Well, my son has a steam account and then there is wine. I will not buy windows. Not to mention the fight with all those viruses, trojans and whatnots, no, thanks, not for me.

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i ditched windows way back in 1996. i have a copy of Windows somewhere ... still in shrink wrap. but i am not a linux-only user. i have/run/use Sun Solaris and OpenBSD, too (and some old Sparc hardware).

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What was it that's the start and of the Microsoft epoch it may have been running dos even if it didn't have the c:\ prompt.

my father bought a laptop a few years ago "for email" and some surfing. within a day he asked me to "get this crap out of here". he has been happy with Ubuntu since then.

And why should they?

Personally I gave up 'evangelising' about free software to friends and family, probably about 5 or 6 years ago, maybe more. It's not worth it and people in general don't appreciate it. Ever been approached in the street by the bible bashers? "just spare 5 minutes of your time... please take a leaflet..."

It's the same as the "market share" fallacy. i.e. there is no real need to consider market share when it comes to FOSS projects. e.g having a shitload of users running Ubuntu, but not really helping on mailing lists/support forums or reporting bugs, let along developing anything themselves, is not going to make much difference - all you can say is "there are lots of people running Ubuntu", that's about it. The users who will be interested and will go on to become developers, will be interested anyway without any coercion.

Also if you foist some Linux distribution on a family member, you will invariably find yourself in the role of "24/7 Linux onsite/telephone technical support". If some windows proprietary app won't install and run, you'll get "the look" (the "sorry but your Linux thing doesn't cut it, so what are you going to do about it?" look), it will be your fault and it's never fun having to go back and reinstall windows for someone.

Use what you have and be happy and let others run what they like. People discover these things of their own accord and switch willfully, if/when the time is right for them.

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Well seeing as how my wife can't use her computer as is, it would make sense for me to switch her. But she's going to wiat for windows 10 and see is it works.

I agree.
To my mind it is only worth putting somebody onto Linux if they will either be completely happy with a Linux install or actively want to get into Linux.

I've switched a few people. One friend of mine his pc died, his wife hadn't had income years (so no unemployment, she was a full time mom for 3), and he had just lost his job, so money was BEYOND tight when the EXTREMELY old pc finally bit it. I gave him a desktop I was considering just recycling (AMD quad core w/ 4 GB ram & onboard video) with Debian installed on it, set up his account, and printed out a paper of how to update it. He calls me once or twice a year because apt gets stuck on something and chokes when updating, but for the most part, has been quite happy with it, and never complained about not being able to run some form of windows software. Even the Office incompatibility was taken care of since I installed WPS office instead of Open/Libre-office.

But overall, not worth it. I will mention that linux has far fewer viri and is much more resilient to viri when people complain about their machines being infected with spyware and viri, and if they ask how to try it out I'll assist them in downloading some live distro to play around with, but it's just not worth the hassle trying to swtich people.

For friends and family (ie, those perhaps less tech savvy), definately forget Linux and/or Windows. Either of those systems has potential to do more harm than good.

Rather, you need a completely closed off system such as say Chrome OS.

Keeps them grans and gramps locked in their bunkers.

That's a long time to be so, what can I say, "non-curious."

The statement is blatant ignorance.

Even if something is no good but has a significant following, you might at least be curious to find out what all the fuss (or lack of) is about.

He said that he's owned, doesn't mean he never had to use it for work and realized that he didn't like it, thus never purchasing for home.

In this case "they" have demands. I suggested they get offered am alternative, that's all.

For the rest (evangelising), I totally agree.

Remark: I have to use Win7 at work. When I compare the ease of use and generally the handling to my setup at home I personally wonder why people put up with inferior technology or at least inferior tools and user interfaces.

The only thing I ever go to Windows for is some Steam games. There are quite a few Steam games that do run on Linux though, like Civilization V !!! Yeah!

I personally never owned a Windows box either. I grew up with Mac's then used Linux both are fine and both will do what I want. Why would I need to own a Windows box just 'cause?

That's not what I'd call 'recyclable' (speaking as the owner of an AMD dual core with 2 GB ram & onboard video which I have zero incentive to 'upgrade'). Seems like a pretty decent system which should cope well with any kind of Linux or *BSD.