Linux Vs Windows , what benefits ,if any does windows have?

[TrinireturnofGamez]

  I know about most of the advantages Linux has over windows,  but does windows have anything on linux BESIDES all the programs made for it?

[TriniXaeno]

lol

Windows totally wtfpwns linux for the consumer market.

The sales figures speaks for itself.

Remember, linux = totally free and windows costs US$100 - 150 depending on XP Home / XP Professional

Even so, Windows has the lions share of the consumer market. 90%+

Why? Because it is tons easier to use, ubiquitous and like you already mentioned, has an incredible software selection available for it. Most important of which are GAMES!

While Mac may best it in usability and stability, it lacks that software selection (and GAMES!)

Linux is a moving target, with tons of flavours and customisations that will scare the average user that doesn't know what KDE and Gnome are about. Again, totally sparse on the GAMES! support. (Did I mention GAMES?!!??)

Despite a few distributions that target the desktop space, linux is best used as a server.

There it spanks MS like a female dog in heat on charlotte street.

You can't beat a free file / mail / web server with a stick or a bull pistle or anything for that matter.

That is where linux continues to shine.

Over the past few years it has proved itself time and time again for me in that capacity. (Thanks to Richjob for introducing me to some of it's finer offerings)

[Netizen1]

Yeah, the only reason I haven't abandoned Windoze totally for Linux is that same reason... GAMES!!!!

With such little support for Games and a bit too much of a power-user level required to use it.... Linux can't come to close to being a true desktop replacement.....



That's why I (and I'm sure some others too) are hoping the new MAC OSX for Intel hardware totally wtfpwns!

Come good with DirectX support and hardware support for all the sweet new toys out there (Nvidia 7800 GTX SLi)

Be better, be more stable, be more user-friendly....

We counting on you Apple

[disciple]

man, love it or hate it.. windows is tons easier for the average consumer to use...

we like to say ' windows this, and windows that'  .. but most of us cut out teeth in windows...be it 3.1, like some of us older folk.. or 95-98, like some of the whipper-snappers out here

and , as someone who has switched.. one thing that frustrated the hell out of me intitially was package dependency..

that, configurin/make/installin packages.. (u really see yuh aunty from couva doin tha? , or yuh granny loggin on as root to install firefox?)  and hardware support

windows brought the computer home to many of us.. in an easy way( which was a double edged sword.. many security principles were foregone in the name of usability)
we tend to jump on the MS-hatin bandwagon because it's the thing to do right now.. not because we have a full understanding of why

we might say that 'windows need to have x, y, and z runnin, and a SP  in order to be safe'.. true.. but in that same vein.. do u still run the original linux 1.0 kernel? of course not.. you'd be insane..


basically, what i sayin is that while i enjoy the linux experience, i cannot totally say that windows has been a total waste...
so i would say that the usabilty is where ms kills linux..  it has gotten better , but not everyone is in the mood to do a 'sudo apt-get install'

[richjob]

lol

Windows totally wtfpwns linux for the consumer market.

The sales figures speaks for itself.

Remember, linux = totally free and windows costs US$100 - 150 depending on XP Home / XP Professional

Even so, Windows has the lions share of the consumer market. 90%+

Why? Because it is tons easier to use, ubiquitous and like you already mentioned, has an incredible software selection available for it. Most important of which are GAMES!

While Mac may best it in usability and stability, it lacks that software selection (and GAMES!)

Linux is a moving target, with tons of flavours and customisations that will scare the average user that doesn't know what KDE and Gnome are about. Again, totally sparse on the GAMES! support. (Did I mention GAMES?!!??)

Despite a few distributions that target the desktop space, linux is best used as a server.

There it spanks MS like a female dog in heat on charlotte street.

You can't beat a free file / mail / web server with a stick or a bull pistle or anything for that matter.

That is where linux continues to shine.

Over the past few years it has proved itself time and time again for me in that capacity. (Thanks to Richjob for introducing me to some of it's finer offerings)

You know, it's weird.

The reason that Windows gets bundled with new PCs is because the PC makers have an OEM or other agreement with Microsoft.  As part of that agreement, you can't load any other OS on the machine as it comes out of the shop.  Load another OS, you lose any warranty protection.    It's the same thing that MS used to kill BeOS in the starting blocks.

