Microsoft has apparently given details of a new deal to PC makers that allows them to get discounted Windows XP licenses for use on UMPCs, according to Computer World UK. This already appeared to be the case due to pricing on the Eee PC, however it had not been confirmed. There seem to be two parts to this story. First, Microsoft is selling Windows for less on UMPCS. Second, some people suspect that the deal is supposed to prevent UMPCs from competing with normal PCs.

The first part is relatively simple. Microsoft is giving essentially the same product away at difference prices, depending what type of device it will go on. Although I am not in any way a lawyer, I suspect that this is legal, since Microsoft can just change one little feature and then it is a different product. Just because it is probably legal, does not, however, mean I think it is a fair practice. Another way of stating the second sentence of this paragraph is: Microsoft is making Windows less expensive in the markets where Linux is gaining market share. Because of this, I think this practice should be illegal and is certainly unfair.

The second part of the story is slightly more complicated, though not by much. The Computer World article brings up the point that Microsoft may be trying to limit UMPCs from invading the regular PC market by defining them with these specifications:

• Max screen size: 10.2
• No touch screen
• Hard drives are limited to 80GB
• Max 1GB RAM
• Max 1Ghz single-core processor, except for a few particular chips

Although it is true that these specifications would limit a UMPC from competing with a regular PC, three things should be kept in mind.

1. Microsoft has to set the limit somewhere. If Windows is going to have a different price for UMPCs, Microsoft has to define what a UMPC is so a 17-inch desktop replacement doesn’t count.
2. Every major UMPC that I can think of fits these specifications.
3. If these specifications are going to limit UMPCs, it is only going to hurt Microsoft. PC makers will not stop improving their hardware because they don’t get Microsoft’s discount. They might, however, switch to Linux, because Windows costs $50 more.

For these three reasons, I don’t see anything wrong with the specifications Microsoft has set. I do, however, think that the whole idea of selling the same product at differenet prices is unfair. If you disagree, however, I am open to hearing your arguement. Go ahead and post it in the comments.

Recently a diagram that depicts Microsoft’s “empire” competing or fighting its competitors, particularly open-source. The diagram (older versions), while probably mostly intended for fun, shows two important realities for Microsoft:

1. Microsoft is huge. They will never just disappear overnight or over a year. If they die, it will be very slow as they gradually lose various parts of their bussiness to competitors.
2. Microsoft is surrounded on all sides. They are facing serious competition almost everywhere they go. No longer are they the only player in anything.

Although these two points may seem simple, and to some extent they are, they are important. If Microsoft wants to continue to survive, it must remember that it does not have a free ride. Whether or not Microsoft will be able to beat back the competition remains to be seen, but so many (myself included) seem to think Microsoft will fall.

Computer hardware is constantly getting  better. Intel and AMD are constantly trying to have the better, faster, cheaper chips. Graphics cards achieve higher benchmarks and lower price points every month. 2GB, or even 4GB, of RAM is becoming commonplace. Everything is getting faster and costing less at the same time and this will probably remain true forever. Microsoft and most Linux distributions view these same hardware improvements differently, though.

When Vista came out, one of the big complaints about it was that is was so resource demanding. Although perhaps not quite as extreme as with Vista, it seems quite reasonable to expect that with each new release of Windows, you will need a slightly, or perhaps not so slightly, better, faster computer than before.

This is not at all true of Linux. Phoronix recently published benchmarks comparing Ubuntu 7.10 (the current version) to Ubuntu 8.04 Beta (the beta of the version that will be out very soon.) What did they find? Ubuntu 8.04 is only very slightly slower than Ubuntu 7.10. Even more impressive, when the did comparisons with even earlier versions, 7.10 had actually improved on former versions.

What all this means is that Windows is becoming more and more resource reliant while Linux essentially maintains its requirements. Microsoft is already seeing the effects of their sloppiness in bad reviews of Vista and having to extend XP’s life, but unless they change soon, they will see it even more, and pay for it too.

