In the Beginning There was the Command Line

April 23, 2007 12:25 PM

"Likewise, when Microsoft's position in the OS world is threatened, their corporate instincts will tell them to pile more new features into their operating systems, and then re-jigger their software applications to exploit those special features. But this will only have the effect of making their applications dependent on an OS with declining market share, and make it worse for them in the end." - Neal Stephenson (1999)
posted by tylermoody (8 comments total)

I'm still on W2K. The only reason I will have to upgrade to a newer Windows OS is that new games will one day require it. So far, only a small handful of non-essential programs I've tried won't run in 2K.
posted by BeerFilter at 12:31 PM on April 23, 2007

I've read this. 8 years ago. It's good, but it has no place as a single link FPP on metfilter.
posted by mcstayinskool at 12:31 PM on April 23, 2007

Can you say "jigger"?
posted by found missing at 12:34 PM on April 23, 2007

Win2k was nice but lacked a built-in firewall, which is nice to have, and so is the picture browsing. It's silly to upgrade your whole OS just to add a new feature to the file manager, and while there are 3rd party firewalls, I prefer the built-in one.

I'd be suprised if this isn't a dupe, though.

I need to switch to Linux one of these days, but it's always such a hassle.
posted by delmoi at 12:37 PM on April 23, 2007

http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntudesktop704

this new build looks great - complete with windows migration tool...
posted by chuckdarwin at 12:38 PM on April 23, 2007

"This is exactly how the World Wide Web works: the HTML files are the pithy description on the paper tape, and your Web browser is Ronald Reagan. The same is true of Graphical User Interfaces in general."
posted by rbs at 12:47 PM on April 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

But this will only have the effect of making their applications dependent on an OS with declining market share, and make it worse for them in the end
It's not that the share is declining -- FFS, it's going to take forever to erode that market share -- it's that it's irrelevant, when increasingly the only app that matters is a browser.
posted by bonaldi at 12:47 PM on April 23, 2007

I also worked with W2K until very recently. My new laptop came with XP so I made the switch. As long as I get drivers for my gadgets I'll stay with this one for the next couple of years. Don't need no stinking Vista, OS/X or Linux. My work has to be done by me - no stupid super operating OS will do the job ...
posted by homodigitalis at 12:51 PM on April 23, 2007