People who say that have never had the "unique" experience of installing Windows from scratch for themselves.  Because if they did, they'd not think it so user-friendly.  Linux won the ease of install battle a long time ago, with the exception of a few crippled peripherals that rely on Windows and drivers to do the work.

Baego will win the GAMES argument easily.  As in commercial games that pople can buy in a store or illegally download off the Net.  In games bundled with the OS by default,  the average Linux distro selection pwns Windows easily.  Commercial gaming support (like everything else) is there for those interested enough, through Cedega.  id does Linux ports of all their games.  Unreal Tournament comes with both the Linux and Windows version on disk.  Though consoles may actually be a better long term solution to the gaming problem, though you can't do Civ on a console.

Ease of use is weird.  I've used Windows from before Windows 3.0 (as in the MS-DOS Exec) all the way up to 2000 (I may install XP for a dedicated PC gaming machine for the first time today).  My Windows 2000 machine went down due to some Logitech driver flakiness and I basically grabbed a demo machine and installed SimplyMepis, which is a nice Debian-based distro that uses Synaptic.  To date, I've not needed to go back to try to repair the installation in the Win2K machine since I've managed to do what I needed to do in Mepis.  Up to and including playing some commercial games.

It is easier to use... if you've been using Windows or its predecessors for a while.  If you've used no computers at all , it's as easy or as difficult to use as any other OS. Mac OS X still rules in usability and is actually the recommended choice for people getting their first computer (if only for the relatively fewer spyware and virus problems you have)  Lack of spyware and viruses is a HUGE plus for PC users (not the 7337, just the average user).

Linux is as much of a moving target as Windows is.  How many seperate code-incompatible versions of Windows are there now put out by Microsoft?

But it's the best choice if you want to play PC games. If you need to game, buy a good console or handheld.   If you need to interact with other operating systems or play nice with others, Linux (or Mac OS X) is the preferred choice.

I did have to respond.

[specialK]

There it spanks MS like a female dog in heat on charlotte street.

Hey, man. You ever see a female dog in heat get spanked on Charlotte Street? I have and it is not pretty.

But you're right. Linux = Servers, Windows = Users

Windows totally rules the marketshare. so much easier to configure/install hardware and....for games.


Bill Gates is my idol.

[richjob]

so much easier to configure/install hardware and....for games.

Try that crap without drivers.  Try talking that balls when a keyboard driver (Logitech) freaks up your registry.

Try that when it have shit that doh work for the flimsiest of reasons.

Easier to configure - in some simple cases (regression tested by MS) it have pretty wizards and shit.  Step outside of that comfort zone, Windows is the unfriendliest freaking OS to try to fix.  When men see reinstallation as a valid repair option, you know you're dealing with fundamentally broken shit.

[TriniXaeno]

If only things were as bad as you say Rich.

I have novices installing the Windows of the day (XP), without incident. Adding hardware and installing software.

It ain't perfect (and that is what keeps me employed) but linux is no saint either.

I have had my fair share of sleepless nights trying to get many of its variations up and running and well behaved. Often with the help of linux gurus onsite or offering help over the phone. Just ask Andrew about that, lol. I don't think he is taking any more of my calls after our last two "projects".

People don't have to take my word on it.

Google idmc. They have only to look to some linux forums to see equally disturbing calls for help on issues of every nature. Scarily, it is often techies makings these pleas.

Software/Hardware support problems galore.

Let us take your Logitech point for instance. Do they even have logitech drivers for linux? lol.

Here is an excerpt of a guy trying to get his MX510 mouse working under Linux so that he can make the switch from the "evil" MS operating system. Same Logitech mouse that I have and use without incident on Windows. Read on to see the recommendations. All that to configure a mouse? OUCH!


r3ckl3ss
New Member

Is there a driver for the Logitech MX510 optical mouse? If so where could I get them and how the heck do you install them. I'm new to Linux but I'm convinced that Windows is EVIL!! So I'm willing to try out Linux and hopefully switch soon.

Thanks

martouf
Senior Member

you're going to need to run 'xev' to figure out the button numbers
for the special buttons you want to use.

then you're going to need to put the button numbers into
a ZAxisMapping option in the proper InputDevice stanza
in XF86Config. Reverse the button numbers if the motion
is backwards.

jimf43
Senior Member

I assume that Mandrake is still using KDE as default.
To change many of the file associations go to the control panel/ KDE components/ file associations.

