[Cialug] HeliOS project article

[Todd Walton]

On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 12:40 PM, David Champion
<dchampion at visionary.com> wrote:
> http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2008/12/linux-stop-holding-our-kids-back.html
>
> My favorite quote from the letter: "I along with many others tried Linux
> during college".

Well I hope she didn't inhale.

There was a comment to the blog:

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jerryleecooper said...

    You are kidding arent you ?

    Are you saying that this linux can run on a computer without windows
underneath it, at all ? As in, without a boot disk, without any
drivers, and without any services ?

    That sounds preposterous to me.

    If it were true (and I doubt it), then companies would be selling
computers without a windows. This clearly is not happening, so there
must be some error in your calculations. I hope you realise that
windows is more than just Office ? Its a whole system that runs the
computer from start to finish, and that is a very difficult thing to
acheive. A lot of people dont realise this.

    Microsoft just spent $9 billion and many years to create Vista, so it
does not sound reasonable that some new alternative could just snap
into existence overnight like that. It would take billions of dollars
and a massive effort to achieve. IBM tried, and spent a huge amount of
money developing OS/2 but could never keep up with Windows. Apple
tried to create their own system for years, but finally gave up
recently and moved to Intel and Microsoft.

    Its just not possible that a freeware like the Linux could be extended
to the point where it runs the entire computer fron start to finish,
without using some of the more critical parts of windows. Not
possible.
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I can't tell if it's a hoax or not.  The letter or the comment.

-todd