Published at LXer:

I have to make a small departure from my normally fair stance on things. I am the first to admit that Windows has better 3D performance than Linux, BSD, OSX, Solaris, and other systems. I am the first to admit that the amount of business software developed for Windows makes it an attractive business platform too. That is fine and good, but things are getting completely ridiculous.

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Yay! Go malware! Incapacitate millions of WinBloze PCs until they all switch to Linux and realize just how better off they have it on Linux than on M$'s targetware.

How can you be sure that if people are infected by malware, they will just all go to Linux?

What if they simply decide to 'restore' their Windows? Or wipe everything and do a fresh install of Vista or 7, and if they cannot do that themselves, they could ask someone to do that for them and insist on it?

What if the majority of people never heard of Linux and will instead switch to OSX?

Have you thought any of this through, before simply 'praising' malware in hopes of it forcing users to switch to Linux?

Your 'logic' confuses me.

Yeah, the vast majority of people out there have only ever heard of "Mac" or "PC" (i.e. Mac OS X or Windows). Even Ubuntu, with all its publicity, is still in the minority as far as OS preference is concerned, and other Linuxes are less common than that...

Really though, they're both "PCs" now! I'm not just being pedantic with terms, either: they're now nearly identical on a hardware level...you could put Mac OS X on a non-Apple "PC" if you wanted (to break the EULA)! They both now use the Intel x86(_64?) CPU architecture...

For as long as I've been using Linux I remember bloggers/pundits claim every year that Linux would finally "take over". Look, it's not something that will happen overnight (if at all) and long term tech trends are very difficult to predict, so this guesswork is really pointless.

I've given up evangelizing FOSS. If I see others that might be interested in it (and willing to learn) I make my case for why I think it's better than proprietary software.
But getting in people's faces and trying to force them to use something they don't want will only backfire, especially when most folk still see computers in the same way they see washing machines or microwave ovens.

This is exactly how I look at it...in fact, I'm rather shy to talk about Linux (or FOSS in general, even if there's a Windows/Mac port) because I'm too afraid of seeming "overly persuasive". If Windows/IE/MS Office/Adobe Photoshop is all someone knows, I'm not gonna force them into using (or even trying, for that matter) FF/OpenOffice.org/GIMP (even though those particular programs have Windows ports), for fear of seeming like I'm "getting in their face" about it.

Long story short: I'm too afraid of suggesting FOSS to someone who only knows proprietary software because I'm afraid of getting talked back at condescendingly, even if I'm being perfectly calm and rational about it...maybe I'm just paranoid, though.

Exactly, most people think in terms of PCs and Mac. So anything else, Linux, *nix and they won't know what you are talking about, and don't even try to point out that OSX is essentially UNIX underneath. They won't know what you will be talking about, nor would they care.