Filed under: Personal Technology
In There will be no Linux Vista, ZDNet blogger Dana Blankenhorn makes an interesting point. Linus Torvalds, principal spokesperson for Linux, says he has no immediate plans to update the Linux kernel from Version 2.6, which has been out for well over two years. Microsoft, of course, is launching Vista, its upgrade to Windows XP.
Operating system upgrades are a two-edged sword. While in some cases the upgrade may offer new features, better security, greater ease of use, etc., the upgrade process itself can be a major effort. This is particularly true in business environments, where standardization on a single OS is important and where a new OS must be tested extensively to ensure critical applications don’t break. Add the cost of necessary hardware upgrades to run a new OS to all of the software and support hassles, and rolling out an upgrade can be a traumatic experience for a firm’s IT staff.
The question that Blankenhorn raises is simple - is Linux better off by not pushing out big version changes every couple of years? Is stability more desirable than the latest feature set? I’m not sure there’s a simple answer - in reality, it’s highly dependent on the characteristics of the environment, and the level of satisfaction with current systems. I’ve seen firms that were still using DOS-based applications a decade after those apps were obsolete. Those firms made the decision to keep using something that worked and to avoid the expense, downtime, and inconvenience of an upgrade.
On the other hand, firms that attempt to use their technology as a competitive weapon are more likely to prefer to upgrade if the benefits are perceived as significant and relevant. And that’s the real challenge for Microsoft - convincing IT buyers that the benefits are real and that the pain of upgrading older machines is justified.
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