Article: “Windows is Free”

Dave Gutteridge writes:

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The fact is that there's a distortion in the idea that Linux can't be given away. There's something wrong in the idea the price difference between Windows and Linux is representative of the actual quality difference. There's an elephant in the room that no one is talking about.

Windows is free.

This article is a very interesting read

The car analogy doesn't work.

Also, Linux needs a better and STANDARD way of packaging stuff with dependencies. I know that since I'm using Kubuntu I have apt-get with plenty of repos... but why should I need to do that? Why can't they take a nod from the Mac people and drag and drop... AND EVERYTHING WORKS.

Seriously, Mac software is simple to install. You drag it over and that's all. Dependencies? All done within the app (I believe the app is a big folder actually).

As Aron said, there are serious flaws in the car analogy (and I probably picked up different ones than Aron did as well); but I will also point out that as a person who does have paid copies of Windows, there are things Windows does do that appeal to me that neither Linux nor Macintosh has (though Macintosh has more than Linux does). Granted, I am not the type as mentioned in the article (I don't mostly just use computer for internet and what not), but I am still part of a sizeable portion of PC consumers. And even though Windows isn't legally free, I can't think of what I would do with a Linux computer.

@Aron: er, isn't the whole article about the fact that the car analogy doesn't work ?

@TechiFreak5: you're supposedly the kind of person to whom the difference is actually worth ${price_difference}

Also, this isn't about technical superiority or even equality. Being able to use a nice "install packages" (synaptic, adept, ubuntu's add/remove programs) program most of the time and if that doesn't work resort to the command line or get someone to help you install it... that may not be as good as Mac OS X, or perfect, but it essentially work, and it close enough — surely not a difference worth $200.


(also, unified packaging can work on OSX but not on Linux because OSX is one single universally unified system, Linuxes are just similar... but that's beside the point)