"Windows Vista brings with it a new era of DRM and restrictive license agreements that aren't going to sit well with even your basic power user and some are looking for an escape route. These changes are making some users question their commitment to Microsoft. The obvious step is to make the leap to Linux. But what's holding people back from escaping Microsoft's shackles and moving to a free, easy platform? My guess is that the platform isn't everything. In fact, it's only a small part of the equation."
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Member since:2006-04-20
"I think they are happy to notice a lot comes for free and is equivalent to commercial applications.If we are talking about Joe Average here."
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If we are talking "Joe Average" here, then basic human psychology dictates that free products will always be viewed with suspicion. People expect things of quality to have a price tag attached, and the higher the perceived quality, the higher the price that can and will be charged. Now, it may be the case that a free (in both senses of the word) software product may be every bit as good as it's closed commercial equivalents, but the absence of a price tag carries with it the implication of "free" = "worthless". Windows users are so accustomed to downloading some freeware or shareware program, only to find out after much frustrating experimentation that the expensive commercial software really is worth every cent (in their mind).
Case in point: OpenOffice.org is a very capable, useful office suite, however, compared to MS Office, it just doesn't cut the mustard.
To compete with Windows, it is not enough for Linux to be as good as Windows, or offer the same features, it has to be substantially better in a wide range of areas, offer a simple, intuitive way to work with Windows file formats, and be good enough that if someone charges a large slab of money for it, people will think it is worth buying.
In my experience, Ubuntu is a very polished, well made Linux distro, and by and lare quite enjoyable to work with, but it is still a pain to get certain things working without resorting to arcane command line adventures (I can't even get a basic internet connection without editing some text files because Ubuntu 6.10 doesn't like my ADSL modem not supporting IPV 6, for example, while Windows XP sees it straight away. Since quite a few ADSL Modem/routers on the market don't support IPV 6, this is an unforgivable error for an operating system claiming to be user friendly). Emphasising the "freeness" of a product, while letting major flaws like this slip through only adds to the general perception that "free"="crap".
Member since:
2005-07-06
Consumers want to see stuff that they can buy that will work for them.
I think they are happy to notice a lot comes for free and is equivalent to commercial applications.If we are talking about Joe Average here.