OSNews

For me its getting worse. one release ago it stopped working on my desktop workstation, and in the latest it stopped working on my laptop in addition to still not working on my desktop.

But seriously...Ubuntu still has some rough edges that really needs to be fixed before it can take on windows.

Ubuntu has been fixing rough edges since it started - sorry, but I wouldn't trust it to finish that anytime soon. Meanwhile, other projects are trying to actually advance the state of the free desktop ;-)

What a load of crap.

Ubuntu is the FIRST Linux desktop in the last 10 years to provide a stable, usable desktop experience for the masses.

While it's still not ready for gamers, etc. It's way ahead of all the others.

PCLinuxOS was the first, and is still ahead of Ubuntu in terms of user-friendliness.

I have also heard good things said about Mandriva 2008 in this regard, but I haven't tried that myself.

Ubuntu is reasonable, but it is not the best. If you go to Ubuntu forums, you will still see a lot of "howto" descriptions where things are done via command-line. This is not necessarily the ONLY way to do thses things, but new users can sometimes get the mistaken impression that it is, and that they will be forced to use the command-line on Ubuntu.

Oh, BTW - Linux is perfectly OK for gamers. It is rather just that games companies have not yet ported their products to Linux. So you got the "actor" the wrong way around.

>>What a load of crap.
Ubuntu is the FIRST Linux desktop in the last 10 years to provide a stable, usable desktop experience for the masses.<<

Sorry but that's bullshit: on my PC I couldn't install Ubuntu (display garbled, that's hard to troubleshoot!) but Mandriva worked for example.

This is strange as all Linux distrib package the same software.. But in this case Mandriva made something correctly that Ubuntu didn't, so Ubuntu wasn't "way ahead all the others".

That's crap. There were several n00b-friendly distributions around before Ubuntu. Ubuntu is nothing special in that regard. The special about Ubuntu is the marketing (sending cd's gratis to all places of the world - you don't find many Fedora install-CD's around).

Ubuntu suffers from the same crap that most other binary distributions suffer from: Dependencititis. Try to remove one package and you'll end up with virtually no packages on the system. Fedora is no better. An ubuntu based on Arch Linux would be much better. Or put differently. A noob-friendly Arch Linux.

If we could get the decentralized installation framework from Windows and Mac OS X with the clean logical NeXTSTEP-thinking and the openness of Linux as well as the centralized package management from Linux. Now that would be quite a system.

PS: Add to this a Desktop with the object oriented nature of OS/2 WPS. Oooh... That'll be a killer OS.

Surely you can't blame Ubuntu or Linux for that! If you want to blame somebody, blame the hardware vendors for not supporting the Linux OS! Every time you buy new hardware like a printer, you get Windows drivers and sometimes Mac OS X drivers, but *never* Linux drivers. The Open Source community has been brilliant in creating their own drivers.

I still think Linux supports more hardware out-of-the-box after a new install, than Windows (before you load Windows full of 3rdParty drivers).

Wacom tablets have a very good open source driver, and it worked in Feisty. The problem with Gutsy and Wacom tablets is definitely an Ubuntu choice.

There was also the whole usb_suspend fiaso in Feisty, which saw many scanners not working anymore, just because *ONE* dev (you know who you are) decided to enable a feature that was considered unstable by Linux kernel devs. When one person decides that it's ok to mess people's office for the sake of experimenting possible small battery improvements for laptops, then something is quite wrong (Mark was aware of the problem, but decided it was ok not to do anything about it, and it didn't show up in the release notes). Then Gutsy went back to a sane configuration.

You got me on that one My Wacom tablet wasn't working in Feisty, and is working on Gutsy. In fact, because of my tablet not working in Feisty, I try some other distribution, with no luck. Until I found out that there was a bug in Wacom support in kernel from 2.6.19 to 2.6.21.

And I am afraid those kind of regression are going to keep happening, and you can't blame distributions for those regressions. The linux kernel is moving too fast, I do think that they should go back to the previous development model, with a stable branch with driver improvement and bug fixes, and an unstable branch with all the subsystem changes.

