Yes, Opera is way better than firefox now, and wine is not even close to a usable VM, very few applications work in a decent way. I still use win4lin or VMware, with 2000 pro.

Well, I have to admit of the Linux distros I have used over the years not one of them gets the raves from me that Ubuntu does on this factory installed Dell laptop. It as become my favorite although I still do have one Mandriva 2009 powerpack and one Fedora install running on a couple of the church's desktops. My staff has all except for one Mac person converted their laptops over to Kubuntu because of the ease of using this distro. Because of the KDE however we are all still using Hardy. KDE4 just does not make it yet and Gnome is about as painful as Mac. Worse it is just not pretty.

I love Mandriva better than Ubuntu

With such a huge number of netbooks hitting the market in 2008, and so many distros shifting their goalposts to accommodate them (Mandriva for one) I would think that a topic might be, most popular distro on a netbook.
Lets face it, netbooks are generally a bunch of almost-laptops with very specific limitations, and there are other factors driving the choice of distro such as speed of loading vs Xandros (for the EEE owners out there).

I don't understand what you are saying. Can you elaborate?

I agree with others that some parts of the poll are too expected :+P But oh well. I guess it's still fair play.

Hail Fedora! hehe

Never the less, the results speak for them self. Some apps are just that good right now. I AM shocked Pidgin got first place :+P

I think UBUNTU desereved to win.Personally I believe alot more persons are now interested in linux because of this distribution.It made me interested and wanting to know more.

One small suggestion: before the polls become live, ask for user suggestions for items to include on them. I saw in a few discussions that new things were being requested and added all the time, well after many people had begun voting. If an awesome app gets added the day before polls close, it's unlikely to win even if should by all rights be in with a good chance.

Edited to include an example: Open Arena came second in the poll for Open Source Game of the Year, but it wasn't on the list until someone pointed out its omission a day or so later. I suspect that it may have received more votes had it been there from the start.

Since the first batch of choices come from previous years and from what Jeremy is aware of, it isn't realistically possible to cover all bases. Too late now, but in just under a year's time have your recommendations ready and get in quickly when the announcement is made. These are Member's Choice awards after all!

All nominees are posted many days before the polls open for exactly this reason.

--jeremy

I'm almost with you dibi. I converted my entire network to Fedora, versions 8 through 10 right now. Still use Fedora at home. Giving some thought to Ubuntu, but as I'm hearing, it is the best way to migrate users from Windows and familiarizing them with alternatives. I'm not really having many problems showing others Linux is easy enough though.

I began with DNS servers, seperated the structures to have a true DNS structure vice Windows DNS, made a chaching and blackholing DNS, public DNS architecture. Leaving Windows to handle only client identification. Took away Windows' knowledge of the DNS architecture and told them my caching structure was all of the root DNS servers. So clients use the Windows server as a DNS proxy to my server. No DNS cache poisoning problems for me .

Migrated all but the windows file servers and one client. Moved the data from the file server, shut down the exchange server. Now the only other box that isn't Linux is on Trusted Solaris 8. I can live with that one in place.

Guy

This is all software. Is there a similar poll for linux compatible hardware?

hmm;

did not see a category for linux "email" server,

like djb's "qmail"
(or whatever else would compete)

[QUOTE=XP_ColdTurkey;3444788]Pretty Good point here.

Ubuntu

I agree but with a different perspective:

Free software is about freedom not convenience. But this is the same in pretty much any domain.

Freedom is inconvenient, you have to learn how to take your own decisions. I am pretty sure that in Mao's china no one had trouble deciding what clothes to wear.

Here I have the opposite experience. If your users were using Linux, first I would think that you'd standardize in hardware that is Linux proven. Second, Once you set up a stable image you'd be supporting their actual use of the computer, not it's maintenance.

Of course the start up effort would be larger.

Again, we seem to agree on the facts, but not on the interpretation.

The best thing is that I'm sure that an intelligent guy like you is learning a good deal through this "ordeal". Most of us have gone through it.