Vista has been incredibly kind to Linux I've installed Ubuntu for a number of people who'd normally plague errm I mean phone me for assistance. Since these people have started using Ubuntu the calls
tailed right off.

To be honest I was surprised, was it cause they though they wouldn't
help off me any more? no simply because Ubuntu worked for them and
just kept on working!
(In many cases I wasted time making there systems duel boot and in
some cases have been asked to remove windows completely - no really!)

However now windows 7 is on the horizon is the steady stream of new
Linux user going to dry up?

Horror of horrors what if for the first time Microsoft make an OS
that works and is fairly bug free?

I wonder how many people really realise that Linux is now an easy
to use desktop product and the myth that Linux is hard to use is
just that a myth?

from my POV if windows7 free then probably linux user dry up, otherwise like myself already full time with linux is not easy to change to become ms user, look like i have to learn again but there no point for me to do that, i stick with linux

Wasn't that called MS-DOS...

Seriously tho, Ubuntu can do things and works for simple tasks, but you can still hit driver issues and anything like that in Ubuntu is just asking for a painful time. Windows has more problems, but when they do occur, most of the time they are easy/quick fixes, linux has alot less problems but when they occur they are harder to fix IMO and need a great deal more research if they are not things you know about.

I am still against the idea of Linux being a totally suitable Desktop enviroment, while it's alot closer then it has been in the past, it's still not at a point where if you hit a snag, you can get things sorted out quickly or easily. Recently companies have offered Linux distributions on their hardware by default what removes any of the installation problems that can commonly be found since the vendor itself has already packaged their necessary drivers and makes things easier. Dell for example now do some laptops with Ubuntu by default, but when it comes to normal PCs, you still get people coming up with problems with Graphics drivers every now and then (generally Nvidia support in Ubuntu isn't always very good, what is some what surprising considering Nvidia has always been more OpenGL friendly then ATI).

As for Vista, it just changed too much too fast, Microsoft has become obessed with Eyecandy and it doesn't really buy them any favours, it just confuses users and alienates them, so essentially, what it really comes down to on Windows 7 is just how different it is to previous windows versions.

I just fired up kubunto on one of my virtual machine. I was blown away. This is so ready for the general public!

I also have XP, Vista, and W7Beta load up in VM's. (Base system is CentOS 5.2.) Vista is so bad I do not see how anyone uses it. W7beta is so much better than Vista it isn't funny.

So far I am the only one I know with a Linux workstation (I have two). I have several Linux servers out there. The problem is that Linux, including kubunto, does not run the critical applications my customers need. And Wine is targets mainly at games. No Lotus Approach, no Lotus Word Pro, no Quick Books, no CCH Tax, no Lacert, no Acrobat, no UPS World Ship, no Mitchell 1, and on and on. Plus if you "actually" use Open Office, it is so buggy it will bring tears to a grown man's eyes. (I hammer them all the time about fixing their bugs, but they are only interested in new features. I must have filed about 20 bugs on them over the years. They never fix anything: very weird for an open source project.)

So, to get my work done, back to my XP virtual machine. I put my customer on XP because I have no choice. I almost got one last week on to kubunto (almost in tears over Vista), but no support for her Verizon 3G card. So I put XP on it. S---!

I would love it if Red Hat, or IBM or someone would step in and make Wine such that it would run every Windows (XP) application on the shelf. I won't be holding my breath. OS2 did it; Linux should too.

My 2 cents,
-T

This is a myth, it is simple not true

Both in my experience on my own hardware and in a dozen other cases of people I help out locally

I've heard so many Visduh horror stories but the other day I was a victim. I had given my sister-in-law a Minolta color multifunction printer for her birthday. The machine works fine from my brother's WinXP desktop machine but on the Visduh laptop they couldn't get the thing to work at all. I wasted a few hours, managed to print a 'test page' but was never able to print anything useful from the laptop. The 'test page' proves that the machine *can* send data properly to the printer, but I have no idea why no one can actually print anything that matters. The printer problem was only one of numerous things that kept me screaming at that worthless heap of crap.

If w7 is more like XP I can imagine people returning to the fold if: a) there are some things they still haven't figured out how to do with their Linux, or b) they still struggle with Linux but only use it because Visduh is such a dung heap and they can't install XP.

For the converted, if Linux works for them I can't imagine them wasting money to buy w7 unless they are driven by the promise of available games ...

Now if only all governments will ban the sale of computers with Winduhs already installed. From what I hear, manufacturers put so much crapware on that people reinstall from their own CD/DVDs anyway - presumably that boosts MS sales figures. Hah.

I think Codeweavers missed their golden opportunity to push WINE/CrossoverOffice as a Winduhs replacement though. It would not have been ready for big enterprise (which, sadly, makes too much use of .NyET) but it would have been OK for many small businesses and most home users who weren't keen gamers.

On the subject of games - I'm amazed the major games publishers haven't got together to make a boot disk
(with install option) given the way MS can throw their weight around re directX

This would at least give them some leverage, after all if asus were honest they only really brought
out a Linux netbook to bring MS to the negotiation table...

I could care less how window$ 7 is, I know I will never use it.

I'm a die-hard linux user.

Then why have I had two machines that have had issues with Ubuntu not having all the necessary drivers, twice I have had graphics drivers lacking what made the GUI almost completely unusable. To say it's simply not true is just making a denial over that it can happen.

I use hardware that hasn't been knocking around a few years, I use tend to use premium hardware what is generally where I sometimes notice problems with Ubuntu... also some hardware vendors aren't the greatest at getting drivers out their for their hardware too, so support for some certain vendors can be ill supported. You shouldn't deny things just because you have not seen them, I have also seen posts around here where people have posted ubuntu lacking drivers, generally Nvidia graphics cards what tend to be the best supported by other distributions like Fedora.

I think the best way is to have two machines one for MS and the other for Linux.

I've used recent and old Nvidia cards in Ubuntu - they just work...

At worst I've had to download the installer from the manufacturers site and this also works

ATI even now have open source accelerated drivers which are coming on a pace

The only time I have had problems with Linux drivers is with really obscure vendors that have gone out of business - but then have you tried getting them working in Windows?

No denial just experience...

You called it a myth, it isn't a myth, it's just your experience as you said.

It depends on which hardware you are talking about.
Videocards are generally supported well. Network cards are supported wonderfully. But take usb scanner, cheap usb webcam, and there goes driver trouble.

and xerox printers ^^

not really sure where all the "vista is oh so crap" comes from...
running vista 64 premium as main OS on main machine and never had any problems at all yet with any hardware (incl. usb sticks, webcams, digital cameras, mobile phones...)

While Ubuntu is nice and such, it also goes towards eye candy, especially Kubuntu with KDE 4.

and yes, the driver support for Linux compared to Windows is quite small from a lot of vendors.