… at least that’s what Nick Farrell from The Inquirer says in his hands-on review of the Windows 7 official beta. The reviewer has been using Ubuntu for the past three years, and calls himself a “Linux fan-boy”. He also says that if Microsoft had released Windows 7 instead of Vista, there would have been no rise of Ubuntu or OSX. He adds that Windows 7 is just as pretty as Appla’s OSX is, and “does not treat you like a moron.”
Read the whole article here.
4:06 pm on January 14th, 2009
Admitting that Windows 7 is a “Linux killer” or will “kill Linux” is, well, admitting that Linux *needs* to be killed. Every Windows supporter that I’ve ever read declares that Linux desktop adoption has never risen above 1%. So why is such a big and powerful company like Microsoft with at least 89% desktop penetration so obviously concerned about Linux? Wouldn’t it make much more sense to make Windows 7 an OS X killer? Is it possible that Microsoft believes that it cannot win against Apple so it’s picking on the little guy instead?
4:59 pm on January 14th, 2009
8 years ago Linux was “nothing to worry” for Microsoft. Then it was like cancer as Ballmer put it. Now they are afraid of it. Things are moving pretty funny, don’t you think?
5:03 pm on January 14th, 2009
@ Richard Chapman: Those were the words of a reviewer, not Microsoft’s. Maybe they think so too, who knows? :))
T4L: Who knows, maybe Ballmer doesn’t like Torvalds’ face :))
2:39 am on January 15th, 2009
Yes, I’m all too familiar with “reviewers” and “journalists”. I watch the blogs and news sites very closely and the phrase “Linux killer” came out with the first reports about Windows 7. No, it’s not the company line, it’s the line of all those bloggers who got a free Acer Ferrari laptop from Microsoft. Also, Microsoft is doing nothing to “correct” the classification of Windows 7 as a “Linux killer”.
I think it’s a dumb move. At best Windows 7 will only slow the adoption of Linux. You could probably count the number of users who switch to Windows 7 from Linux on Steve Ballmers sweaty hands. You can’t kill Linux. Then what? It will look as dumb as one of my other favorite stupid journalistic remarks: “The year of the Linux desktop”.
8:20 am on January 15th, 2009
Well, why would they do that? Microsoft probably likes the sound of it…
On the other hand, Linux, even though it’s been adopted on a larger scale lately, is hardly a competitor for Microsoft. At least in the following years.
3:18 pm on January 16th, 2009
[...] Nick Farrell from The Inquirer wrote that “Windows 7 is enough to kill Linux on the desktop“, Maximum PC hosts a Mortal OS KOmbat between the two. What do you know? Linux comes out [...]