While you're in control panel check Peripherals/ Mouse. I don't think you can do anything there, but since the system recognizes 7 buttons, maybe it gives you more options.

[TinyGrasshopper]

I think you've opened a can of red beans here...

First of all, yes. Windows' only real purpose is for the games. Realise that now. There is absolutely nothing Windows can do better than Linux except games. Absolutely nothing. Anything else that someone would consider is done better by Windows is not because of the OS but because of politics and economics surrounding the OS.

Even so, Windows has the lions share of the consumer market. 90%+

This is 90% of the American consumer market. There are constantly stories of massive linux deployments in developing countries. Furthermore the only reason that that number is so is because of the OEM agreements.

Why? Because it is tons easier to use, ubiquitous and like you already mentioned, has an incredible software selection available for it. Most important of which are GAMES!

The only statement that is absolutely true here is the ubiquity. Software selection is just not true. There is a massive selection of software that is available for linux. Just check out http://www.freshmeat.net or http://www.sourceforge.net. As for ease of use, Synaptic/yum take care of the gui front-end for package management. The concept of configure/make/make install is quickly becoming a thing of the past. I've been using linux for a few months now and I very rarely have to do that for back-end libraries since they're in the repositories already and I NEVER have to do it for normal programs. Have you ever tried Ubuntu Linux's apt-get front-end? It's literally a entry in the menu that just says 'Add Applications' and you just click in there and you browse through a simple Explorer like interface with big icons and easy to read descriptions. Plus there are distro independent systems, like Autopackage, that are being developed that already do the job that debs and synaptic do without requiring repositories. Furthermore have you ever tried klik? The program in that instance literally requires no installation and is just one file that self-extracts and runs when you double click it.

With such little support for Games and a bit too much of a power-user level required to use it.... Linux can't come to close to being a true desktop replacement.....

Again, I'll just implore people to try SimplyMepis(http://www.mepis.org/), Ubuntu(http://www.ubuntulinux.org), OpenSuSE(http://www.novell.com/products/suselinux/) or PCLinuxOS(http://www.pclinuxonline.com/pclos/). Try Ubuntu first though, that's my favourite. The only thing that I could consider difficult of any of them for anybody was partitioning, if you still want to keep Windows around. Anybody trying it out, I'll just tell them to make separate partitions for swap and home and that's it. Even if you don't know that, (I didn't my entire root is on one partition) it'll still work like a breeze. (heh heh Breezy Badger, lol pun not intended)With the huge package selection that SuSE and Ubuntu provide you, it's rare to have problems finding and running programs that work.

For everyday users, programs on the Linux platform not only have more selection but very often they're not just as good as but better than Windows equivalents. Have you tried amaroK? This thing blows iTunes away as a music manager with features like Cover Manager lookup using Amazon, Artist Info lookup using Wikipedia, Lyrics lookup, Podcasting, a better dynamic playlists feature than iTunes and soon to have an integrated store with Magnatunes (none of that DRM shite). You already know that gaim rocks but of course on linux it'll run faster and look better since it uses the gtk toolkit which is linux native, not a weak port. Digikam/gThumb == Picture managers as good as Picasa with as many features. There will always be scenarios where there'll be platform specfic apps out there but the same thing applies to linux as well, just look at MythTV and Asterisk, Those two are reasons enough to get two cheap boxes on which to put linux, just for those two apps alone. Plus with the major linux backers (i.e. Sun, IBM, Novell) getting behind Xen virtualisation, it won't be long that Windows will just be an icon on a gnome desktop that i'll run when I need to. Plus there are little usability things that Linux does that are really nice. Like when I upgraded Ubuntu, it recognized immediately that I put an Ubuntu disc in the drive and with one message box click of Yes, it added the cd to the apt-get list brought up synaptic and and did the dist-upgrade. Took 45 minutes. I was surfing web the whole time, albeit completely shocked that upgrading an OS was that easy. Didn't even have to reboot. And in kubuntu, when you put an audio cd in the drive it shows up in Konqueror as a group of ogg and flac files in their respective sub-folders and when you click and drag them it does the ripping to the hard drive on the fly! That's pretty freekin cool.

Let's not forget the main reason, that we even think about installing linux in the first place. All the technical stuff. It's FASTER. That's why I switched. I have it on a laptop with 256MBs RAM and on a 933Mhz HP box and it will actually run in both cases. BETTER SECURITY. Half the reason it ran slow with Windows is anti-virus, spyware and firewall all bogging the machine down. It's FREE. Not just as beer but as speech. You can choose to do what you want with it. The philosophy behind it. Open Source is the saving grace of the computing industry and it's nice to make that statement of support by running it all through the stack. It's just plain better.

