Attention Microsoft: I’m A PC (Running Ubuntu Linux)
Talk about ironic. Microsoft has launched a new chapter of its Windows Vista advertising campaign, branded around the line “I’m a PC.” I suspect Microsoft is trying to communicate that PCs have open architectures and have a far larger user population than Apple Macintoshes. Still, Microsoft overlooked one important fact in its “I’m a PC” ad campaign: The best part of open hardware involves the rising popularity of open software like Ubuntu Linux.
As I blog from Ubuntu Linux on my Dell PC, I’m thrilled to be free of Windows Vista and Windows XP, and all of the security headaches I used to endure.
Microsoft deserves credit for pioneering the world of low-cost microprocessor software in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. Too many of us forget how expensive (and complex) life was during the mainframe, mini-computer and Unix ages. With Windows and open PC hardware came customer choice, lower-cost applications and competition in the software market.
That healthy competition nearly died in the mid-1990s as Windows became too dominant on the desktop. But Linux and Mac OS X have restored competition on the desktop.
During most days, I proudly say “I’m a Mac” because I continue to use my MacBook Pro for many applications. However, when I say “I’m a PC,” the phrase doesn’t include Windows or Microsoft. Instead, my PC proudly runs Ubuntu Linux.
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“Microsoft deserves credit for pioneering the world of low-cost microprocessor software in the late 1980s and the early 1990s”
I don’t agree! Microsoft arguably pionnered low-cost computing _on the PC_, but there were better and cheaper alternatives already, namely the Atari and Amiga personal computers.
Yves.
My PC, and that of my partner, runs Linux also, Mandriva Linux, in fact My servers (file and media), which are in fact re purposed PCs also run Linux, Mandriva on the File/Print/Domain server and MythBuntu on the Media Server.
Yes Microsoft, I’m a PC, a Linux PC.
“Microsoft deserves credit for pioneering the world of low-cost microprocessor software in the late 1980s and the early 1990s”
I disagree with this. I was using microcomputers since 1979. I was using cpm before I had even heard of Microsoft. I have barely ever needed to use Windows and I use Linux professionally and personally now and have done for the last 12 years.
Regarding the Atari and the Amiga: I was a big-time Atari computer user, programming in BASIC just for the fun of it. Great, low-cost computers. But MSFT successfully pushed beyond DOS. Atari collapsed. And you know the rest of the story.
I started personal computing with the Tandy TRS-Model 100 Portable Computer in 1987. From there to the Tandy Model 1000 PC. In 1994 I started to look at Linux, but it was too crude and technical to propose to my clientele. About eight years ago I dipped into Mandrake 8.0 (now Mandriva) and found that I had found love, albeit sometimes more than I could handle. Since then I have run Linux on at least one of my PCs (servers were converted over from NT back when I adopted Mandrake) while run Windows from 95 through XP on the others.
Over time the number of boxes running Linux grew, until finally it was the dominant choice. I have tried many Linux distros along the way, but have since settled on Ubuntu and Debian about three years ago.
Windows? Today, I only run Win2k and XP under Sun xVM VirtualBox, and only because I need access to a couple of special apps that won’t run under WINE, and to show my clients that they don’t have to give up needed Windows programs to adopt Linux as their choice operating system. Even my Panasonic Toughbook CF-27, the slowest and oldest of my laptops, with 192 MB RAM, 6 GB HD, 300 MHz PII processor, is running Linux (Xubuntu 8.04).
Linux is about choice, as is the Mac. Microsoft (MS) can only get better with competition. Of course MS is fighting its steady loss in dominance, as any monopoly would. It will be a case of the customer providing a cure that will hurt more than the disease…for the time being.
“Microsoft deserves credit for pioneering the world of low-cost microprocessor software in the late 1980s and the early 1990s.”
Nope. I think you’ll have to thank Commodore for that, and for doing so in the late 70’s, early 80’s.
