On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 05:55:33 -0400, Stephen Harding wrote:
phil hunt wrote:

Have most end users even used Linux? I contend that for many tasks
-- examples being browsing the web, reading email and Usenet, doing
word processing, Linux-based systems do the job perfectly well,
without the issues of cost, insecurity and vendor lock-in associated
with Microsoft.

Linux is a great OS. I really prefer Unix (Solaris/Linux) to a Windows
platform.

But I think a lot of the caution amongst business in using Linux is the
view of it being "hacker software" with no one "in charge".

That's true to some extent, but it's a lot less true than it used to
be.

Business
needs someone always available to help solve OS problems and the view
is that isn't there with Linux. Asking a newsgroup isn't the same as
having MS available a telephone call away.

No, it's better, in my experience anyway.

When I have a computer problem, if I can't fix it, I use
Google (both on web and groups) to see if anyone's had the same
problem. That usually turns up a fix. If it doesn't, I read the
manual (sign of desperation!) If that doesn't work, I ask on relvant
ngs and/or mailing lists. After doing all this, i will typically
have an answer, if an answer exists.

When I telephone helplines, I usually get someone assumeing I'm too
thick to describe the symptoms of my problem correctly (which is
probably true for many callers), or when stuiff from two suppliers
is concerned, each blames the other's products. If it's MS, the
usual advice is "reboot", or "upgrade to the latest version", oh and
I think they charge something like $99 per incident, whether they
can fix your problem or not.

Not certain what Linux
tech support actually is though.

You can actually buy support contracts for Linux.

MS is trashed by many a programmer, but I think they do make reasonably
good products (although their concepts of system security seem almost
a non-concern at times). It's plenty good enough for most users.

Attribute it to my increasing anti-European attitudes, but I think the
Euro move away from MS is primarily intended to undercut US economic
power.

To some extent. But I think undercutting American spying
capabilities is probably a more common motive -- the German security
ministry funds open-source encryption software partly for this
reason. MS is perceived as having secret backdoors that the USA
could use to spy on computers, and that's one of the main reasons
the Chinese govmt is going over to Linux for all its own computers
(the other is a desire to use local products).

Of course, this isn't a reason why lots of Americans are
increasingly using Linux. In the USA, as elsewhere, Linux+Apache is
the most common web server platform.

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