Re: Major interview

[Michael A Hamblin <michaelh@utdallas.edu>]

On Wed, 8 Sep 1999, Jose C. Lacal wrote:

> ?? Maybe. If you look at the public schools in Dade County (Miami, FL),
> they have around 50,000 "old PCs" in their schools now. So, let's follow
> your example: 50,000 x US$400 = US$200 million. I would propose to you
> that, for that kind of money, there has to be some other alternative to
> "extend" the usable life of those "old" PCs.

Mmm, depends on your definition of "old PCs". I'm sure you'd find that
quite a number of those are 486s, which still are quite useful and fully
capable of running Linux. It depends on your paradigm of course, and how
your network services are laid out.

> I have to add a disclaimer here: for the last 02 years I run a website
> (http://www.volks-pc.org) where I promote the use of DOS-based software
> to rescue the 100 million old PCs worldwide that can still be used for
> 99% of what a Pentium III does today (read e-mail, surf the web, do
> office applications, accounting, etc.), at a hell of a lower cost.
[snip]
> ?? I must disagree with you here. I am as much a GNU/Linux geek as
> anybody on the list, but I am convinced that GNU/Linux on every desktop
> is the _wrong_ answer to the problem. For millions of SMEs (small and
> medium-size enterprises), their existing PCs are unable to run
> GNU/Linux. Even then, these people are NOT interested in becoming
> worshippers in the Church of GNU. Those people (my brothers and parents
> included) want to _use_ PCs as little as possible, get their stuff done,
> and get back to their real business: running the business. DOS is easy
> to use for them, they are familiar with it (how many people still use WP
> for DOS out there?), and their existing DOS-based apps get the job done?
> Why do they need to upgrade their hardware for?

I'm not sure about the need for hardware upgrade, as I already stated.

But DOS is lacking in a number of areas that are not simply semantic:
Multitasking? Protected memory? Quality networking implementation? Easy to
use interface? Long filenames? Multiuser support? I have little against
DOS based machines, but some of these are important advantages of Linux
over a DOS. A lot of people are scared by the DOS prompt (not to mention a
Unix prompt), and in particular a lot of students are already familiar
with GUIs in Windows since that's what they have at home. They're used to
being able to go from Eudora to Word to Excel to Netscape swiftly and not
have to run one application at a time. With Linux, you don't have to have
a PIII to do that. I'm just saying that cost isn't the only advantage to
Linux. If cost was the only one I probably wouldn't be using it.

I'm still looking for solutions to the nice UI problem for older machines.
Project Seagull was promising but until I get something in my hands its
not an option.

I'm going to have to cut this message short, so most of the thoughts I
wanted to develop aren't, sorry.

--
Michael Hamblin            http://www.utdallas.edu/~michaelh/
michaelh@utdallas.edu      http://www.ductape.net/
UTD Linux User Group       Engineering and Computer Science Support, x2997
                           "So you're here to 'save the world'..." -Matrix