Microsoft did not pioneer low-cost microprocessor software. MITS (Altair), Apple, Digital Research, Commodore, and others were already there. Microsoft did nothing except take advantage of the market position handed to it by IBM to set the computing world back at least a decade with its monopolistic business practices.
As for the TV spots … the phrase “I’m a PC and I’ve been made into a stereotype” does apply to Linux far more than it applies to Microsoft.
Now that I think about it, the Windows stereotype shouldn’t be John Hodgman dressed as a business geek — it ought to be a masked, machine gun toting terrorist eager to kill people in a turf war.
What bugs me is not that Microsoft seems to forget Linux also running on PCs, but the fact that the Linux community wasn’t offended by the Apple ads, as they put Windows an Linux in the same boat (Apple said PCs are full of viruses, not Windows PCs). This is far more bothering than Microsoft forgetting to mention Linux.
@IGnatius T Foobar: “it ought to be a masked, machine gun toting terrorist eager to kill people in a turf war”; well, you seem to forget business is just that, just take a look at SCO/Caldera or the over-inflated prices of UNIX installs. It’s not just Windows, Apple is far more monopolistic than Microsoft, IBM rips customers off, RedHat charges a small fortune for support.
Um, even the original campaign is PR doublespeak. Macs are PCs too — same hardware in a fancy box.
randomset Says:
September 22nd, 2008 at 5:49 am
What bugs me is not that Microsoft seems to forget Linux also running on PCs, but the fact that the Linux community wasn’t offended by the Apple ads,
I wholeheartedly agree. I was offended at this as well since i run PC’s with Ubuntu 8.04. Let’s also not forget that GNU/Linux also runs on MACS thus brigeing this gap between Mac and PC. By running GNU/Linux you are saying you don’t give a crap who makes your hardware you demand an os that will not tie you down to a corporate standard. I can forsee a great add campaign if any of the popular distros wanted to punce on it.
Maybe this is myopic Linux user talk, but this is what I’m thinking:
- How much of a threat is Apple to Microsoft, realistically? I know mac fanboys will bristle at the suggestion, but Apple’s business model doesn’t scale to a level where they could seriously threaten MS’s monopoly. They’d have to open OSX to non-apple hardware, and that would involve some serious growing pains.
- On the other hand, what platform CAN scale up to eclipse the MS monopoly, quite easily (speaking strictly on the basis of distribution models)? You guessed it.
- So by equating itself with “PC”, Microsoft effectively sends the message “it’s either Apple or Us. There’s no other alternative.”
- So when Apple bashes Windows under the moniker “PC”, why should MS care? So they loose a few users to Apple; they can still sell them a copy of Office, anyway.
This is why you will not see any campaigns from Microsoft bashing Desktop Linux. If they ever launched such a campaign, it would be the greatest thing ever to happen to Linux; because, suddenly, millions of ordinary people would be asking the question “What’s this Linux thing Microsoft doesn’t want me to use?”
Why not just use Microsoft’s ad campaign to publish the fact that you run Linux on your PC? Upload your video or picture and tell anyone watching your preference! (Oh, and I’m not a PC — I’m a human being!)
Microsoft really did nothing to push the idea of the “low cost: personal computer. The companies that really did push development of the low cost PC have now all pretty much left the market or are dead.
Radio Shack, How many people saw their first “home” computer at their local Radio Shack?
Commodore, The Pet, Vic-20, C64, and the first low cost modern computer the Amiga. The Amiga gave people multitasking, stereo sound, and accelerated graphics long before anything running Windows had it.
Atari, Both the 800/400 line and the STs where very innovative.
Sinclair, A real computer for the masses.
TI. The TI 99/4a dropped the price of a home computer to the point anyone could buy one.
Even if you want to talk about PCs then lets talk about Compaq and Kaypro. To early companies the produced PC that where a lot less expensive than what IBM was offing.
Microsoft was just along for the ride and made the best of it.
What’s Ubuntu Linux? I thought this GNU/Linux distribution was named only Ubuntu…
People please stop calling Microsoft PCs. Microsoft is a software company. Read http://19incheswide.com/2008/09/22/im-a-pc/
I have to go with all the others that disagree with the idea that Microsoft drove software prices down.