In the future, it seems likely that a computer with Windows will cost far more than a computer with Linux, not because of the price of the operating system (since hardware manufacturers are constantly pretending Windows is free, when in reality it is not) but because the hardware required to run Windows is so much more expensive than the hardware required to run Linux.

Returning to the present, Linux is already well on its way to removing all the road blocks to switching. Even when there are no road blocks left, though, Linux will still not win mainstream adoption, until it gets a simple reason to use it: it’s cheaper.

Of course, Linux is cheaper right now. It’s free, while Windows costs hundreds of dollars. Well, as you probably know, most places like Dell get it for much less than that. I don’t think anyone knows for sure (and it almost undoubtedly varies for deal to deal), but a safe guess would be that places like Dell get Windows for around $40 (just a guess). In addition, we repeatedly see cases of an identical Windows and Linux machine costing exactly the same price. It is not fair to give Windows an advantage like that, but it seems to be the reality. No longer will it even matter, though, when a Linux machine costs so much less than a Windows machine, just because of the hardware.

Just by continuing to use minimal resources, Linux is constantly becoming a more and more attractive option, and eventually this may be the single most important factor in winning Linux’s mainstream adoption.

Asus announced it before and we all knew it was coming, so when Asus announced they will offer Windows XP on the new Eee PC 900 when it ships it was no surprise. Still, a comment made at the announcement, which ZDNet covered, by a Microsoft employee was both interesting and very funny. The Microsoft employee, whose name was Thomas Bauer, said, referring to the Eee PC, that “We couldn’t go the Vista route” and that “We are in close discussions with Asus [regarding] how to take that forward… in regards to the Windows 7 Europe timeframe,” according to ZDNet.

Unless I very much misinterpreted that, the translation of that quote would be something like: We could not use Vista, but we will think about using Windows 7. In other words, even Microsoft admits Vista does not work well on the Eee PC, presumably because of its resource requirements.

Beyond the funniness (is that a word?) of the comment, it is actually quite interesting. If what he said does, in fact, represent Microsoft’s view of Vista, it means that perhaps Microsoft has realized that Vista is not better than XP for everything. Additionally it suggests that Microsoft plans to target lower specification devices, but not with Vista. Unless Microsoft suddenly starts making new additions to XP, which seems unlikely, it seems like Linux may corner the Eee PC-like market before Microsoft really even introduces a serious competitor (in 5 years.)

Many decisions and opinions in the Linux world are justified by the idea that the decision will help attract new users to Linux, but why should anyone care at all if other people use Linux? KillaGeorge recently posed the question directly in response to a recent post, titled “A Simple Feature of Ubuntu 8.04 That Could Be So Important:”

“I always wondered why linux users are always trying to convert microsoft users. Whats the deal with that? Who cares what other people use. I use linux and i’m happy with it. If my friends dont want to use it then no sweat of my back. Who cares?”

The main reason for wanting more users to switch to Linux is that the more people use an operating system, the better it will be supported by hardware and software companies and, in the case of open-source software, there will also be more people to develop the operating system. In fact, a good example of this showed up earlier today.

With AMD open-sourcing their graphics drivers, many people are looking to nVidia to see if they will follow suit. Earlier today, an open letter to nVidia was posted that has already received 547 signatures at this time, yet even if this number grows to 1,000 or more, nVidia may still never respond. With Linux’s current market share, nVidia can continue to ignore people for as long as they want. That does not mean they will, but even if nVidia listens, they are only one of many companies that do not have open-source drivers or do not have Linux drivers at all. If Linux had a larger market share, companies would finally have to pay attention to the Linux world and release drivers for Linux.

Unfortunately, the issue is not as simple as more users being better. If Linux ever achieved a large market share, it would become the target of viruses, much like Windows is now. The question is how to find the perfect balance, so that Linux is widely supported, but not the target of viruses and spyware. Right now, Windows is obviously far over that perfect marketshare and Linux is way under. The closest may be the Mac, since most companies do support OS X, but, so far, there are no viruses for OS X in the wild. If you think I am advocating everyone switch to OS X, however, you are wrong. Apple has no intention of stopping their growth. Any day now the viruses will start to come for the Mac and each day it just gets more and more likely.

