G'day Silvertones,
yup - exactly what I'd expect. Linux is an excellent choice if all you do is surf the net. That's probably its greatest strength, but I stand by my claim that until it becomes a "white good" in that all the major games and application software houses produce off the shelf applications that install with minimal user input and zero user understanding of what their computer contains then it cannot compete with windoze as a truly mainstream consumer product. And there isn't enough standardisation for that.
Please understand guys, I'm coming from a perspective of supporting systems for people who are complete computing ignoramuses. Case in point, Silvertones, you at least know what a wi-fi hotspot is. A good proportion of the general public would have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, but these same people can go to the local computer games outlet, buy a CD or DVD with a game on it, insert it in their windoze box, follow the prompts when it autoruns and install and then play their game - no messing around, everything gets found for them and it just works (well most of the time).
You cannot do this with linux - hopefully that includes a "yet"... I had high hopes for Red Hat many years ago, and then more recently Suse after Novell acquired it, but still they do not have enough penetration at the desktop to be considered "standard linux" and until there
is a standard linux it will not be a consumer product. Windows wins by default because the competition is disorganised by comparison.
Then you look at things like doctors surgeries or accountancy practices, or maybe pharmacies, or legal firms, your local motor mechanic & etc.. There are no mainstream vertical market products in these industries that run on a linux desktop. They
all run on windoze platforms. Where wordprocessing and spreadsheets are required, then they expect MS Office, and directly interface with its API's. In many cases they now also expect databases to run on MSSQL - either the full version or in many cases MSDE (now called SQL Server Express).
I would love to see this change.
Actually, we'll all know that linux is mainstream when PG Music makes BIAB and RB for native linux (NO "wine"ing now

) in the same way as they are supporting Windows and the Mac.