See, as I understand it, the hardware prices went down as the supply increased. Simple economics. As far as the software… In the beginning, there was open source software. You wrote a piece of software, and you handed it around to your friends, who handed it around to their friends… you see where this is going.
Along came Bill Gates, who whined because people were doing the same thing with his software, and he felt cheated because he was trying to sell it. And that, children, is what Microsoft REALLY pioneered: The idea that software was a commodity, to be bought and sold, but not freely passed around. And from that, we arrived at the thought that to give away copies of what you had paid for, is stealing. I’m all for making money, but COME ON.
@ Bruno Miguel: Ubuntu Linux is search engine optimization
Don’t listen to JK Wood. He is a nooblet. Everyone who knows him knows this.. There should be a project to tell him to STFU with his crazy ideas
OK …. so I installed Ubuntu 7.10 on my land lady’s computer who was going to buy another laptop just because XP was slowing down her computer over time, no to mention spyware, adware possibly a few viruses too. I just re-provisioned her P3 800Mhz laptop with Ubuntu and when 8.04 was released I upgraded Ubuntu 7.10 over the internet. I installed for her all the apps that she would need and not once have I got a support/help request from her, including gtkpod for her ipod. She is sooooo happy using her old laptop that runs the ClamAV and Firestarter firewall all for free. The only call I got from her was requesting me to install Ubuntu even on her husband’s, daughter and her parent’s computers as well :). She asked me that since the OS is sooooooo good (and she went on and on about how good it was - it was even boring me) why others don’t use it. All I said was that there is lack of publicity and advertising.
Can you imagine that if a 50 something lady doesn’t have problems with with Ubuntu then at least the sub 50 or so age group shouldn’t either since they would be more tech savvy at least in theory. My land lady even uses GIMP. Going from XP to Vista would have a huge learning curve anyways so I figured that moving her to Ubuntu would be a good bet. In fact it is probably easier to move from XP to Ubuntu than from XP to Vista. Imagine if she would have moved to Vista with a new laptop she would have lost faith in OSes.
I personally use Slackware and I think Linux (doesn’t matter the flavor - pick your poison that your hardware can support) is a great way to prevent computers from going to landfills thereby making it environmentally friendly as well.
I moved to Linux some 7 years ago when Windows ate up my final year Electrical Engineering project in DSP. I have been using Slackware since and haven’t looked back.
Its been said before… Mac, PC: same thing.
Cuban Jose Marti said once “To change masters is not to be free.”
I discovered Ubuntu 7.04 about 2 years ago and havent looked back. I’ve installed Kubuntu and Puppy on old laptops and PCLinuxOS and Mandriva 2008 for my parents.
Seeing all this led my two sisters in law to not fear Linux and they got themselves the Acer One netbook with Linpus Lite Linux which they love.
No more antivirus, malware and trojans. No more giving out money for new incrementals updates of a pretty OS which eats its old that it has no remorse leaving behind.
Bringing life back to old hardware.
All the things we have gotten since our family moved away from proprietary software (we still keep the XP partition on one machine for two games: Chessmaster and David Douillet Judo… everything else is in the console.).
I’ve been aware of Linux through friends at work but never felt it ready for our family.
The past 18 months have changed all that.
This is just another ill-conceived ad campaign from the greatest follower and opportunist of all time.
First of all, I’m a PC and I’ve been stereotyped. You moron!!! Of course you’ve been stereotyped. That’s because you’ve been an unthinking clod for all these years using a crappy software product from a company that doesn’t want you to own your own computer. You are lemmings. Dimwits that continue to step up with your wallets open and, in one of the most naive and unquestioning behaviors imaginable, hand over fist-fulls of money to a convicted monopolist.
“I’m a PC and I fish.” Sorry. I don’t see the connection. Unless of course, it’s Redmond that is doing the fishing and you took the bait.
At least the Mac commercials talk about real issues like viruses and being productive. (Hold the emails, folks, I’m posting this from my Sidux laptop.)
