Only Windows are suitable for the PC - or not?
First some practical points of windowless PC-sales:
There is this "Ghosting", i.e. the so called "Symantec Ghost" and similar
disk-image practices. The manufacturers are clearly not sitting there and
installing Windows. They do it once, make some sort of image, and then simply
dump the ready made images to thousands of the empty hard disks (some
probably even using some Linux tools for it, I would not be surprised).
So you could buy a PC with self-installing image-DVD (the excellent Vista would not fit on a CD) if you wished so, or just PC without that DVD as I would.
It would actually be simpler for the manufacturers, simply add the Install-DVD
for those who want to pay for it (this DVD would not be the MS-DVD - it would be
an image prepared by the manufacturer for that particular hardware
configuration).
It would be exactly the same as today, the only change being those 10 to 15
minutes it takes to dump 5 GBytes from a DVD-disk to hard disk (the manufacturers do it faster by not using DVD, but the end user has one to install,
not thousands)
Now back to my title:
Only Windows are suitable for the PC - or not?
The contributions from the "Windows side" illustrate an interesting point, well
known to us others: Windows is not suitable for "ordinary people". If the thing
does not come pre-installed, it is not suitable. It takes lots of work to bring it to
a reasonably usable state, whether the hardware is new or old. In contrast to
that, if you take any decent Linux distribution, and an older hardware, in most
cases Linux will install in no time (20 minutes or so) and it will simply work.
Why is that so: Windows are full of strange things, drivers, old things from DOS
times (on XP: try to rename a file to con.txt .. you still can not .... is it still there
in Vista ? ).
The manufacturers must usually modify "Windows" by smuggling in
drivers etc. Linux distributions, on the other hand, usually collect all the drivers
known for all the interesting and thinkable hardware - but only when the hardware has been around for some time, so that the "heros" hardware writers
can have time for their detective work with little or no help from the MS-enslaved
industry (well Microsoft tries to do the same collecting, but it is simply more
messy).
Yes, you told us yourselves: most Linux distributions are much better suited for
non-tech people, since you repeatedly stated that Windows can not be installed,
while most linux live-CDs simply work - and e.g. Ubuntu installs itself from
live-CD without problems. The only problems appear for some unknown
hardware. What is "unknown hardware" and how is that possible? It has
happened over the years, supported by Microsoft philosophies.
The industry should also be forced to publish the interface details for
construction of "drivers". Drivers are no "rocket science" if a list of
all actions and all to them related commands are known (it is not difficult
to talk to postscript printers, is it - well not so easy on MS-windows, the "driver"
might be wrong somehow - guess why).
Open standards and open specifications would not mean that everybody
needs to read them and write their own drivers.
In the old times (like 10 years ago) you would get an electronic design drawing
of your TV, with specifications - and you probably never looked at it - but the
repair shop on the corner (when such shops existed) would be able to figure
out from it what to do with your seemingly dead TV-set.
Nowadays construction details vave become a "trade secret", in particular
in the IT sphere. Together with the "drivers". All that nicely supported by the so called "microsoft ecosystem".
If the proposed move would happen in Europe, it would really change the whole
situation and really contribute to lots of innovation - and bring "back to normal"
a whole industry.