Yes you can in these both cases, because :
- the wacom problem in Gutsy is that someone commented out wacom configuration in xorg.conf, so you have to manually edit the file to remove the comments. If your wacom system wasn't working in feisty but is working in gutsy, it's either because you upgraded, or because you got a serial one (or a tablet PC, since these function like serial tablets);
- the usb_suspend fiasco was due to a deliberate choice from Ubuntu, even though kernel developers warned about the code not being ready for inclusion in the kernel (but the Ubuntu dev went out and included it). You seem to have misunderstood : that code was NOT included in the kernel, it was in an experimental branch.

I only picked out case that were :
- the fault of the distribution ;
- deliberate choices instead of errors.

In these case the developers knew exactly what they were doing and decided it was ok to play and mess up with user's setup.

You can find other numerous regression when it is indeed the fault of Ubuntu, some are unintentional, some are. Saying that it's the fault of hardware makers or of the linux kernel moving too fast is often used as a way to hide their shortcomings, which is not a courageous choice, nor is it going to improve things.

Well I BLAME LINUX when it comes to hardware.

Why ? Here is latest example from experiences of mine:

Recently I managed to get Nokia 6610 GSM phone to be recognised by Ubuntu via some no-name IrDA interface and third party software.

Transfering files from and to phone works ok. But when I tried to use it as an "emergency Internet connection" it failed to connect via GPRS, despite of other people used the same scripts successfully and with the same GSM network as I tried.

By the way - as far as I remember way of connecting to Internet using Windows 3.1 and dial-up modem (software was called "trumpet winsock" or something) it was much easier than under Ubuntu and GPRS nowadays.

The problem with support for any hardware at all on Linux and other non-monopoly operating systems can usually be attributed to one or both of the following:

1. Lack of the hardware manufacturer's desire to write drivers for and/or support those OSes and

2. Lack of any open source developers interested enough in the particular hardware to write an OSS driver worth installing.

When both issues are present at once, usually with obscure but neccessary hardware, you end up with next to no support at all. Attitudes need to change on both sides of the fence before we get really good drivers, whether binary and manufacturer-supported or OSS and community-supported. Of course, what we really want is for the manufacturers to not only provide native OSS drivers but also to support said drivers. That very rarely happens but when it does (example: HP printers) it's a wonderful thing.

I long for the day when a big-name manufacturer will step up there and provide fully open-source friendly laptops and desktops that are 100% supported by Linux. Dell has come close with its Ubuntu offerings, but they are nothing more than their "Designed for Windows Vista" systems that are the most compatible with Linux. When it comes down to it, the various components that make up the PCs as a whole, each from a different manufacturer (mainboard, wifi card, video adapter, etc.), cause a significant roadblock to the above stated goal of 100% OSS compatibility. Even Apple computers have parts made by several different manufacturers, and are simply assembled under the Apple name and supported by Apple at the end of the production timeline.

Lenovo will sell you such a machine, and so will HP.

But really, all you need to do is look for certain chipsets.

For example, I found out that an Acer laptop I was looking at had an Intel graphics accelerator, and an Intel wireless chipset ... so I was pretty confident that it would support Linux 100% out-of-the-box including 3D graphics acceleration, and I was not mistaken.

I recommended this laptop to a friend who was looking to build up a Linux setup, and I told that friend to also get a bog-standard wireless router (I think it was d-link) & ADSL modem combined, and also to buy an HP inkjet printer (they chose a Photosmart).

The result - 100% Linux compatible laptop with printer and Internet and full application suite - all installed out-of-the-box from a single liveCD - at less than half the cost of an equivalent Windows setup to do the exact same tasks.

ATI graphics is also on the way to becoming open source, so perhaps by next year these cards also will have 100% 3D graphics support out-of-the-box.

If you are wondering if a given wireless chipset has an open-source driver, this list may help:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open_source_wireless_dri...

Edited 2007-12-05 11:59

And Linux is at fault here because... Oh wait, it's not. Nokia refuses to document the inner workings of their phones and the protocols they use so Linux devs need to reverse engineer them. You should not be able to do anything with a Nokia phone on Linux. The fact that you're able to do something is remarcable.



You either enjoy being tortured or your memory's not what it used to be in your old age. Because I remember that setting that up was a complete nightmare.