Hopefully this will not happen to Linux, but it seems hard to escape. Once an operating system gains enough momentum to make it to a significant market share, it is unlikely to stop and no matter what you tell me about the security of Linux, someone will find a way around that security. Perhaps Linux will really find a way to avoid this … I hope it does.

Update: A lot of people seem to be making the same point: Linux is fundamentally more secure than Windows and thus would never get viruses like Windows does. First, I agree Linux is more secure. Second, if anyone ever makes a desktop operating system that both does something useful and is completely immune to viruses, spyware, hackers, etc. I will be very, very surprised. In other words, I don’t believe Linux, or any desktop OS, is completely immune to malicious code.

A recent Linux.com article related the experience of its author in setting up Ubuntu for his mother.  A subsequent post on The Open Road responded to this article by saying that anything that requires an explanation of how it worked out is too complicated and that Linux sacrifices usability for control. The author of this post also made a comparison with his own experience having his family members switch to the Mac. While I agree that setting up Ubuntu was somewhat complicated, the author of the post does not seem to understand that the same project would have been much harder, if not impossible, if Windows had been used.

The most obvious issue complicating the Linux.com author’s project was that the computer was built from spare parts the author happened to have lying around. This can potentially complicate the project in a number of ways (trying to find drivers, not good enough specs,) but neither of these issues were really the problem. I do not know what exactly would have happened if Windows had been installed on a computer like this, but I can tell you that Vista would not have worked. Once XP is discontinued, Linux will become the only option for old computers.

Another problem from recycling old parts is that you have to install the OS yourself. The author of the post seems to think that installing Windows or OS X is easy compared to installing Linux, but he is really comparing having the OS pre-installed (with Windows or OS X) to having to install the OS oneself. A computer novice will not want to install the OS himself no matter what OS it is, and if you are looking for a computer with an OS pre-installed, there are multiple Linux choices for around $200. (Side note: I have installed Ubuntu, Windows XP, and Windows Vista and I can tell you that none of them are “hard” to install, but I find that Ubuntu is the least painful, since, at least in my experience, it takes the least time.)

After the OS was installed, all that was left to do was customize the interface to be more familiar and install applications that were similar to Windows applications. When you install an OS, you almost always have to install applications and this would be the same on any OS. In fact, in Ubuntu you have a lot more applications available out of the box, reducing the chance you have to install more applications.

The other customization the Linux.com author made was to remove the top panel and customize the bottom one to make it seem more like Windows. To do something like this on Linux, you just have to do some right clicking and drag and dropping. To do this on Windows, you need commercial software. To do this on OS X, well… can you do anything like that on OS X?

While Linux might not have gotten everything perfectly out of the box, compared to what you would have to do to make Windows or OS X work in this situation, it was really quite easy.

In a recent interview with Linus Torvalds, he said that the desktop in general is getting to a point of maturity and that at this point, further innovation is not necessary, and therefore people should focus on small improvements to what we already have. To state it bluntly, the desktop is good enough, there is no need for major innovation.

While this sounds crazy at first, he has a point. Right now, most people view the desktop as whatever their desktop looks like right now. When they move to a new operating system that is different, they view that as bad, so there is a real argument that simply polishing the current desktop is the best thing to do. On the other hand, we could have said the same thing before GUIs existed. Most of us (yeah, yeah, I know there are people that still use the terminal for everything) think the GUI is a huge improvement, so what is to say something like that transition cannot be done again?

This issue is a very difficult issue to take a side on. On one hand, the desktop works now and it is very hard to identify specific shortcomings of it, so why change? On the other hand, it seems like an oppertunity to make something that could revolutionize computing is too big an opportunity to just ignore. So what is the right answer? I don’t know, but, luckily, with open-source, it does not matter. Some people will go to work making small improvements to what will happen and others will go to work on a whole new idea for what the desktop is. Proprietary companies will be forced to choose one path or the other and if they choose wrong, they will die, but open-source does not have that problem. Whatever is the right answer, if there is a right answer, open-source will have choosen that path, because open-source never has to take a single path.

