Is Windows 8 really the makings of a fiasco? True or not, get ready to hear this more and more as the Windows 8 general release approaches.
by Brooke Crothers
Windows 8 FUD is starting to hit the fan.
That would be fear, uncertainty, and doubt. As in, “I think that Windows 8 is kind of a catastrophe for everybody in the PC space.”
That was said yesterday by Gabe Newell, a former Microsoft employee and managing director of Valve Software, which makes games such as Half-Life and created the Steam gaming platform for Windows and Apple’s OS X.
Newell’s company is now moving Steam to Linux. Thus the comment, “we’re trying to make sure that Linux thrives” from Newell (in the same story linked above) before his Windows 8 critique.
You could almost mistake all of the fuss for the fall presidential election, not the general release of Windows 8. “Windows 8 is treason! Linux will win the future!” (or substitute Android or OS X for Linux).
That said, Microsoft is in a hard place.
One, PC makers are no doubt reconsidering — either casually or seriously — their commitment to Windows because of the Microsoft-branded Surface tablet due to arrive around the same time as Windows 8 (more on that below).
