Linus Torvalds on the new MacBook Air

Re:Linus Torvalds on the new MacBook Air by mbirth on Sunday November 22, 2020 @03:55PM (#25180997)

We had this with Netbooks - remember those? You could choose between a barely running Windows XP or a well running Linux back then. People mostly bought the Windows version because that's what they knew and where the illegal copy of software X from their neighbour ran.

A similar thing happened with the city of Munich trying to convert their systems to Linux. The workers complained that OpenOffice/LibreOffice didn't work like their (most probably illegal) copies of Word and Excel at home and thus they couldn't work with it. When that didn't help, they complained about "missing software" and other strange reasons about why they absolutely couldn't work with Linux. So they rolled back to Windows and Office and started sending our tax money to Microsoft again. [1] (Also Microsoft promised to move their German HQ to Munich to bring wealth into town. But that's toooootally unrelated.)

At least, they're trying again... [2]

Point is, as long as 90% of all jobs and schools have you work in Windows, why should people start buying Linux PCs for themselves?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux [2] https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-i...

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Re:Linus Torvalds on the new MacBook Air by stu2b50 on Sunday November 22, 2020 @05:13PM (#25181615)

I think that is changing, though. G-Suite and the online versions of Office (Office365, I think?) are gaining a lot of traction in the business world. Live collaboration with other people is a huge benefit, and being a webapp saves the IT department many headaches.

Although that's less "Linux as a viable OS" and more "Google Chrome as a viable OS".

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