Re: If you could design a $300 homecomputer today, what would you choose?

[graham@aledrinker.co.uk (Graham)]

> Why should they have to though?  What extra power would my parents get (word
> processing, internet, dtp, spreadsheet)  by using Linux over Windows or her
> Mac (actually my old Mac)?

None if they can use Office/Works already. I would give the Unix
Office applications a year to become functionally more useful than the
MSOffice equivalents. By more useful I don't mean that they will do
everything that the equivalent MS program would do, but it would do it
correctly. Office has so many bugs it is unbelievable. Still, large
software programs have bugs, so the Unix Office apps will get them as
well. I just hope that the emphasis for the Unix Office apps is going
to be stability and bug fixing over feature bloat.

The Windows interface is just as confusing to newbies as the Linux one
(say, KDE). Except that KDE comes with a whole pile of apps
preinstalled for free, KOffice, Konqueror, silly games, etc. Linux is
just a mess under the surface though, and the surface is dodgy. For a
home user desktop, it needs a single, consistent interface, easy to
configure printers, hardware, etc. MS is way ahead in these areas. QNX
is the best alternative desktop OS I have seen to date.

>  What advantages would I have in using Linux over
> Windows as an application programmer using VB, C++ Builder, VC++, Jbuilder,
> SQL Server etc?

VB - MS Technology
C++ Builder - Borland
VC++ - MS
JBuilder - Borland
SQLServer - MS

You would get none, of course. What advantages would I have in Windows
over Linux as a server programmer using Perl, PHP, Python,
PostgresQL/Oracle/MySQL?

> And there are not dozens of known security holes in most Unix/Linux
> distributions?  Every scanf(),gets(), sprintf(),strcpy in the OS is a
> potential security hazard.

Hence you should use the more secure alternatives with length
parameters to prevent buffer overflows, such as strncpy.

Graham