It seems fairly clear to me, and nothing said on this thread has remotely changed my mind, that Linux is a loooooooong way from being suitable for use by the "any idiot" fraternity, including myself, regardless of its benefits. Which causes me to ponder. Standby for pondering results.
When MS decide they need another skydillion umptillion dollars to keep their shareholders happy, they issue a new OS which nobody needs but which everybody eventually has to get, because MS are clearly not going to play along if 90% of the PC owners said "No, XP is fine for my needs thanks, you can shove your Vista where the sun don't shine." They simply stop producing XP, and since we're long past the golden days of W98SE when there was no DRM and your disc could be copied ad infinitum, there is no choice.
But wait a minute. MS don't sell computers, they sell operating systems. What if the Dells and Compaqs and HP's of the world said to MS, "we think this new system is completely unnecessary and adds so much to the cost of basic systems which are our bread and butter that we're not going to pay for it. Keep producing XP or we'll go elsewhere."
Right now MS obviously rely on there being nowhere else to go, in other words they are abusing their virtual monopoly. So, where is Linux in all this? I have no idea how a free product works, but wouldn't somebody, a company, a cooperative, whatever, be able to get together less than 1% of the MS budget and drag Linux into the world of being useable by "any idiot" in a relatively short time?
I have long been of the opinion that the vast majority of computer users are overserviced by a factor of lots. That is, they don't use a quarter of what their basic machine is capable of. The only reason I ever changed from W98SE is because it was deliberately made obsolete by new software.
I am probably missing something obvious, but it seems like there is a real opportunity to throw whatever is needed at Linux to get it to an easy interface with no geeky knowledge at all needed, so that Mr Dell can say to Mr Gates, "sorry Bill, we don't need you anymore", as he did to Intel a few years ago, forcing a price cut. Or is the pervasiveness of MS software such that it's already too late, and we are doomed to buying every new and unnecessary OS update they thrust upon us?
Isn't this how the free enterprise system is suposed to work? Competition? I suspect Mac's five year vision for Linux could be made a lot shorter with a couple of billion bucks thrown at it, and lots of anti-Microsoft nerds out there who would leap at the opportunity to get paid for working on it.
Ok, ok, I'm awake now. Sorry, it was just a dream.....