Let us take your Logitech point for instance. Do they even have logitech drivers for linux? lol.

That does not specifically mean that when you take that logitech mouse it won't work when you plug it into the box. The distro developers again have worked magic here. Flak that linux took that formerly was warranted isn't quite so absolute anymore. The Ubuntu developers asked the OEMs to give them all their laptops so they could make the extra features work with Ubuntu and now they do. Suspend works reliably with it, which wasn't even the case with Windows. Furthermore, if the underlying technologies that are required are standards (not what M$ calls standards) then they practically always work. And if it's using proprietary stuff and it's got market share then the hackers do the job for us to get it working. I've never had to edit a file once to get hardware working except for wifi which i explain below.

The only other problem surrounding an OSS OS is the hardware manufacturers attitude to Open Source. This is not a problem with the OS in any way but with the companies in the value chain. The reason codecs don't come with distros is because there's usually patents surrounding them and they can't be bundled with a free product. Doesn't mean that you can't get OSS encoders after the fact, but because of silliness of law you're immediately breaking a law by doing so. Wifi driver support is basically not there right now, because wifi chipset manufacturers like Broadcom consider their driver spec to be a competitive advantage and as such don't publish specs or source code to drivers, even though they could very publish a linux specific binary. Getting wireless working with the windows drivers and ndiswrapper was easy, but again, not because of usability or technical superiority, it had to be done after the fact. Furthermore a reverse engineered Broadcom driver early version was recently released and very soon my whole ndiswrapper experience will be a thing of the past. Plus you get virtaully no issues, if you, (i hate to say it) buy Linspire.

And don't even get me started on the DRM. If your mp3 player doesn't work with iTunes on linux, that's not linux's fault. First off they don't make a linux client so it's Apple's fault. There is the sharpMusique frontend to iTunes by dvdjohn(The guy who broke the iTunes and DVD encruptions) but the updates the encryption on version 6 broke sharpmusique so again Apple's fault. iTunes won't work other players because they know they're "the Microsoft of Music stores" (actual quote by Steve Jobs). Again apple's fault. If you had any playsforsure player it wouldn't work with linux because, well it's M$, so that's their fault. Furthermore DRM in general is just bad for your health. Just get a Neuros 442(http://www.neurosaudio.com) or a GP2X(http://www.gbax.com/indexgp2x.html) and buy music off Magnatunes(http://www.magnatune.com) or buy CDs off Amazon (although after the Sony rootkit debacle I won't blame you for thinking twice). You should really only be buying local music anyhow

Windows totally rules the marketshare. so much easier to configure/install hardware and....for games.

That's because IBM and Apple basically gave them the comsumer computing industry on a platter, plus with purely evil tactics like OEM licensing  and other M$ FUD(http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/) that's the only reason it stays that way. When you think about it, the only thing stopping Linux from gaining respectable market share (I mean like a 20%) is companies like Sony putting rootkits on machines and record companies desperately pushin DRM and proprietary specs to hardware manufacturers, and companies like Microsoft editing out references to Open Source in a paper that was passed around at the UN ICT summit in Tunisia. Things like that will continue for some time, with things like HDCP(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDCP). Game designers are facing a similar thing, economics-wise, which is why to get any linux support a linux gamer has to fret and bitch and moan and put up petitions(http://www.blizzpub.net/petition/) and all kinda ting. That's why linux games aren't there yet. Think twice about who you're blaming when stuff doesn't work on linux.

Much of the problems facing linux at this point aren't usability or technical capability but education and marketing.  Distros like Ubuntu make Linux on the desktop so easy it's ridiculous. As a linux user sometimes to get what you want requires some degree of activism especially on the desktop. Same thing applies to games. Hopefully as more developing nations adopt Open Source the collective sway will go back the other way.(http://trends.newsforge.com/trends/05/12/08/2034216.shtml?tid=136)

As you may have guessed I'm an Ubuntu whore, so I'd recommend trying it out or it's kde counterpart kubuntu(http://www.kubuntu.org/) which is another good thing that Ubuntu does is that rebranding the other graphical environments in their early stages as sister projects with different names(kubuntu and xubuntu)

[TriniXaeno]

Note to self: Add Ubunto to my "must try" linux distros list.

