Agreed. For most people, it is irrelevant if it is 100% GPL or whether a hardware vendor provides closed source driver, as long as they work!

But the open source croward can get a bit anal about system purity and not contaminating it with other licences, let alone pre-compiled binaries...

I think the netbook situation confuses the issue somewhat - yes, netbooks are marketed at people who want to access the net on the move quickly and conveniently, but are bought by people who are expecting a fully-fledged laptop for £200. At the same time they are supplied with a linux distro that hasn't been fully tested with the system, so various bits of hardware will not work as it should. The people who buy them are not well supported by the manufacturer and sticking XP on it and running anti-virus and 3rd party firewall on a hardware that can barely cope seems like the easy option.

Also, look at the hardware configurations - the linux version invariably has a smaller hard disk and less RAM - I'd buy the XP version and install linux on it.

Ultimately, there won't be a motivation to change until people start using linux at work and become comfortable with it. When MS Office stops being the defacto standard for office applications, or when MS start releasing a linux version - but they won't do that until they give up on Windows - hopefully 7 will be the last one.

I have to disinfect a network that is running a very highly rated anti virus program across all systems. the DC forces all systems to patch via windows update, and all systems are therefore up to date in that respect also. The network is nevertheless riddled with Conficker.

Normally I am happy to use Windows and Linux interchangeably, but I don't often do my internet banking from Windows, and I would recommend this same precaution for others. Without warranty of course, as we do know that Linux can get infected, it just happens a lot less often.

http://research.microsoft.com/

You obviously can't do research
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/gro ... fault.aspx

Don't see any/many Linux distros doing anything like that...or are the part time programmers too busy working on their pet project?

Get your facts straight before you make snide comments about comments you don't really know.

Microsoft R&D is constantly derided in IT mags, including PC Pro. All those billions, for what?

Windows is way behind Mac OS X and other UNIX/UNIX-like OSes, even when it comes to the GUI.

I can only think of one market where Microsoft are the innovators - Office products. Every other market they are playing catch-up with their rivals e.g. Search, browser, MP3/MP4 player, video playback, gaming, mobile OS...

Actually, thinking about it, I will also give MS that new gaming tech. where it detects what the people in the room are doing, if it actually ever works properly and makes it to market.

What? You point to links showing Microsoft's computational science page and then pass snide judgments about linux & unix, forgetting of course that the people who brought BSD to the world also brought us BOINC - a multi-platform computational science client. They may not have as much money as MS, but they seem to be doing a lot with what they have. BOINC is out there and has been for years, running on machines across the world, getting results. MS may spend money on research but where does it go?

As Linux_user says, Windows is stuck in the past in OS terms compared to where Linux and UNIX has been for a long time. Windows doesn't do anything that 'nix can't do, but still manages to use more system resources and when you compare it to OSX and KDE4.2 and 4.3, Windows just doesn't look as good.

Fortunately, Windows 7 may just be awful enough to motivate people to kick their Windows habit. It is certainly the worst I've used for a while.

I keep seeing the "Linux can do everything Windows can do" line. Certainly on various Linux forums.

What can Linux do that Windows can't do? Maybe it's here where people can be encouraged to switch if they can be shown the benefits of switching. Otherwise is there really any reason for Joe Schmoe to move from Windows.

Vista SP3 Ultimate - £190
Most linux distro's - £0, free upgrades every 6 months.

Oh, there's the virus thing too, the lack of a registry etc...

That says nothing about what it can do that Windows can't.

Can you play your favourite latest release 3D games, use Office (as a standard, seeing as you can also get it on the Mac) software?

My point with the link is that most of the stuff there isn't known as being the research (not RnD) that Linux_user incorrectly references as the RnD is for products, not research projects in general. I think it is quite clear where a lot of the money goes, also into internal projects that aren't seen by the public.

Also funny how when I pass a snide comment about your Operating System other users are very vocal in correcting it.

Actually yes, using Wine and Crossover Games.

Then what can it do that Windows can't?

So how do you explain to someone with no technical knowledge that a lack of registry and the fact you have to download and configure extra software to run your games and current software is better for them?

Ah, it never gets old, does it!

A good old fashioned OS flame war. With hardly any flaming though.

Did anyone invite Marklar over here? He was never one to back away from a good old fashioned flame war!!

Last time I tried it (I had a subscription to the Cedega service for a couple of years), it sort of worked, but the games I played dropped from 100fps to 19fps on the same hardware. Linux was generally faster, but the Wine libraries couldn't cope with games realistically...

You don't, you tell them it is free, it'll get them onto facebook and let them check their emails & write letters and you don't have to worry about viruses, plus it'll probably be faster and actually stay faster than Windows on older hardware. You tell them that thanks to the "registry" Windows will gradually grind to a halt and require a reinstall, as well as get bombarded with spyware. The people who use their PC's for games will already know this.