But tell you what, why don't you go back to using Windows 3.1 if you like it better than Ubuntu 7.10?

Edited 2007-12-05 22:58

How is blaming the hardware company going to solve the problem? The customer doesn't care for your excuses, they just want the damn hardware supported, and they wanted it supported yesterday.

As a customer I don't care what excuses you give me for why hardware doesn't work - all I care about is whether it works or not. If it doesn't work, you won't get me as a customer.

Same goes for third party commercial applications, we as customers don't care for your excuses - unless the application we want are available on your platform, we don't care how good those replacements are, they aren't the ones we're used to it.

Get used to it, this is the marketplace - where customer is king, if you can't step up and meet the challenge, relegate yourself to a niche.

"How is blaming the hardware company going to solve the problem?"

Works for Vista users...although it does seem that a lot of these things are done already, and large companies like Intel/Ati etc etc are now advertising the work they have done in the kernel.

The Odd thing is he mentions printers, now why should an Apple supporter like you have heard of Cups

"Same goes for third party commercial applications"
You mean like Firefoz, MySQL etc. Unless you didn't mean commercial...but another word maybe binary!?

"this is the marketplace - where customer is king" And yet Apple and Vista both implement DRM which no customer wants. I wonder what you mean. Currently customers bend over for Vista...I was going to make a joke about Vista capable but for those users who where robbed its no joke.

No it doesn't. Windows users froth at the mouth when their hardware isn't supported - and who gets the blame? not Nvidia, not ATI, but Microsoft. Microsoft will get blamed for everything from their hardware not being supported to their cat being hit by a car.



What is so difficult to understand about third party commercial software. Where are the Adobes, Quicken's, the numerous games companies producing boxed software for Linux?

Again, people don't give a sh*t about the excuses, they want their applications; I'm not going to move Linux until there are quantifiable improvements over Mac OS X and all my software is available for Linux.

That is the case for ALL end users; I've been hearing the same pissing and moaning form the Linux quarter for 10 damn years, and yet, in 10 years no one has yet come up with an office suite which isn't slow and bloated, a Photo editing application which doesn't royally suck, or many of the numerous tools out there which are properly developed and MAINTAINED for the long term.

Take inkscape, no improvement forward in months. Passparout is now dead. Pan, again, dead. Pidgin? too bothered about chucking code out because of political arguments rather than adding features when code is made available - anyone remember the video support fiasco?



Bullcrap. Apple is growing in the high double digits - yet, people are forced to run Apple Mac's *rolls eyes* stop trying to make up bullshit, because it won't float here.

Vista been a failure - where? all sales figures so far, both retail and OEM have actually been pretty good! so again, stop trying to generate bullshit to prop up your anti-Apple and anti-Microsoft agenda.

How about instead of spreading lies, you actually spend some time fixing the deficiencies in your operating system - then maybe people might voluntarily move to it.

Edited 2007-12-04 23:55

In that case the customer can damn straight pay for that support.

Using a gratis OS and demanding support like you had paid 500$, while you are sitting in the corner and whining about the evil non-paid developers that don't have time for you right now because they have a life outside your computer problems, just isn't fair.

Contribute or shut up.

""Non-tech people should *never* have to see command-line. ""

Give examples

//Give examples//

My neighbour, my dad, my sister, my wife, my co-workers, my .... lots of non-tech people.

.. Which most likely have a friend/relative/IT man that does the heavy lifting for them.

I've yet to see a single joe-Windows-user that managed to solve a major problem (broken installation/missing DLL/missing driver with no CD/etc) on its own.

- Gilboa

- using a Wacom tablet now requires to edit xorg.conf;
- screen rotation (for LCD with panning support) still needs you to edit xorg.conf, then you can install the gnome applet and it will work;
- as usual, if you want to input any language using scim (Chinese, Korean, Japanese, etc...) but you're in an "occidental" locale, you also have to edit some files in addition to using System>Language settings. It's been like that since they broke it from Hoary to Breezy, and even though there's long and documented bug reports in Launchpad, nobody cared about it, except the users - I did set up a wiki to help people like me, but you still have to DIY (see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SCIM).