If you're in the area some time you could bless us with a copy?

That was a damn brilliant post.

Expertly written and thought out. 

Richjob couldn't have done better to defend the cause, which unfortunately, is what it still remains. A cause.

As you alluded, a lot of why Linux is not on top of the desktop market has absolutely nothing to do with it's technical capabilities or usability.

It comes down to marketing and business strategy. Whereas MS and Apple have a cohesive business unit executing precisely that (marketing and business strategy) linux has nada.

It has to get it's desktop mileage by word of mouth. Activist and evangelists are it's only real weapon and there aren't that many of those.

When last have you seen an add for a linux desktop? Or maybe saw it for sale at a local comp store? Better yet, linux software retailing on the whole? Rarely. The stuff is FREE and still can't get off the ground.

It remains a boon to ultra tech savy PC enthusiasts and (for shame) no more.

Developing countries make up like what? 1/100th of the worlds computer population? Check the stats. There are more PCs in one developed country than the rest of the third world combined. Name a succesful PC computer manufacturer outside of the US?

So if St.Kitts Nevis roled out linux to 1000 students that only makes for a nice news paper headline on page 5 of the daily newspaper.  It is also about how many PCs HP/Compaq sell with Windows on a lunch break of any given Tuesday.

Linux loses. Not for any technical or usability reasons, but due to Marketing and Business strategy, or rather lack thereof.

Microsoft went through great effort for Window's, Exchange and Office to achieve their status. Everything from providing an education system for techs too marketing the product across the globe. I fear nothing short of a similar endeavour will get Linux to that stage on the desktop. Imagine, your OS is FREE and you still can't strike an OEM distro deal? Unbelievable.

A few local white box dealers toyed with it as an option. A means of avoiding the costly Windows XP license. I do not know of any that have had sucess with it.


Now do not get me wrong. I am on your side of this equation. Personally tried many linux products to keep it as part of my repertoire and promote it's use amongst those that would lend me their ear. Almost every open source exchange replacement in existence. Not to mention a plethora of open source apps (thunderbird, firefox, sunbird, gaim, Ximian Evolution, filezilla, etc...)

It is from this very effort that I have come to understand the very real shortcomings and uphill battle that faces the platform.

At the risk of re-iteration, the second biggest problem apart from the business savvy issue, is the utterly ridiculous amounts of distros. A by-product of the open source nature. On one end, it is a plus, but as far as broad adoption goes, it is a minus.

Ubuntu, Xandros, Mandrake, Red Hat, Pink Tie, Suse, Knoppix, Gentoo, and the list goes on.

Just how long? 370 Distributions. 370 MOFO DISTRIBUTIONS!

Think I'm kidding? http://www.linux.org/dist/list.html

Now it is great that there is a distro that will setup a wireless  hotspot for you and another that will be good for grandma to write her email...but how the hell do you keep on top of a list like that and know which is good for which without doing some incredible research?

With Microsoft, you've got...Windows XP Home and Windows XP professional (and even that still confuses people)

Not scary enough??? Out of those 370 distributions, half  are out of date / no longer supported, with more heading in that direction as the days progress.

What would you do if you were the unlucky bastard to start building your home desktop experience around one of those abandoned distros? The linux answer...support it yourself.

Not scared yet? Read some of the bug reports and security issues for any given distro on sourceforge.

That is the reality.

After freeness is......

But I am probably doing more harm than good to the cause right now, so let me stop.

Defeating the very purpose, which is to promote the use and adoption of linux and OSS.

Forgive me for playin devil's advocate.

[Crixx_Creww]

WOW THANK YOU, YOU BASTARDS FOR MAKING MY EYES BLEED FROM READING ALL OF THAT!! OMFG YU LINUX BASTARDS NEED NEED NEEEEDD TO FIND SOMETHING ELSE TO DO WITH YOUR TIME OTHER THAN WRITE!

like go play some games on a 1337 windows box please

iam all for linux, i like that its a 1337 os as opposed to the kiddy gloves windows.

But that in itself is a prob.... ive tried explaining simple windows things to females and there are like wtf mate.

So if i even attempted to do the same with linux... well id probably know alot less girls..

And lol @ who ever said that thing about having granny log on as root to install firefox ahahaha thas funny.