This commercial just makes winDOHs users look pathetic and empty-headed. They can’t even tell us why they chose the garbage in the first place. All they’re saying is “Hey, don’t stereotype me. There are lots of people that use winDOHs.”
So how do stereotypes start in the first place? Hmmmm. First you get a lot of people to do the same thing… something else happens… then profit. Lots and lots of profit.
Why don’t they just come right out and say it. I use winDOHs because I’ve been convinced that everybody else does. How’s that for independent, free-thinking behavior? Right. There’s absolutely no reason why you people should be stereotyped.
Imagine this commercial:
PC User sitting in front of a blue screen of death. “Another BSOD, No WALLS????” and user throws Vista package out the window.
Fade into next screen:
User sitting in front of linux desktop… “No walls, no windows, no crashing!”
No. Microsoft do not deserve credit for introducing low cost computing. The word you were searching for is “Intel” and “AMD” with a sprinkling of “IBM PC clones”. As manufacturing technologies improves so the cost per unit dropped. All Microsoft did was force OEM’s for sign up for some highly dubious agreements over licensing and cost per unit… which they were eventually, globally, slapped for (amongst other things).
“I suspect Microsoft is trying to communicate that PCs have open architectures”
Then you really need to watch the ad again. There’s nothing in it that even remotely suggests ”open architectures”.
On the contrary, the Microsoft campaign (unlike the Apple campaign) deliberately equates “a PC” with “a person using Windows”. In this world, PCs running Ubuntu don’t exist at all. That’s a perfectly understandable way for Microsoft’s mass-market advertising to treat Ubuntu at this point: that they’ve “overlooked … the rising popularity of open software like Ubuntu” is entirely intentional.
If Ubuntu had 30% market share, Microsoft’s “I’m a PC” campaign would make no sense (because any “PC” could be running either Windows or Ubuntu). But Apple’s Mac vs. PC campaign would trundle merrily on, with John Hodgman confusedly trying to choose between Vista (“’cause it runs all my apps”) and Ubuntu (”’cause it’s brown, and I like brown”).
@Joe Panettieri
And incorrect, also.
@Bruno: no, that is a correct SEO…
(of course, Ubuntu is an OS, a GNU\Linux distribution, etc.)
@Alan
You said: “How much of a threat is Apple to Microsoft, realistically? I know mac fanboys will bristle at the suggestion, but Apple’s business model doesn’t scale to a level where they could seriously threaten MS’s monopoly.”
Inadvertently, you made an important point, but not the one you think you made –
Apple doesn’t threaten Microsoft’s market share in a significant way, but Apple does threaten Microsoft’s *monopoly*. Linux does too. Microsoft is a company whose business model now depends upon monopoly — they are so addicted to the network effect of monopoly that they are unable to compete fairly. As a result, any significant presence of a competitor is going to harm their market position.
When Microsoft’s only product was a buggy BASIC interpreter, Digital Research was producing CP/M for Z80 and Intel 8080/8085 machines. Kaypros and Osbornes did not run Microsoft and it was their success that prompted IBM to introduce the PC.
Microsoft’s hand was more involved in milking the PC revolution than in breeding it. Indeed, it was the cracking of the PC’s BIOS that ushered in the flood of PC-compatible equipment, not Microsoft’s OS, (which was initially written by Tim Patterson at Seattle Computer, not Microsoft).
One thing most missed is that Microsoft has tried to appropriate the Linux slogan “With no walls who needs Windows” by saying that you need Windows with no walls.
Doesn’t anyone at Microsoft realize just how stupid that statement makes them look????
I mean really with no walls why in the name of the unholy would you need any kind of windows??
Ubuntu rocks!
But, unfortunately there is software with features and websites only made for Windows. Microsoft is huge. It is funny how Microsoft is cunningly playing the underdog with reference to Google and with technology journo’s falling for it. What a joke. Windows is virtually a monopoly, on 99% on PCs you buy in the stores.
Come on Ubuntu, get a move on here!