace Russian Windows Home edition with English Windows Professional Corporate edition + Russian MUI you have no problems with updates (patches are month or two late for Russian version), activation (corporate edition does not need it!) and so on.

Why Windows is so popular here ? Simple: it's cheaper then Linux. For the same $10 you can buy ASPLinux, ALTLinux, Debian, RedHat, or Windows. But it's be only ASPLinux, ALTLinux, Debian or RedHat while "windows disk" will include the following (typical "windows disk" contents):
1. Windows 95 OSR2 + USB Update OSR2.1 (russian & english)
2. Windows 98 SE (russian & english)
3. Windows ME (russian & english)
4. Windows NT 4.0 SP6a Workstation (russian & english)
5. Windows NT 4.0 Server (english)
6. Windows 2000 SP4 Professional (russian & english)
7. Windows 2000 SP4 Server (russian & english)
8. Windows XP SP2 Professional (russian & english)
9. Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition (english)
10. Norton SystemWorks 2004

If you'll try to find software for Linux - yet again it's harder then with software for Linux. And games are non-existant.

So 80% conversion looks like correct approximation: only geeks like me will choose Linux over Linux when alternative is so cheap. What exactly will be installed on PC in the end has almost no relevancy to what was installed initially and Windows is more popular (way more applications).