[mkotowski]

> Back in 2001 there weren't any real alternatives to windows

- Mac OS X Public Beta (2000)

- SUSE Linux 7.0 (2000)

- Debian 2.2 (2000)

- OpenBSD 2.7 (2000)

- Solaris 8 (2000)

- AmigaOS 3.9 (2000)

- and so on... [0]

Hardly “no alternatives” in my humble opinion.

And in office space, MS-DOS was still a thing for quite some time.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_operating_systems#...

[sandworm101]

None of those had the broad software options of windows. Everyday users who wanted to complete office tasks, use the internet, and play games were locked into windows. (The 2001 ruling also took a while and was based on pre-2001 behavior by MS and likely future behavior.)

[simfree]

In 2001 Linspire had a huge software library you could install from with a single click right from Click N Run (a pretty app store with the app icon, name, description, storage required and user reviews.).

Firefox worked, as did Flash (hello NewGrounds!), Java (RuneScape), you could do a ton and be nigh invulnerable to all the malware on the internet of the early 2000s.

[KronisLV]

Curiously enough, 2000 was also when the first public versions of OpenOffice became available: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org

It's interesting to think that the project has survived for so long, even if nowadays the Libre office variety is more widely used.