Carl:

I can't say the lack of anything in linux forces me to use windows...
however, the lack of commercial video games written for linux forces me to
revert to windows to run them... "Neverwinter Nights" is an exception, and
is ported to linux, however, the game is now a few years old and I went
on to others and this is the main reason my private computers sport
windows also...

The only factor truly forcing windows on me is other windows users, and I
am paid 85%+ of the time to develop on the windows platform because of
them, and almost exclusively for NT these days (thin clients like cell
phones are an exception)...

Anything windows can do--Linux can do, Linux can just do it better...
windows on the other hand cannot do all which linux can--mostly this is
because of MS having to hold the source secret and pursue proprietary
ends... what is good for MS pockets is not good for the
consumer--generally...

John

On Sun, 21 Aug 2005 00:42:12 +0000, Carl R. Stevenson wrote:


"John Smith" wrote in message
news
Carl:

Exactly, why would arrl back such a system?

If they, indeed are, I don't think they should be ...

Amateur radio should not allow any PROPRIETARY hardware/software to become
a standard. We are not about supporting monopolies, we are about the free
experimentation, development, testing, construction, use, etc. of equip.
and methods/protocols, even that equipment encompassed by the homebrewer.

We need some more linux people in amateur radio for the software and more
computer hardware people for the hardware... it would be a mistake to
support companies holding a monopoly, there are already commercial
stations for that... besides, windows software just ends up enriching
bill g.

While I have experience with linux I am forced by the need for a number of
applications to use Windows XP on most of my machines.
I think there are a lot of people in the same boat, so I don't think that
you're going to get an overwhelming majority of hams to abandon the Windows
OS and move to linux exclusively ... HOWEVER, open source ham APPLICATIONS
can be ported to both operating systems so the users don't have to be locked
out by their choice (whether they're "forced" to use Windows for other
reasons or not) of OS.

73,
Carl - wk3c