One of the things that annoys me the most about Microsoft is their love of FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt.) I have no problem with companies marketing their products to customers, but I do object to false conclusions that cannot be backed by real, relevant facts. One argument that bothers me in particular goes like this: our product has fewer security vulnerabilities than yours so it is better. This argument works great for headlines, but when you really look at it, it falls apart. Below are two examples of these claims:

• Jeff Jones, a security expert for Microsoft, claims Vista is more secure than Ubuntu 6.06 LTS
• Windows Server is more secure than Red Hat Enterprise Linux, according to a Microsoft FUD site

As I said, these claims are full of issues. Here are the problems with the arguments: (not every such argument suffers from all these flaws, but all of them suffer from one or more of them)

• The severity of the vulnerabilities is not included. Security vulnerabilities are ranked by what kind of a threat they pose. If this data is not included, a product with 100 minor glitches of almost no consequence would be considered less secure than a product with 75 major glitches. (The kind of thing where a hacker can take control of your computer.)
• There is no consideration of the status of a vulnerability. If a vulnerability is quickely fixed it is counted the same as if it has been weeks or months and is still unfixed.
• Not all companies admit to all the bugs that exist. In an open-source project like Ubuntu, if a bug is found and can be duplicated, it is known and reported, but not all companies act this way.

When you fill in the missing data, you get a very different conclusion from what Microsoft would like you to believe. I will only go through the data pertaining to Microsoft’s FUD site claim, but you can do the same thing for Jeff Jones’s claim.

(All of the below data is from Secunia, solving the problem of companies not reporting all the bugs that exist.)

Starting with the severity of the vulnerabilities, here is the data:

As you can see, Ubuntu has less critical vulnerabilities. The data is even more impressive for fixed and unfixed vulnerabilities:

Here Ubuntu has a perfect record, having fixed all of the flaws.

In conclusion, Microsoft’s argument is flawed and their conclusion is incorrect. This will not be news to many of you, but hopefully you will appreciate seeing real numbers behind it.

Even Microsoft has realized that open-source cannot be ignored. For years, Microsoft’s open-source strategy has basically been to destroy or ignore open-source software, and it seems like they have not gotten much smarter. Microsoft’s “Director of Platform Technology Strategy and the company’s Open Source Software Lab” recently explained the company’s open-source strategy to ZDNet. If this is really the strategy Microsoft intends to follow, it is almost comical.

As far as I can tell, the theory is this: let open-source people port their applications to Windows and hand them a piece of rope so they can tie themselves to all of Microsoft’s proprietary products and cannot leave. (And if you need Linux, use Microsoft’s virtualization technology to run it on Windows.) As you can see, this is not going to work.

Perhaps this strategy would work if Microsoft had an absolute monopoly on the OS market, but if that is what they are thinking, I have bad news for them, once they catch up to the 21st century.

If anyone can figure out what Microsoft is thinking, please let me know. I sure can’t figure it out. Unless.. I know! This is how Balmer will make everyone port their applications to Windows!

Once every couple of months someone claims that product x is better than product y based on absolutely no legitimate evidence and every time the argument is the same. This time around, Jeff Jones, a security expert who works for Microsoft, is claiming on his blog that Windows Vista is the most secure operating system of all the modern operating systems (which, by the way, does include Linux, specifically a version of both Red Hat and Ubuntu.) The headline is great, but the argument does not stand up to, well, anything.

In this comparison, the metric for security is the number of reported bugs. It does not matter if they have been fixed or not, it does not matter what the level of severity is, and there is no adjustment for the fact that Microsoft or Apple might not report all the bugs that exist, while in open-source software, almost any bug that anyone finds is reported. Do I even need to say any more?