Like for example teehehe, it have dis breadren in work who instal linux(i believe it was fedora) on a laptop that we couldnt get windows to work properly on, it kept blue screening. So he installs linux and starts boasting and yada yada yada windows this windows that.

Iam a linux noob so i went poking around and was like hmm, this looks like the system folder, and off of kix i was like ok let me shift delete all the files in here and see what happens....
Lol, little did i know, that you COULD ACTUALLy DELETE YOUR SYSTEM FILES IN LINUX!!
machine promptly stopped working, i was like wtf mate!~ ahaha

HE then reinstalled and logged on as something other than root so i couldnt do it anymore blah.

BUh anyways, fellas.
Linux is notttttttttttttt for the uber noobs out there.
That real sweet girl yuh meet on hi5 and wah talk to she on msn an ting... she reallllllllllll cah use no linux sooo...

Windows =Real girls
Linux= REAL stones...

MS 1
Linux 0

[TriniXaeno]

lol @ linux = stones

well if I thought my post was damagin to the cause, crixx's own obliterated it.

seriously, linux may not need desktop success so long as it can find homes in Linksys Setup boxes and other "appliances" around the home.

People will be using linux without even knowing it.

That is a very real path to sucess for the platform. It won't come with a red carpet, fans and at the death of windows, but it will be sucess nonetheless.

Maybe even take a crack at portable laptop type thingies like those TinyGrasshopper posted about.

[Kaizen]

Windows pwnz all? O_o I HIGHLY DOUBT i only on xp right now for games really

im a child of mac ..panther for mmc ..
so um O_O,,,ahahahahahahaha
fiah for linux
long live MAC and uhh WINDOWS!

[TinyGrasshopper]

I promise. After this post I'm gonna really really try not to say Ubuntu again.

Iam a linux noob so i went poking around and was like hmm, this looks like the system folder, and off of kix i was like ok let me shift delete all the files in here and see what happens....
Lol, little did i know, that you COULD ACTUALLy DELETE YOUR SYSTEM FILES IN LINUX!!
machine promptly stopped working, i was like wtf mate!~ ahaha

HE then reinstalled and logged on as something other than root so i couldnt do it anymore blah.

And you can't irreversibly delete system files in windows? You're not supposed to be in root. ever. Always sudo if anything. A good desktop distro like Ubuntu turns that option off by default upon installation. Linspire inexplicably gives you the option to do so. The philosophy of everything is a file makes scriptability truly badass. You'd be surprised how un-1337 ubuntu/kubuntu can be. A noob really can get work done on it. The only problem is codecs, but there's always ubuntuguide.org (a dotish-easy one page faq) I'm not that heavy into linux, yet, but Ubuntu made it simple to keep the capabilities of what I always did on Windows quickly and easy.

Note to self: Add Ubunto to my "must try" linux distros list.

If you're in the area some time you could bless us with a copy?

(https://shipit.ubuntu.com/) They'll mail you nicely pressed copies of the distro free of charge including shipping. Another thing they've done right. Of course being led by the founder of Thawte and multi-millionaire, Mark Shuttleworth helps.

seriously, linux may not need desktop success so long as it can find homes in Linksys Setup boxes and other "appliances" around the home.

well, it's just as much about mindshare as it is market share. Plus like M$ we too wouldn't mind complete world domination. 

Developing countries make up like what? 1/100th of the worlds computer population? Check the stats. There are more PCs in one developed country than the rest of the third world combined. Name a succesful PC computer manufacturer outside of the US?

Microsoft went through great effort for Window's, Exchange and Office to achieve their status. Everything from providing an education system for techs too marketing the product across the globe. I fear nothing short of a similar endeavour will get Linux to that stage on the desktop. Imagine, your OS is FREE and you still can't strike an OEM distro deal? Unbelievable.

At the risk of re-iteration, the second biggest problem apart from the business savvy issue, is the utterly ridiculous amounts of distros. A by-product of the open source nature. On one end, it is a plus, but as far as broad adoption goes, it is a minus.

True. But some of those countries are becoming more developed and they see OSS as a good cost cutting strategy so whilst they aren't the largest population of computer users, they do represent a huge portion of the population of the world and as soon as they get computers it's gonna have linux on it. Of course it could all be neither here nor there, you hear about government acts in China to roll out linux on all the desktops in China , and how Red Hat and Microsft are gearing up to do battle in China, but I don't live in China. Also how accurate can those numbers be when dealing with developing nations?

