Slow Linux growth expected among the average desktop user, specially in North America for the following reasons:

(1) Dell desktops for about 400 bucks with Win XP
(2) Ample support for the decade old Win 95 and later Win operating systems on the net
(3) Security of a backup from a CD burner that are easily affordable.

Comments welcome.

Vijay

Well, considering that the $400 Dell desktops actually don't sell for $400 (it's akin to the "base price" of a car. I mean, you do want the brakes, turn signals, carpeting, and other "required options" right?) if you read the fine print in their add. "additional fees apply" - which means you have to pay for the mouse, keyboard, required bundled software, and so forth.

granted winblows is a COMPLETE piece and I feel like im having the life sucked out of me everytime I use it but it is good for the braindead. Linux as good as it is needs some amount of thought process when using it where as you just click a button in winblows and a half hour later your playing solataire. The install is a perfect example, CD goes in then a produt code and timezone later winblows comes out, of course it will just eat up your drive and not give a "blank" about other partitions or OS' installed. No need to download additional drivers or anything of the sort. My point being it encourages stupidity whilst giving the illusion of control, people are easily lured into this trap and thus are drawn away from an true OS like linux.

I make most of my money getting viruses an crap off those boxes. So go ahead and sell all of them you want.

New machines will carry windows for a while yet... But it's the upgrade market where people will either go to linux or continue to steal windows. I worked out it would cost me about $10,000+ to go to all windows here on the home network and have just basic features. I'll stick with a much more complete network system with free linux.

I don't see that win 9x boxes will survive too much longer. Software will be harder to get and they are being hammered hard on the internet...

And I don't know what you mean in point 3?

The bottom line is that Windows is pre-installed on practically every PC sold, at least for the average consumer. Until that situation changes, Linux will remain 'unknown' to the average user....

Point 3 Explained.

Those days not everyone had a backup due to price. These days both the CD burner and media are cheap making backups very affordable. With a good backup even if there is a virus attack, one can be backup and running fast.

Vijay

I happen to believe in buying anything that needs to be bought. When I was using windows, I didn't steal it, I bought it. In fact, I have quite a collection of legal software sitting around gathering dust.

Yes, that's a very sound comment. Commercial software development is very expensive, so I'm dead against pirating and ripping off commercial applications. I use Linux out of choice - it does what I want, and it represents better value...

I believe in buying software too. I have recently bought things like cedega, crossover, course designer, breedmate, HL2, doom3 and I even have a few MS licenses...

But I have a feeling that most people out there are not like you and me

I like to be legal. The easy way for me to be legal is just use linux... It's better anyway, so it's a good deal

I pay my linux debt by 'working' on lists like this and occassionally some documentation and themes and stuff over the years... Very little coding tho...

It seems to me that very few people do backups.

DVD-R makes it better tho - but I need HVD or blu-ray these days as my /home is about 12 gig

But I guess the answer to that is - who cares? Linux is already 'good enough' for those who want to use it. A little more share would be nice to help get some software ports, but in the end linux does not 'need' to be number one...

I don't think Mac users care at all about not being the #1 desktop. They still know their systems are better than MS...

amosf,

couldn't agree more! Linux is a gem, for those who've taken the trouble to acquaint themselves with it...

QUOTEThe bottom line is that Windows is pre-installed on practically every PC sold, at least for the average consumer. Until that situation changes, Linux will remain 'unknown' to the average user....[/QUOTE]

The transcripts of the MS anti-trust case make it reasonably clear that OEM's did'nt really have much choice other than to pre-install Windows. Which in turm rather limited any choice the ultimate consumer might have.

This is good, and I hope it stays that way.

While using Linux I feel like the VIP surrounded by all those bodyguards wearing red t-shirts with targets painted on them. They're out there drawing the fire of viruses and malware - all the while bragging about how good they are doing frequent OS patches that often times break more than they fix, having to prove they have a legal copy of the OS on a daily basis, paying for yearly subscriptions on firewalls, virus scanners, spyware scanners, paying $50 for a program like Ghost when we simply type "dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb conv=notrunc" for free, another $50+ for Nero when we can do better for free with mkisofs/cdrecord or growisofs.

The more of 'em out there running malware interference, the better. Long live Windows!

(All said tongue-in-cheek ... my wife and kids still run on a Windows box I maintain for them. )