I love Ubuntu, but these problem have been going on for *years*, have been documented by users, bug report filled and solvable by main devs whenever they'd like to solve them.

However, Ubuntu release notes *never* pointed them, even when they were definite regression and would mess user's system (especially the whole scim fiasco). Reviews (even OSNews reviews) don't talk about them either, even though one is a showstopper (scim) for many people, and one a serious issue (wacom).

Edited 2007-12-04 21:39

Canonical broke the vesa framebuffer in 7.10. Luckily I'm not the first one to have noticed this, so there was a thread about it in the forums. I'm starting to get the impression that Canonical doesn't build on releases. They seem to start out at square zero then see how far they can get on each release.

I don't think many reviewers live with the system for a long time. I suspect that most of them just install a OS under a VM, like VMware or VirtualBox, then write a review after playing with it for five minutes.

I think tech-journalism needs to have more long term reviews of OSes. Living with them day in and out on real hardware brings up a lot more faults. The high level fly-bys that pass as in dept reviews are just crap, and they do nothing for those of use who actually want to further our understanding of the OS.

A few command line related observations:
1) as someone already mentioned the command line is the easiest howto you can give, because you don't have to explain anything to a user about complex work that they have to do. Compare a windows howto to an ubuntu howto. Simple networking howtos on windows are pages long, filled with dozens of screenshots of config windows that all looks almost identical. A Linux howto is generally one page culminating in a few CLI commands with instructions "Open a console, and copy-paste" Can it get much simpler or more straightforward then copy-paste?

2. While people have already brought up the cli vs regedit argument, I prefer to reference the mac os 10.5. In a post earlier this week in the "mac osx10.5 is the new vista, the "3d" dock issue was brought up by many people. This was quickly trivialized by mac users with a simple fix:

"To make dock 2D go to terminal and type the following:
defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES
killall Dock

To make dock 3D
defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean NO
killall Dock

Granted it should be a preference item, but why does everyone whine so much about this?"

So apparently, it's no big deal to use the CLI is MacOS when setting "Power User" settings, but in Linux using the CLI for anything is immediately viewed as absurd. It's somewhat hypocritical, in that the mac cli, which is just a UNIX cli anyways, is seen as a feature that makes OSX more useful, flexible, and powerful, but the linux cli gets such a bad rap.

Edited 2007-12-05 19:31

The same can be said of vista, and xp, and macos...

There is hardware that worked in xp which doesnt work in vista.
There was hardware that worked in 98 that didn't work in xp.

There are things on windows for which you need to manually edit the registry, which is even harder than the command line and easier to break.

Many things are simply easier on the command line, especially from the perspective of an experienced user telling someone inexperienced how to do things, consider the following contrived example:

Type: "sudo apt-get install tcpdump" and enter your password when asked

Click on the package management program, once it loads find and click on the "select new packages" option, once that loads find the subsection called network tools and click on the little triangle next to it, make sure the triangle is now pointing downwards and you should see a new list of things underneath it which are slightly indented, look in that list for something entitled "tcpdump", when you've found it click on the little square to the right of the word tcpdump so that there is a tick displayed inside it, then find the install button at the bottom of the window and click on it.

People are not happy when they have a hardware they spent money for and it won't work anymore.

Well, this kind of observation is really poinless.

If you want to run an operating system, just go and buy hardware that work with it!

You do the same with Vista, OS X and all the other OS: before buying something you check that it works with your Operating System and the rest of your hardware, so, why should it be different with Linux?

You are a bit confused there, buddy. You have got it the wrong way around.

Ubuntu works with far more "off the shelf printers and scanners in a plug-n-play sort of way" than Vista does.

If you have an older printer or scanner, and you plug it in to your new Vista box, it is quite likely Vista won't recognise it and that the drivers that came on the CD with your printer or scanner are XP drivers that won't work with Vista.

http://vistaincompatible.com/forums/YaBB.pl?board=hardware

"Non-tech people should *never* have to see command-line. "

Nor should they have to use regedit, or know things like sysoc.inf to remove stuff like windows messenger from their desktops, but they need to.

No, installing MORE software to tweak their computers isn't right either because it requires knowing basic troubleshooting which they shouldn't have to know either.

