| Vista vs. desktop Linux: One year in |
Nov. 08, 2007
Opinion -- After almost a year since Microsoft released Vista to manufacturing, it's time to re-evaluate it and decide if it's finally the equal of the best of the desktop Linuxes.
That's not a facetious question. Yes, in terms of market share, desktop Linux hovers just over 1 percent of all users, while Microsoft claims that Vista by this summer had already sold more than 60 million copies. I'm not impressed, and you shouldn't be either.
In the early '80s, the idea that foreign cars could outsell Detroit's finest was treated as a joke. The VW Beetle was fine in its low-end niche, but Japanese cars outselling Ford, American Motors, Chrysler and GM? Impossible!
No, it wasn't. By 1990, a Japanese car model, the Honda Accord, became the first best-selling foreign car in the United States. Today, AMC is long dead. Chrysler spent most of the last few years as a division German-controlled DaimlerChrysler, until it was sold off in August to Cerebus, a private-equity firm specializing in troubled companies. Ford lost only $380 million in its last quarter. Of course that was peanuts compared with GM. America's biggest car manufacturer lost $38.96 billion in its last quarter. Even Bill Gates' piggy-bank would be squealing in pain at that kind of loss.
What company sells the second-most cars in the United States and makes money doing it? That would be Toyota. Honda is No. 5, and its earnings went up 63 percent in its last quarter.
What ruined the Detroit car makers? It's a long story, but the heart of the matter was that they started turning out crappy, overpriced products. At the same time, the Japanese car makers were making well-engineered, inexpensive cars.
Have I mentioned yet that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was born in Detroit? Coincidence?
To me, Vista is a lot like those gas-guzzling, constantly breaking down American junkers. I have been using Vista for more than a year now. It still doesn't run all my hardware. It still has problems with some of my Windows applications. And, even as PC hardware prices continue their perpetual drop, I still find that the average PC with 2GB of RAM, built-in Intel graphics and a middlin' performing dual-core CPU isn't fast enough to run Vista acceptably.
At the same time, I can take any older PC with 512MB of RAM and any processor running at 1GHz or faster, and get a better performing desktop experience with any modern Linux desktop distribution. MEPIS, openSUSE, SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop), Ubuntu and Xandros are my favorite Linux desktops. Each can work on your 2004/2005 vintage machines without a lick of trouble.
When it comes to cost, there's no comparison. Only two, SLED and Xandros, require any money up-front. If you compare them with Vista, it's easy to see which ones are kinder to your wallet. SLED 10 SP 1's closest Vista equivalent is Vista Business. The street price for Business' upgrade DVD is $189. You can buy SLED, either directly from Novell or from a Novell reseller, for $50. Xandros Home, my pick for the easiest Linux desktop for Windows users, is a Linux answer to Vista's Home Premium. The biggest difference? Vista Home Premium costs around $149 at most stores; Xandros will run you about $80.
Of course, all the Linuxes, including the free ones, also include at least one full office suite, OpenOffice 2.x, and access to every open-source Linux program in creation. Have you priced Microsoft Office lately?
You say you must have a Windows application? Well many of the most popular ones will run on Linux with CrossOver Linux. It won't run with CrossOver? Then use a free virtualization program, like those from VMware or VirtualBox, to run XP on Linux for Adobe Photoshop or your homebrew office application.
You like your PCs with the operating system already installed? No problem. You can buy PCs from midtier vendors such as Everex for $198. You can get consumer desktops or laptops from a top-of-the-line PC builder such as Dell, ThinkPad business laptops from Lenovo, and you can always special order business Linux systems from HP.
Almost a year ago, I took a long, hard look at Vista vs. Linux in a series of stories. I found then that while both operating systems had their problem, Linux was better. Since then, desktop Linux has gotten even better. MEPIS 6, the Linux I used as my comparison, was vastly improved in its next edition, 6.5, and MEPIS 7, which is due out around Thanksgiving, looks to be better still. Vista? We're all waiting for SP1.
Lest you think this is just a case of another Linux supporter throwing brickbats at Vista, I ask you to consider for a moment that my colleague Joe Wilcox of Microsoft-Watch found that resellers are still installing three copies of XP on PCs for every one of Vista.
It seems to me that the market is speaking. And the market is saying that Vista doesn't work well enough and costs too much. At the same time, both businesses and home users are beginning to look at cheaper and technically better alternatives. I've seen this story play out before. Except, this time around, Microsoft will be starring in the role of GM.
—Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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