Rony Bill wrote:
According to my most limitted knowledge, this problem is due to too many linux flavours flooding the market and competing with each other instead of M$. Divide Linux and M$ rules!!
I would like to add a few lines regarding my experience on trying/advocating Linux in my office (a totally Windows dominated domain). Let's take an employee X (I'll use feminine gender henceforth to save asciibets & be politically correct):
1. X knows the "True MS" way of doing things & that the only s/w she has experienced.
2. X doesn't have time to experiment (though she doesn't mind endlessly going through Office 2000 Bible for Dummies).
3. Since majority is using some other s/w (which being MS need not/is not compatible with OSS), for the fear of being left behind, she cannot afford to wait with OSS till things work together.
4. If some MS feature is absent in a OSS, X can't wait till it is installed (though she wouldn't mind bowing before the 65,000 rows limit of MS Excel).
5. Whenever (& that is the case mostly) something does'nt work properply in Windows, X can catch hold of a colleague within a 4 cubicle radius who can fix things. Worst case scenario, the Windows Support Brotherhood a.k.a HelpDesk is available. The company doesn't employ Linux support engineers 'cause there ain't linux users around to support. Plus their entire setup is MS tech.
6. Since the entire intranet, the shared network resources, Internet access et all is totally MS tech., for some reason X cannot Sign-on, copy/read files from the network drives, go to Internet etc.etc. Samba, apache? Reminds X of wildlife.
May be I should paint X in black for stalling the progress of FLOSS and is a brain-dead MS slave. But to me X is just a cluless, blind creature busy surviving. And am I the enlightened evangelist? Hey, I'm busy surviving too.
Btw, I love OSS, consistently use linux at home, try to contribute by occasionally murmuring few words of help based on my limited knowlege to newbies & buying Linux distros.
Regards, Soumen