Wait, to use Windows they DO need to know that.

If they don't they pay service fees to folks that do.

No matter what the OS is there is always a need to get under the hood. To discredit an OS for providing flexibility is silly.

There's a difference between providing flexibility and requiring specialized technical knowledge from non-technical users in order to accomplish something that *should* be simple.

As you pointed out, Windows has plenty of problems in that department too - but that doesn't negate the areas where Ubuntu and other distos need improvement. Windows isn't really a great metric to use in terms of usability - it doesn't set the bar terribly high.

I wasn't trying to imply that it doesn't need to improve, only that there will always be value in having the capability available.

Sometimes it's the easiest, and fastest way to accomplish something in any OS. That was the point I was trying to make. :-D

I don't contest the value in having the capability available, just that non-technical users shouldn't have to deal with the lower-level stuff if they don't want to. Complex tools are a given when a user is performing complex tasks, but they shouldn't be necessary for simple stuff.

I totally agree with you on the second point, though. The key is balancing the two goals IMHO and I think it is possible to accommodate both the casual and the hardcore users.

Hey, it's just like Windows!

Considering the fact that I just fixed a network problem (packet drop) in my parent's XP by using the netsh shell, I doubt that -any- OS is truly tech-free (by your standards)

Plus, what makes you think that using a very complicated GUI (regedit) is easier then using the command line?

- Gilboa

kubuntu is the best i think but this last release was the worst ever. There are still so many bugs it is not funny. I'm also amazed how they can take some tested and true app like konqueror and make it as buggy as it is. If you use it in another Linux it works fine. But I would still use it over MS.

"Ubuntu is getting better with every release but I feel it is not there yet. Some tasks still require going to the command-line. Non-tech people should *never* have to see command-line."
To work for avg win and mac users this is true... thankfully, pretty much any hardware and system config tasks of avg users can be done with a gui in both Mandriva and Opensuse. Mandriva having the easier to use control center interface, and suse one being a little more powerful, though not as intuitive as the Mandriva one. I personally think the Mandy Control Center is better than either the Windows or Mac one. Ubuntu still has a long way to go there, though is doing better in a few areas, mainly style, community and PR.

"""As for the article, I have been hearing about the year of the linux desktop for almost a decade now. I'll believe it when I see it."""

I've been discussing this recently, my conclusion is that we'll know xxxx (or no specific year) was the year of linux on the desktop years after the fact.

for example, maybe we'll say in 2020 "yeah you remember, feature the evolution we saw in in 2008 really made the curve make a significant bend, and adoption started to rise dramitically".

will it be the focus on polish (that ubuntu now has, but fedora isn't much worse), will it be some sort of marketing drive, will it be the press, will it be this year or next year or will it ever be?

we'll only know it after it happened

This "Year of the linux desktop" you speak of, i've got news for you, linux has been on the desktop for many years now.

Linux IS a serious threat to Windows thats why Microsoft is throwing every bit of FUD at it. Once Linux lifts off in the OEM market proper Apple will be chocking on it's smoke.

Same here, and its name has been either Debian or SuSE/SUSE/openSUSE.
Never Ubuntu.

""Apple and MS, but that wont even be a serious "battle"""

I belive that Apple were at a full 14% at there height, although its interesting that their current sights are not really on the large market share...its not even a battle they are fighting.

It the short term its either a missed opportunity for apple, or a shrewd business decision. Although nothing is going to be little is to be gained from playing safe.

"linux desktop for almost a decade now."

Have you...good for you. Although I am not sure what you mean by this statement, The functional Desktop has been in place for several years, Superior Desktop alternatives have been available for two. OEM offering boxes in real numbers is getting there...what do you mean. Is GNU a real desktop alternative the answer has been yes for some time...or any of these times.

If you mean growth in market share GNU is the fastest growing OS currently, and this trend is set to continue.

Although I'm sure your talking about majority market share. Now thats an interesting predication. 5 years 10 years...never, and patents haven't even started hotting up.

I was making a reference to the puff pieces that the tech media likes to put out on slow news days. They have been implying a mass exodus from windows to linux for almost a decade now. AFAIK linux is at ~1% of the desktop market atm.