Also you can get Linspire desktops and laptops in Walmart and off the site. Not sure how well they're selling but Linspire's still in business.

The problem with the OEM deal is that it's just so restrictive. Micrsoft really has these OEMs by the balls, wringing the life outta them. Also they, technically do sell PCs with the option of not putting OSes on them, and I heard, I'm not certain that I think on Dell's UK site possibly, in one of the business stores they offer Mandriva and FreeDOS. I have no idea how true that statement is.

As far as distro choice goes, when you can get a distro of Linux that is 50MBs and runs off a thumb drive from within a window in Windows offering a full desktop experience including, firefox, ftp client web server & wordprocessor (Damn Small Linux) you could understand the kinda niches that Linux fills that explains such a large number of distros. I believe there should be a better way than having actual seperate distros and there is too much redundancy among the choice, The problem is often a distros community is deadset in their ways and spining off a new distro is how these developers get what they want. A problem with that though is that distros get tweaked so much that you sometimes can't just download a package off a site and have it install and you'd be tied to their repositories which I hate. That's still an issue that needs to be resolved. One thing you could do is avoid the Linux nomenclature when suggesting a distro. Get behind one distro that you've had the best experience with or which best suits someone's needs and explain that letting any further discussion grow into an explanantion of Linux. Also for minigames Linux is inundated. That always helps. I mean Linux is poised to dominate the smartphone/pda/mobile phone platform (I'm not sure exactly which one), with things like the next version of PalmOS switching to linux, but noone's gonna know it's Linux that's running.

[TriniXaeno]

yeah

that's the nasty thing. Some of linux best work goes unsong. That doesn't help mind share one bit.

If they succeed as the phone/pda os of choice as opposed to Microsoft Windows CE, people won't be any the wiser.

Cest la vie.

Thanks for the Ubuntu link, will give it a shot.

[Jarrox]

WOW!! Ubuntu... i've tried all redhat, suse and mandrake distro's and you're right ubuntu really rocks for desktop but i still not sure yet between that and suse, wich i find to be really user friendly.

[TinyGrasshopper]

Yeah, SuSE is my second favourite. They both have great hardware support. It's basically whether you want to download 5 CDs and then download a little bit afterwards or download 1 CD and download slightly more afterwards. SuSE's package selection is great but overwhelming for a first-timer. Ubuntu's is very picky-choosy going for quality rather than quantity.

Here's two questions. Which desktop environment do you use in Linux daily? KDE or Gnome? Ubuntu uses gnome, I prefer it right now, as a newbie liking the simple interface, as opposed to KDE's plethora of configuration dialogs. But KDE's development is really taking full steam with more apps with better options. I already use a bunch of KDE apps regularly and while it's not exactly the most usable, stuff like Appeal(http://appeal.kde.org/wiki/Appeal), Oxygen(http://www.oxygen-icons.org/) and Plasma(http://plasma.kde.org/) look like it'll change that. And Mark Shuttleworth is backing kubuntu to be on par with ubuntu in the future. Are gnome's days numbered?

Also has anyone ever really gotten a game, any game to run with Wine or Cedega? We always say it's possible but has anyone tried it?

[disciple]

hmm. i use kde   

 (doh mind the 'k' convention , i.e. kopete, konqueror, k3b etc annoys me a bit) 

   

[Jarrox]

I use Gnome most of the time, i started off wit kde but switched and never went back, not that i don't like it but because i just got comfortable.

i tried to use wine once before but never got it to run

[richjob]

These days, I use SimplyMepis.

One of the recent ones.    Not perfect, mind you, but Good Enough that I haven't had to go reinstall Windows on my borked box.

Honestly, I don't want Linux on every box - just on those that want it.  What I want is choice of OS on the desktop.  Not Linux monoculture.  Not Windows monoculture, and not Mac OS X monoculture.

To reply to Baego's point, there may be 600 distros listed, but in real terms, people use one of Debian (Mepis/Linspire/Xandros/Ubuntu/Debian/Knoppix), Fedora (Fedora/Red Hat), Suse or Mandriva.  Hardcore guys use Gentoo or Slackware. 

Windows refugees use Xandros and literally get the best of both worlds, thanks to the Crossover Office variant of WINE.  It's good enough to get screwed up by spyware if you use an MSIE that you install to surf the web.  Yeah, pay, but worth the money.