hoacker wrote:Some people in this thread ask, why windows (not vista in particular) is that popular. You guys never bought hardware? No matter what you buy, the round, flat, shiny thing in the same box is a CD with a driver for windows (OK, maybe not for Vista). It may be not secure and it may be buggy, but it works 99% for the people who want to use it. You put that CD in your drive, click 10 times OK, reboot and it just works (somehow). There's no need to ask someone who has a tiny bit of understanding.
True, although tbh most of the users you describe below would get a friend/family member to set up their machine, if not the latest thing they buy which yeah comes with a disk for doze. The thing is there's more hardware that works with Linux across the board, and usually works well; not usually the shiny new stuff agreed, since it comes out without specs and often buggy firmware that only works on doze since MS have "embraced and extended" an industry standard for no-one else's benefit, and definitely not the users'.
But once something has a driver in Linux it's usually kept, which is why many people are using Linux to rejuvenate old machines.
The only linux distribution that aims towards something like that is (k/x)ubuntu, in my opinion. Kubuntu was my first serious experience with linux. And, to be honest, it was my first SERIOUS experience, because everything worked out of the box. I tried linux earlier, but I just didn't get it to work in a reasonable amount of time. So I switched back to an other windows version that just worked (or seemed to work).
Actually that's exactly what Mandrake was aimed at, and it used to work a treat; it was the first major distro that you could easily and quickly set up to play DVDs. Although I did get that going on RH6 which was fun, mainly for the sense of achievement at the end of it, and the wonder that a 64MB K6-2 350MHz could give such a nice pic -- I had a hardware decoder card ;) But it makes me laugh when people go on about KDE being a hog as I have always run it, starting with that box (on RH5.2.)
To make things clear: I do not miss windows and I am (close to be) clean of MS products in my private live. I really like linux and I just love the possibilities gentoo gives me. But, the average user does not give a damn about security or freedom. They don't care about knowing what is going on in their box. They just want their computer to run with a minimal investment of time. And linux in general is still behind windows in that point.
Sure, many people do see a computer as "just an appliance" (serving them is how Apple made its name.) I think more and more people will become concerned about security, and the "Trusted" computing thing is a real turn-off; how many people really want their OS deciding if they're allowed to use their HDTV for example?
That's one of the reasons (and in my opinion the most important) why windows is dominating the OS market. If windows seems to work, why change to a time and work demanding linux??
Dunno: why are you here? ;-) Thing is, once you've used a desktop Linux, and worked out which apps to use etc (the middle-mouse paste gets people) it's incredibly hard to go back for anything other than games and work crap. More and more those are being negated, by consoles as well as Linux 3D games and WINE, or the myriad apps that can only properly be run on *nix; the server stuff is IMO a done deal: any organisation switching from a commercial Unix is far more likely to choose Linux over doze.
And once you're over that hurdle, there's all that lovely free software :-)
