By becoming dependent on "IDE's" you are only making it easier for companies to control you. As developers you are important and companies want to have some control over what you do. That was Microsoft's original plan and it has worked beautifully.
They were quick to provide an OO environment where someone could create something "impressive" very fast. A little eye candy is all it takes to impress many developers and users.
And that's all she wrote. They beat everyone else to the punch. To this day, IDE's and OO programming still rule. And MS's mysterious API's are still very much a competitive advantage, tying programmers to the MS IDE and platform. They control you.
The unfortunate result of this over a long period is that today's developers are a lot less knowledgeable about how to build things from the ground up. Take away their IDE and they can't really do much.
If you want to create something truly "new" and push the envelope (think systems programming), then you need to start at a lower level than the IDE where someone else has handled the low level details for you. (Who built those objects anyway?) A recent post here on HN said that the most talented programmers are the ones who can move from different levels of abstraction effortlessly. From very high to very low and back again. The IDE keeps you in a box. One level of abstraction. Dirty low level details are scary to many developers.
IDE's are useful. They increase productivity exponentially. But if we take away your IDE and you are helpless without it, that's a problem from a progress standpoint (e.g. new systems development). Companies like MS are controlling you and controlling the rate of progress. And they have an incentive to maintain status quo. The envelope does not get pushed.
He says he favours tinkering. But then he says he believes "pre-installation" is the way forward. Am I the only one who sees a certain incompatibility here?
It is not rocket science to transfer an image to some media. Installation of an OS is not some black art. Non-technical consumers can do it. (I've tested this with some people and they caught on more quickly than I expected.) More advanced users can compile their own images from source.
At the same time, I suspect that replacing Linux when it is "pre-installed" will prove more and more difficult. Hopefully I'm wrong. But Linus himself fears bias. That fear should also apply to "Linux bias". Equal opportunity for all OS's.
Pre-installation is a Microsoft/Apple tactic. It is far too easy to abuse.
Consumers should have choice.
Make OS installation easy. Let consumers do it, not just OEM's and Apple.
OS installation has been easy for quite some time now. That doesn't make Linux catch on in the consumer desktop / notebook market. A typical windows user has no idea why he SHOULD install linux. Furthermore, even the ones that do try often get stuck with 3rd party driver support, especially on new hardware (and the time when a device is new is exactly the time when someone might be tempted to install linux). The only way to solve this, is preinstallation by the manufacturer.
Windows 8 will be a big chance for the consumer brands besides Apple to distinguish themselves with their own preinstalled distro. Microsoft will again fight, like they did during the netbook boom (which I believe is one of the reasons why netbooks saturated / declined really fast - the 2nd generation with XP preinstalled just was not pleasant to use anymore). Only this time the core market of the PC industry will be affected, therefore a lot more will be on the line.