For the more technically inclined, I would agree with you. It has been easy enough to work with that a geeky user could get going with it for at least a few years now. For the general population, I don't agree with you. Gutsy comes damn close though. bulletproof X is going to help alot, I would give it one or two more versions though.

Something to keep in mind is that market reality and OS quality don't always go hand in hand. BeOS and Amiga were both best in class in their respective time frames.



IMHO this will hit a peak. Where it will be remains to be seen.



I really doubt that. In my dream world, what I would love to see happen is linux take over in the business though, and have MS ditch windows and offer solutions on linux. OSX could have the home and creative markets, and due to its unix base we could have fantastic interop across the board. I doubt that would ever happen, but it would be cool.

"I was making a reference to the puff pieces that the tech media likes to put out on slow news days. They have been implying a mass exodus from windows to linux for almost a decade now. AFAIK linux is at ~1% of the desktop market atm. "

Prove it! It wouldn't surprise me but prove it!

"I would give it one or two more versions though." A year!? thats a blink of an eye, and thats 4 versions of Linux 2 of X, maybe even some OpenOffice goodness etc etc. Oh and in a year Vista will be 2 years old

"BeOS and Amiga were both best in class in their respective time frames. " And Amiga only worked on its own hardware, and BeOS is nowhere near as popular as GNU.....or as open.

"IMHO this will hit a peak." ...and even the most conservative estimates put its growth at 14% in one month....this one, and why should it *ever* hit its peak

"I really doubt that. In my dream world, what I would love to see happen is linux take over in the business though, and have MS ditch windows and offer solutions on linux. OSX could have the home and creative markets, and due to its unix base we could have fantastic interop across the board. I doubt that would ever happen"

lol, yes because focusing on separate markets has really worked well from a competition point of view...oh wait no it doesn't people want the same at home as they do at work, thats without familiarity working well on the server for both Microsoft and GNU...Now what happened to Unix

Edited 2007-12-04 23:15

""Competition in the market is good for everyone""


;) It would be nice if some Vista Users remember that when they are defending the more obscene Monopolistic abuses.

...can I use that as a quote from you

You can definately use that as a quote from me. I have never defended "monopolistic" abuses, especially "obscene" ones.

<ot rant>
In any argument I have had with you about DRM, I have been arguing about the idea, not the implementation. I don't have a problem with DRM, I do however have a problem with AACS, and refuse to buy HD-DVDs because of it. It is naive to say that there should be no protection at all on media under no circumstance. It is just as naive to go to the level the MPAA has with ACSS, since people will crack it no matter what they do. All they do is hurt their legitimate paying customers. Same deal with windows activation, people will always find a way to hack it. That doesnt mean MS should just let them do whatever they want, but they should keep that fact in mind when developing protection against it.
</ot rant>

""You can definately use that as a quote from me. I have never defended "monopolistic" abuses, especially "obscene" ones.""

is this you on OOXML

"MS Office uses it by default. Since it has more market share then everything else put together, I would say that it has long since hit critical mass, and you really need to come up with good reasons NOT to use it, since it is what the rest of the world operates on."

"Granted, it is a move in the right direction, and simple documents will be easy to parse by third partys."

Not exactly chastising them is one. .

Oh year and then you take a pot shot at apple for there *loose* DRM as opposed to Vista's Orwellian DRM. Hows that spyware working out for you.

OOXML isnt an abuse of their monopoly, it is a switch in formats (and a move in the right direction). Adding hidden APIs to the operating system for use only in microsoft products, or pressuring hardware venders to not offer alternative operating systems pre-installed are anti-competitive.

In that post, I was responding to somebody saying that OOXML is only used by Office, ODF is used by everything else. What I was saying is that point is moot, since office alone is MORE then everything else put together.



I wasn't taking potshots at apple for their DRM, I was pointing out that apple and vendor lock-in go together like peanut butter and chocolate. As someone who happily uses apples various product stacks, I can say that personally I don't care. If I remember right, I was arguing that "lock-in" only sucks when you have to use bits that you don't want to. By tightly coupling a stack, venders are free to provide integration that you wouldn't otherwise see.

