Business War : Microsoft vs Linux

Microsoft is apparently teaching Best Buy employees that Windows 7 beats Linux in every category imaginable. At this point, everything looks fine. Microsoft is simply going to explain the pros of running Windows over Linux.

First we see, according to Microsoft, that Linux has poor support for cameras, iPods and MP3s. Really? Have they tried to compare with Linux Audio player such as Audacious, Banshee, BMP (Beep Media Player), Amarok. Read more Linux audio information. Click here.

Microsoft also claims that Linux user can’t use video chat on desktop Linux. Is it really true ? Linux can run Ekiga and Skype for video chat on Linux all the time. How about Windows Live ? Does Linux user really need that application ? I don’t know… :) Linux doesn’t offer free downloads? Hello !!… The actual operating system is a free download!

This is where Microsoft should have stopped. Linux does indeed offer a ton of updates, and they’re easy to download and install.

This is probably the most controversial part of all the slides. Microsoft has somehow managed to imply, without actually saying it, that Windows 7 is more secure than Linux.

Look, nobody’s saying Linux is perfect for every consumer (or even most), but Microsoft’s “training material” for Best Buy employees casts the open source operating system in a bit of a bad light — and isn’t exactly accurate.

What is it with Microsoft? What wrong with giant Microsoft ? Why are they so frightened of desktop Linux that they have to resort to this kind of propaganda? Maybe Microsoft knows something that most of its Windows users don’t: given a fair shot, many users would switch to Linux. I dont know what Microsoft was attempting to accomplish with this, I bet they spent way more money on this campaign than they were losing from Linux sales.

Source : ERM Blog