It’s official, Linux needs Windows. Jerry said.

Browsing through forums and filtering out posts from angry, potty mouthed teenagers led me to this article. It was from a guy called Jerry and his staggering lack of knowledge with regards to operating systems. The topic discussed if Linux could ever replace Windows. Read for yourself…

“I dont see how this will happen at all.
Vista is far more powerful than windows XP, and runs twice as fast. It is also much harder to pirate, and this point more than anything else has the Linux crowd in a panic.
It wont be long until Windows XP is no longer supported, and when that happens, what is Linux going to do ?
Linux will have to find a way to work under Vista from here on, since it wont be able to rely on XP being readily available anymore.
Linux may seem like a good alternative to Office, but all that is happening in linux is that the windows interface is cleverly hidden away. It still needs the drivers and software services in order to run, and in most cases - that happens WITHOUT a valid windows licence.
This is just plain piracy.
Vista will finally put an end to this blatant abuse of intellectual property, and linux should decline, taking the pirates with it.
Anyone that supports the continuation of Windows XP in place of Vista surely has a hidden agenda .. and you will surely be caught out.”

Where do you begin? This person is clearly confused, What i want to know is how did he come to this conclusion? I won’t go into explaining what about this article is just so wrong, that would just insult your intelligence. (”Linux may seem like a good alternative to Office”,”It still needs the drivers and software services in order to run”… 8O )

The follow up post was from someone pointing out all the things we are all thinking. Then Jerry bit back, and it just gets worse…

“Are you saying that this linux can run on a computer without windows underneath it, at all ? As in, without a boot disk, without any drivers, and without any services ?

That sounds preposterous to me.

If it were true (and I doubt it), then companies would be selling computers without a windows. This clearly is not happening, so there must be some error in your calculations. I hope you realise that windows is more than just Office ? Its a whole system that runs the computer from start to finish, and that is a very difficult thing to acheive. A lot of people dont realise this.

Microsoft just spent $9 billion and many years to create Vista, so it does not sound reasonable that some new alternative could just snap into existence overnight like that. It would take billions of dollars and a massive effort to achieve. IBM tried, and spent a huge amount of money developing OS/2 but could never keep up with Windows. Apple tried to create their own system for years, but finally gave up recently and moved to Intel and Microsoft.

Its just not possible that a freeware like the Linux could be extended to the point where it runs the entire computer fron start to finish, without using some of the more critical parts of windows. Not possible.

I think you need to re-examine your assumptions.”

I am starting to think that this could quite possibly be a wind-up. Surely, to come to this conclusion requires living in a sealed box for the past 10 years living off nothing but Microsoft propaganda. I don’t want to be nasty about Jerry, he needs re-educating on all things, erm, computer related. Saying that, you can forgive me for thinking that he is the sort of person that is to this day still searching for the “any” key.

Personally, I want his take on Firefox vs Internet Explorer.. now that would be interesting.

I bet you are all thinking i made Jerry up, well i didn’t… here’s the proof