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I don't think that is so certain. I could be happy with Linux and in fact, i already use Linux exclusively on my Laptop and Windows only on my Desktop. The reason i can't ditch Windows completely right now are a couple of proprietary apps which don't have Linux alternatives. Those alternatives do exist for Mac.
So despite i like Linux and despite that it runs on my existing Hardware i will get an Mac, simply because Linux lacks support from Software companies and the OSS scene can't compensate everything.
Please, no one saying Wine now. I tried all the apps i miss on Linux with Wine and not even one of them worked in a bearable way.

How about QEMU or VirtualBox? They have kernel support and if you have a recent CPU it'll even have virtualization support. These mean near-native speed. You can even run apps in a "seamless" manner ie. show just the app you want, in a native Linux desktop window instead of the whole Windows desktop.

Absolutely agreed. Unfortunately, most Linux zealots will not realise this as a truth.

Dave

But apple has these things in their favour:
1. Plethora of well known software, drivers
2. Easier to set up*
3. Big company, lots of marketing.

*Some may argue that linux is easier to set up because it includes the apps you need out of the box but if you need to use your wireless networking card and it has no native driver what do you do? Most people don't like hunting down firmware and setting up ndiswrapper. Or having to stop using their brand-new non-hp photo printer because there are no linux drivers.

No doubt that linux is a great OS but for the average Joe, Mac is more attractive. But who knows - this may change in the future.

Edited 2007-12-16 00:40

Same thing applies to Vista and even XP, and yet it doesn't stop Windows. And if there's an OS that comes with the least amount of stuff out of the box, Windows wins the crown hands down. It has the worst ratio of money payed for applications you get by far, of the three.

And if you stop to think about it, you'll see that most of these drivers are not even Microsoft's merit. That brand new camera and whatnot works because the manufacturer makes drivers for Windows and can't be bothered to make them for other OS's. To that I say thanks but no thanks, if they don't want me using it I won't. No matter how much I may like a piece of hardware, when they say "but you gotta use a certain OS" is where I draw the line.

The last time I checked, Macs had a bundle of software pre-installed.

"but if you need to use your wireless networking card and it has no native driver what do you do?"

Buy a new one. Wireless cards are cheap. Macs are not.

(Oh, or there's the ndiswrapper if you would rather spend a a bit of time, rather than money on wireless card.)

Linux still needs to get fundamental basics right, pretty much everything is easier, less stressful, a less time consuming to do with Windows, and I hear is even simpler on OS X.

The first-time tried to installed Linux was in 1995 Slackware 3.0, no support for my generic graphics card, and i had to issue some weird command -line augments to disable noacpi for it to even install.

Fast forward 12 years, i try installing ubuntu 6, no support (Vesa modes don't count) for my NVIDIA graphics card, and i had to issue some weird command -line augments to disable noacpi for it to even install on my INTEL motherboard.

Edited 2007-12-16 00:50

There was no support for ACPI in Linux at that time. Please don't lie.

Well, if you drove one car for a decade, everything else will seem weird, you might even bet your one is beter than all the others (wouldn't be the first time such thing happens). Your being unwilling to properly try to install a Linux distro doesn't convince anyone of it being a load of crap. There are some of us who could list angering stories of pretty hard Windows installs, so what ?

So try to install Vista in an old computer and see what happens.
The problem is not the OS here but the fact that NVIDIA don't make appropiate drivers for Linux (that meaning open 3d drivers that would be directly included into the hardware).
It is the same problem that old hardware has with vista. The company that sold the hardware is not interested in doing drivers for it.

But it is only a question of marketshare. Once they realize there is business in making sure their products work with linux, that big problem of you totally disapears.

Neither.

Most people just don't have a reason to switch. Most of the software available on Linux is also available on Windows. In contrast, Linux recieves attention from a miniscule portion of the commercial software market.

No exclusive apps on Linux is a big deterent IMO, along with certain "geeky" perceptions--some which may still hold true today when dealing with poorly supported hardware.

Cross-platform apps are fine and satisify the open source ideology but fail to increase attention or awareness of Linux as a viable platform.

You can very well run Windows apps from a *nix environment in a varity of ways: wine, seamless terminal services (CVS-built rdesktop & seamlessRDP w/ several patches), seamless-mode virtualization (VirtualBox). However, none of these solutions are intuitive nor flawless.

People are not willing to migrate to a different OS and learn about it, just to use the same apps as they were before--assuming they tried something above.