You want to use OSX? You are buying a computer from apple, that will be bundled with software covering most creative areas. Their music software is tightly integrated into their music store, and to their portable mp3 player. Their OS is integrated with their .mac online service. Do mac users care? Nope. By contrast, but just bundling WMP with windows, the EU goes up in flames. Imagine if you had to have a Zune to access files you bought in their music store.



Actually, really well. The more I use ASP.net, the more I love it. I am able to deliver more, faster then I would have ever been able to with J2EE. I still chuckle to myself whenever I do something in a line or two of code that would have taken hours to do in java.

Keep in mind that Microsoft does not directly battle Apple, but does so through the OEMs such as HP, IBM/Lenovo, Dell, Gateway, etc. So while Apple may have a good marketing campaign as they do now against Vista, they still have to contend with HP, in other words they go up against a double edge sword. As good as Apple can do, they will always be limited in their decision to lock the OS onto their hardware only. At the end of the day it is hard for Apple to compete with HP workstations, desktops, etc.. that are hundreds of dollars less. When Apple had their "own" CPU it was one thing, but to now use Intel PCs makes it much more difficult for them to justify the cost differential.

As for this Linux vs. Vista debate. I just am so tired of these and find these childish and silly. But allow me to point out something that needs to be said. There is a whole industry from applications to gaming that support the Windows OS, and as such will not be particularly interested in seeing Windows lose market share. As much as people would love to see software written for multiple OSs, it just will not happen as this obviously gives rise to development and support cost. No need to drag out the economic dynamics of this as I am sure most of you understand these basic principles. The same can also be said of hardware MFRs. Supporting multiple OSs on a limited basis is one thing, but to give general support across all channels is another.

To put it in a basic sense, HP may offer a limited line of workstations with Suse, put the costs of offering Suse alongside Windows on all desktops, including consumer is just not economical for them. Most importantly HP is a Microsoft reseller, as such they would stand to lose revenue from the sale of the OS. Dell has done this on a limited basis, but did so in a way as to knowingly target an audience that would buy these computers simply because it had Linux. Therefore they were able to price these as not very competitive offerings, but this would not translate across the board.

One last topic that really gets heated: DRM. The one aspect that people just simply look over is that the entertainment industry are the ones behind DRM, not Microsoft or Apple. When you put out a consumer product such as XP or Vista, you have a choice to support DRM and allow HD playback, or not to support DRM and have no HD. The media industry would still continue with DRM regardless of whether an OS would support it, simply because set top boxes would. The market share of media PCs is still so small as to force any changes on this. So when Microsoft enabled DRM, while this gave excellent ammo to Microsoft haters, they did so knowing that the vast majority of their customers would have demanded this, or more specifically would have demanded the ability to play HD movies and content. Keep in mind please that the majority of consumers, say what you want about them, do little about DRM but would know that their HD movie is not playable on their new laptop.

The problem for Linux is that not supporting DRM limits the ability of the OS to be widely accepted. Unless DRM can be done away with completely, which it may very well be soon , everyone from consumers to the OEMs will not want to deal with Linux on a broad scale.

Ubuntu, more than any other distro has a good chance at building some user base, it is just that for years to come they will not be able to garner any decent market share simply because their are non-Microsoft forces that will equally be dead set against adopting this OS.

""The one aspect that people just simply look over is that the entertainment industry are the ones behind DRM, not Microsoft or Apple.""

Its worth noting that Apple is larger thatn the entire Music industry worldwide , I'm absolutely certain that the even the record industry wants Apple's monopoly through there implementation to go away. As for Microsoft *giggle* I'm sure they got bullied by those nasty Music.Movie people. have an intimate working with the OS, or both aren't looking to earn Billions for the arrangement.

""Microsoft does not directly battle Apple,""

Playforsure (sorry) I mean Zune vs Apple.

""Linux is that not supporting DRM limits the ability of the OS to be widely accepted.""

I think we will see a lot more of this argument, and I suspect we will see it with the added twist word choice...although I suspect that this is a complex argument. I also suspect that if the choice is Draconian DRM vs Faster more stable PC at the expense of various content suppliers it will be an interesting future. In reality it depends on whether the consumer can stomach DRM.