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Story: Longhorn and the Linux long-game

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With longhorn history will probably repeat itself again, and things will change just to be the same again.
I don't think that neither Linux or Longhorn are going to 'win', I believe longhorn will stop Linux growing market on the desktop (for some time) and maybe help it kill the rest of the unixes, but Linux will still be there, and that'll hopefully make the competition interesting.

If you think it twice Linux exists because of Windows, because many people was fed up of old unixes snobbism and the Windows (9x) sloppery. And now, on return, Windows evolves just because there is Linux out there. They complement each other in some ways.

I am a software engineer, I use Debian both at work and home, everybody else around uses Windows. I can understand them:
- They don't need to "mount -t vfat..." to access their pendrives.
- They can grab the cheapest hw at any shop, it will work for them.
- They wait 25s for their laptops to be ready for use, while I have to wait 1min and a half. (I really plan to work on a multithreded init script myself, this really makes me nervous).
-They can put their laptops to sleep, no matter ACPI or APM, they don't even know what APN or ACPI are.
- They can use many programs that have no equivalent on Linux or that are much less user friendly in Linux.
- And hey, at the end of the day it's "free" after all, I mean nobody in Spain pays a penny for a Windows or Office (Linux would be king if they had to).
- Apps start up faster, C++ GUIs is not the best thing to see on Linux, KDE is still quite heavy to startup. Did you ever compared OpenOffice Writer vs Word? or Firefox in Linux vs IExplorer startups?
- Viruses are fun. I will be doomed when my debian gets its first one, I really assume it can't and that is dangeous from a security point of view. No viruses means that you are a too small market, not interesting enough.
- (Re)Installing the system every 6 months because it is too junked (Windows) or because you just changed distribution (Linux) is just the same.

Sure, Linux is closing the gap:
- Installation IS NOT more difficult, depending on the distro it can even be easier. The only disadvantages here are that Windows usually comes preinstalled and does not want to share the harddrive.

- Some of the complains here will probably be solved sooner or later. I think of ACPI4Linux and Project Utopia (I really look forward to them).

- Some others are already been fixed on modern kde 3.4 and gnome 2.8.
...etc

But when longhorn arrives, gap filled completelly or no, Linux will find another gap to close again. Users like me won't change back (at least at home, I might be forced at work), and users like my mother will eventually demand to get a longhorn installed just to browse the web and use skype, just because it boots up faster (than that "extrange linux thing") and she already know it...

Things will change... just to be the same again.

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