I think people, such as me, who use Linux do so for alternate reasons. Reasons such as it being free, open, non-Microsoft, and "different". These are all valid reasons for OSNews readers but aren't a concern for ordinary users.

Ordinary computer users don't know and/or care about Microsoft's monopoly status or open source code, etc. Therefore the only way to gain their interest is to develop amazing software they "must have" thats not available on any other platform.

Edited 2007-12-16 01:35

Most people just don't have a reason to switch.

I couldn't agree more. However, there is a deep psychological element involved in all of this.

Recently, a new teacher came to our hagwon (private English academy) here in S. Korea. I had told him before arrival that the Boss would be happy to help him purchase things like a new laptop for his personal use, and he could reimburse the Boss incrementally from his salary. So he did just that.

The problem? If you buy a new computer in Korea, it comes (a) with Vista (various versions) by default, and (b) exclusively with the GUI in Korean; even the CLI comes with Korean switches and the like when traversing the filesystem (I know because I did that for him the other day, of which more later).

Now, he could have purchased an English-language laptop from (say) Prime PC in Tokyo, but if he did that, he would have to pay 10% Import Duty on the purchase once it arrived here. He was desperate to have English Windoze and in the end, despite the fact that he could have used my software to (a) partition his drive and install any favour of Linux he desired (I use Mandriva and have everything he could need, including an up-to-date version of Acronis so he could have done all of this comfortably from within Windoze), and (b) he would then have had a very nice-to-look-at, exclusively-English environment, he has just forked out for a more expensive version of Vista, in English, to be despatched from England, and intends to scrub the HDD and install this.

This is indicative of the mind control Microsoft has due to its dominance of the market. Despite having someone there who could do everything for him absolutely for free, his insecurity when confronted with the unknown made him do something that I would never even consider. The fact that he would be doing things almost exactly the same in day-to-day terms under Mandriva (I would have set him up with KDE and he would have really enjoyed it) and it would have been free, with a minimal user learning curve, were things that he never really considered, so afraid was he of venturing into what was (for him) uncharted territory.

I think people, such as me, who use Linux do so for alternate reasons. Reasons such as it being free, open, non-Microsoft, and "different". These are all valid reasons for OSNews readers but aren't a concern for ordinary users.

Ordinary computer users don't know and/or care about Microsoft's monopoly status or open source code, etc. Therefore the only way to gain their interest is to develop amazing software they "must have" thats not available on any other platform.

Yes, this is true, too. I use Mandriva because I first played around with it back in its 7.0 days (and wrecked a hard drive in the process!!!), but I find that being able to get the KDE appearance just as I want it, having to spend no more than a minute booting and no problems so far with any kind of malware, viruses etc. is fantastic. I have just begun setting up XP Pro under Virtualbox on my desktop machine and it is great - it works really well and transitioning between host and guest OSes is sweet and easy.

But this doesn't mean that, as a user, I am either unwilling or unable to fork out for software; I'm happy to do this if I consider it worthwhile, it's just that I can now do anything I could do under Windoze - free.

For me, the main reason to switch was simply the security aspect - if all of the Windows GUI is in Korean, how on Earth could I ever be sure that the system was secure, even with English-language third-party apps like Trend PC-Cillin to protect me? Virtually all that I do in Windows these days is just update the databases and scan for malware and viruses; I do everything else under Mandriva, and I'm happy there because this is a comfortable and largely hassle-free environment under which to do almost anything I need to do.

But I don't evangelise on behalf of Linux, only present it as a considered alternative if there's a problem. Some things run better under Windows, so use Windows. For everything else, use Linux.

Anyway, let me finish with this: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/eo20071216a3.html

It seems that it's not only the English-speaking world that finds it has trouble with new versions of Windows and Office!

I dont use it for any of those reasons. I use it because it's lot less frustrating than Windows (I've used Windows since 1990 and always found it frustrating) and I am more productive in Linux and/or BSD both at work and at home. Sure, free, open and non-windows and all that is nice but at the end of they day I need to get stuff done and that is what it's all about. I cant get stuff done in Windows without pulling my hair out and having my blood pressure skyrocket. Granted the same happen in Linux (try setting up an ad-hoc network with nm-applet) but much less so.

Edited 2007-12-16 07:31

I'm fine with Windows XP (I don't need Vista, thanks). If I had to change, I would use Linux. I tried OS X and I didn't like it as a whole, especially the look.