OSNews

It is interesting to me how you are constantly being bombarded by reviews of people trying to install one Linux distro or another and making each instance sound bad. In a nutshell, Windows XP is Windows XP and any Linux distro is its own entity. THEY ARE DIFFERENT, GET OVER IT.

Thinking back.... when you first migrated, say, from DOS to Windows, or Windows 95 to Windows 2000, you had a learning curve where you bitched about this or that not being the same or how you know do this or that when I used to do it in this "really simple way". Well, why should it be any different when going from Windows XYZ to Linux or Mac OSX?? If you don't want to migrate and go through the learning curve, don't migrate. Simple as that.

Now, getting to why most people, IMHO, haven't migrated away from Windows is..... why do they really need to? Most people buy a computer and the darn thing is preloaded; therefore they use what they have. In addition, the computer probably has some preloaded software that they use. They have, in essence, been stuck into the Windows world and its applications.

The Windows platform has the majority of the WELL KNOWN applications that people use; any other platform doesn't. So as long as this continues to be the case, most people have absolutely no incentive for using anything else and hence, trying another platform such as Linux. Microsoft is truly wise in realizing that the business world governs a lot of the home market. Office has become a defacto standard in the workplace and has as a result, filtered into the home world where people need to read, use, etc. their work files.

Although Linux distros are maturing at a very fine rate, even when they have matured to the point (and hopefully past the point) of any Windows platform, they will still have to fight the true battle, the application world. Until then, only geeks like us will continue to play with new distros, find one or two to use, and be content. Let's face it, the common user basically surfs the web, uses some flavor of Office or Works, and plays games. The operating system is simply a host; nothing else. Get those same quality of apps on Linux or Fred's platform, or whatever, and you finally begin to have a true reason why to try another option.

I'll be darn curious to someday read an article on ones of these sites that one day compares a well-known, must have Linux-based application suite versus an equivalent Windows-based application suite, that are both very prominent in the market place (back like in the days when Lotus SamrtSuite, Wordperfect OfficeSuite, and Windows Office Suite were actually competitors).