Editorial
Chip Chat
A few years ago, the great epic battle of the IT industry was all about operating systems. MS-DOS versus OS/ 2, Windows verses Mac. Novell NetWare rode the wave of the network operating system for a while, until Microsoft punched back with Windows NT. The first couple of years I was in my editor’s chair, it seemed like every month we were writing about some hyperbolic new FUD from Microsoft as it sought to bring down Linux.
Dear Linux Pro Reader,
A few years ago, the great epic battle of the IT industry was all about operating systems. MS-DOS versus OS/2, Windows verses Mac. Novell NetWare rode the wave of the network operating system for a while, until Microsoft punched back with Windows NT. The first couple of years I was in my editor's chair, it seemed like every month we were writing about some hyperbolic new FUD from Microsoft as it sought to bring down Linux.
All these operating systems still exist (except for NetWare, I guess), but the great epic struggle of one system versus another hardly commands the same attention it used to. Even the great iPhone versus Android struggle is increasingly looking like iPhone versus Samsung – not that Google isn't still an interested party, but it isn't so easy to separate the experience of the operating system from the phone itself. Microsoft even tried to buy its way into the smartphone standoff with a massive subsidy for Nokia, only to discover that its cherished Windows brand had absolutely no significance to the market.
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