And Microsoft moves closer to Linus Torvald

[Ian Curtis]

http://www.theage.com.au/news/Breaki...?oneclick=true

According to that article one Daniel Robbins (founder of the Gentoo distribution) is going to Microsoft. Things like this were earily fortold by Wired Magazine last year. Thoughts?

[scitobor 617]

Well I believe the reason that Robbins is going to Micro$oft is that he is wanted to help Microsoft better "understand" the open source world. I can't but think that Microsoft has more sinister plans of brainwashing amazing opensource developers and sending them back out into the wild. Am I the only one who is thinking of consperice theories?

Seriously though, I'm not quite sure what to make of this. As far as I know all Gentoo related code written by Robbins has ben licensed under opensource licenses so I'm not too upset yet. I'm interested in what it was that made Robbins accept an invitation from Microsoft though.

[GhostInTheShell]

noooooooooooooooooo!!!! well, gentoo was OK then i went to debian so i hope they don't take their creator too!

[evulish]

Originally Posted by scitobor 617

I'm interested in what it was that made Robbins accept an invitation from Microsoft though.

A good position at Microsoft is not the easiest thing to come by. I mean, if you want to talk about job stability.. Microsoft has the largest market share by no small margin in the desktop PC world and the office suite markets. They're not going anywhere. They pay well and have great benefits, too. Many open-source programmers are getting sucked into the likes of Microsoft, Apple, and other huge companies like that. Developing for the worlds most popular OS would be a hard job to turn down.. open source fan or not.

[miketwalker]

Originally Posted by evulish

A good position at Microsoft is not the easiest thing to come by. I mean, if you want to talk about job stability.. Microsoft has the largest market share by no small margin in the desktop PC world and the office suite markets. They're not going anywhere. They pay well and have great benefits, too. Many open-source programmers are getting sucked into the likes of Microsoft, Apple, and other huge companies like that. Developing for the worlds most popular OS would be a hard job to turn down.. open source fan or not.

Very well said.

[wilshire]

I do not think that Microsoft will ever go to open source but are just hiring some new developers as always. Maybe one of the developers said something behind gate's back and now a new developer is needed. Anywho Bill Gate's will own the entire market someday so this really doesn't come of any shock to me.

[wk1989]

Microsoft has a Linux research lab.

[wilshire]

of course they would. what are they not researching? seriously

[Mike]

Microsoft makes a great operating system for the end user, has anybody ever tried to use gentoo? It was horribly confusing for me, never mind a user that just got a computer. If *nix ever wants a hold in the OS Wars, they will have to make it more user friendly. Right now the only reason why I have a Knoppix Live CD next to me, is so I can become more knowledgable about *nix systems because they are used in nearly all major servers. Right now, the only thing Linux has over Windows is it's one hell of a server.

Bill Gates is a very good businessman, regardless of all the scandals going around about where he got DOS from. Whether or not his morals are good, is up to debate. "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." - Thomas Watson, founder of IBM. Now there's a desktop in almost every household in America, thanks to Bill Gates.

[wk1989]

Originally Posted by Mike

Microsoft makes a great operating system for the end user, has anybody ever tried to use gentoo? It was horribly confusing for me, never mind a user that just got a computer. If *nix ever wants a hold in the OS Wars, they will have to make it more user friendly. Right now the only reason why I have a Knoppix Live CD next to me, is so I can become more knowledgable about *nix systems because they are used in nearly all major servers. Right now, the only thing Linux has over Windows is it's one hell of a server.

Bill Gates is a very good businessman, regardless of all the scandals going around about where he got DOS from. Whether or not his morals are good, is up to debate. "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." - Thomas Watson, founder of IBM. Now there's a desktop in almost every household in America, thanks to Bill Gates.

I use Linux as a desktop, for me it surpasses Windows, I have all the software I need installed, the system is fast and stable, I can play Need For Speed Underground through Cedega, and Enemy Territory which has a native Linux version.

Gentoo is not the best option for starters, there are much easier distros out there like Ubuntu. Ubuntu's installer is actually easier to use than Windows, and its package manager is far more superior. Gentoo is not designed to be user friendly, its designed to give you full control over your system, and allow software to run as fast as possible.

[Ryan M.]

Originally Posted by Mike

Microsoft makes a great operating system for the end user, has anybody ever tried to use gentoo?

Yep... just tried it for the second time a few days ago. Got to the same stage as the first time (kernel compile) and got the same error. Must be my comp.

But I agree that Ubuntu is very nice. Actually, that's what I'm on right now. Only thing I really dislike about it is the inablity to login as root (you can sudo into root, but you can't actually login as root) Does anyone know how to reenable root? It does appear, but it just doesn't let you in.

[Ian Curtis]

If we're going for usability to the end user, Apple would rule the world, seriously. The way Macs work is very logical and much more eye friendly to a first time user, not to mention the hardware itself is much more than a box.

I've never tried Gentoo, but Suse rules my world .

[wk1989]

Originally Posted by iCurtis

If we're going for usability to the end user, Apple would rule the world, seriously. The way Macs work is very logical and much more eye friendly to a first time user, not to mention the hardware itself is much more than a box.

I've never tried Gentoo, but Suse rules my world .

Mac OS is nice, but is not free, and only runs on $1000 Macs. Even if I have a Mac, I wouldn't run OS X on it.

[Ian Curtis]

Not So! There are cheap emulators which enable you to run OS X. Also eMacs and the Mac Mini are less than 1000 dollars, significantly cheaper actually.

Also OS X is cheaper than Windows XP although Linux is cheaper than both of them.

[t3ch]

As long as we're talking about Gentoo, I'd just like to bring up the fact that Gentoo is one of the most versatile flavors of linux out there. Being that it is great for systems like amd64, sparc, ppc, etc... it can fit on just about any configuration. Another thing that I like about it is the fact that there is no GUI installer out there for it. Though, yes, one is being developed. I, personally, prefer the stage1 install. There's nothing more challanging than configuring everything by yourself. Along with that, the Gentoo Handbook has to be one of the most well-written handbooks I have ever seen, It is incredibly descriptive, and even the most basic user can do a pretty simple stage3 install with genkernel. I learned more with my first install of Gentoo than anything previous to that. And in terms of the 'OSX' look, a friend of mine made a fluxbox theme that basically shared the same look as OSX. It was very nice. Linux has to be, by far, the most versatile OS out of OSX, and Windows. Though I still use Windows, rarely, to play games.

http://www.gentoo.org/news/20050613-drobbins.xml <<<--that is the original article. And in terms of Microsoft, they will probably never be Open Source, and with these stupid software patents (BTW which Microsoft supports, and just recently was found guilty of infringing) the Open Source community may not look good in the near future. So get all you can from Sourceforge before it's too late!

Heh, and btw, in terms of Microsoft having a linux research lab, I believe it is Unix, not necisarilly Linux. But it's still *nix. But that's just my 2 cents.