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The long-awaited verdict of the landmark Microsoft case is out and the company was found guilty of violating anti-trust laws. In his statement, U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson wrote, "The court concludes that Microsoft maintained its monopoly power by anticompetitive means and attempted to monopolize the Web browser market." Judge Jackson has, in addition, accepted 23 of the 26 anti-competition arguments presented by the 19 states that joined the federal government in the lawsuit.
Although such a verdict was anticipated, Wall Street did not take the court’s findings lightly and even before its release, Microsoft shares took a hard dip of about $15. Simply stated, $70 billion of the company's market value vanished in one single day. The plunge of Microsoft shares, along with other factors, spawned a level of uncertainty that resulted in a total panic in the market. At one point, Nasdaq was down by almost 600 points and the New York Stock Exchange was down at some point by more than 500 points. Needless to say, the lawsuit is far from being formally concluded. Judge Jackson called in his ruling for a 60-day schedule for establishing remedies, while Microsoft's first reaction, on the other hand, was its announcement that it will appeal.
Will the remedy be the breakup of Microsoft? It is hard to speculate at this point, but it will be a different kind of world with no Microsoft. Over the years, the main goal of the company was to mainstream computers, and indeed their success is clearly visible in user space.
The uncertainty that Microsoft's landmark case brought to the operating systems world may give rise to new and different operating systems. This may indeed be the case, if the remedy is going to involve restructuring Microsoft. We are already witnessing a spree of new operating systems such as Linux, BeOS, and many others that only recently have gained new ground. Not to overlook Apple, Inc., with its strong comeback via its new iMac and G4 line of computers.
Linux and BeOS present a more interesting case than Apple though, because the approach between the two camps is simply different. There has always been a distinctive line between Windows and Apple (iMac or the old Macintosh). Each runs on a different processor (Intel vs. Motorola) and thus a total separation of software is imposed between the two. One application may not be run on both platforms; only file sharing is possible.
The case is different for Linux and BeOS. They can run on the Intel architecture and reside peacefully next to Windows, or if you desire, they can replace Windows completely. Both operating systems run on PowerPC platforms and Linux could also run smoothly on any Motorola-based architecture, SPARC, Alpha and many others. The two definitely deserve a detailed review due to their many appealing features, with the major points of each being addressed in the next paragraphs.
First, let’s talk about Linux. The operating system that is totally endorsed by the Open Source movement that represents, at its least, a philosophical yet practical revolution. Put in simple words, you get a state of the art operating system with all the source code. You can change it, re-sell it, do whatever you desire with it; you are only required to give royalty-free rights to others. It is a noble concept of give and take in a equal way. At first look, one may think that such a concept is doomed to fail commercially.
But look again! The open source movement represented by the Linux community is spreading like wildfire and amazingly has proven to be commercially viable. Their plan: provide the software for free and make a profit from supporting it. Many of the leading companies that maintain their own line of operating systems are either endorsing Linux or at least becoming open-source companies. In the lead is IBM, which announced recently that it will be using Linux in all of its server-base line of products. Along with IBM is Sun Microsystems, which released the source code of their world-renowned Solaris operating system.
So who is officially behind Linux and doing all the development, one may ask? Well, the only official person behind Linux is its creator Torvalds Linus, who maintains control over the heart of the operating system (the kernel) but is being helped by thousands of interested developers from around the world. That is how it all started, with many companies currently releasing Linux applications as an open source and relying on support contracts.
The Linux operating system comes in many flavors (i.e. distributions) each of which is bundled with a plethora of applications. All the distributions share a common kernel, differ on the installation procedure, administration tools and the selection of software bundled with the operating system. RedHat Linux (www.redhat.com) and Caldera's Open Linux (www.caldera.com) are the two most distinguishable distributions in the United States. RedHat Linux is a superior distribution for corporate use (network servers, file servers, etc.) due to the powerful administrative tools that are supplied with it. Caldera is also widely used in the corporate arena, but with its straight-forward installation, it is viewed as the distribution of choice for home users and small offices.
viewed as the distribution of choice for home users and small offices.
BeOS has lately gained a solid reputation among its competitors as a robust multi-threaded operating system with a 64-file system geared towards multimedia manipulation. It comes with a wide array of tools that support audio/video editing capabilities. Its graphic user interface (GUI) is among the easiest interfaces to use, as found by many technical reviewers and users. Although the operating system is capable of running on Intel and PowerPC architectures, it lacks the necessary application base. This is mainly due to the fact that BeOS is not an Open Source operating system, only now you can download a free personal version of the operating system from their website directly.
It is expected, though, that more applications will be available in the time to come as 10,000 developers had already registered to create BeOS applications.
The competition is fierce between Linux and Windows as each is coming from a different arena. Linux is widely used as the server operating system of choice that is pushing to gain new territories in the home-user space where it has so far been pretty successful.
Through its Windows-NT (and now Windows 2000) operating system on the other hand, Microsoft is attempting to gain a good market share of server space. However, Linux is still growing to become an appealing choice for home-office computing due to its stability when compared to that of NT's or Windows98 and its license-free philosophy.
It is for certain that Windows is here to stay regardless of the anti-trust lawsuit. However, the time that it will take to negotiate a remedy to the case and to implement it afterwards may be the golden opportunity for these operating systems to gain user acceptance.
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