OK, we are going off-topic here, but:
>Unless the linux operating system come "idiot proof" like
>windows, it will be running in the background in the
>server rooms, supported by techno geeks
HeeheeheeLoLLoL... (gasp...)
Windows as a good example of an idiot-proof system!! I refer you to BEOS or Macintosh as the closest the world has come to idiot-proof.
I don't know where these people are, who have such seamless experiences with Windows, but I can almost guarantee you they are
not the typical end-user. Not even the typical end-user on a corporate network with trained sysadmins.
Please read the following 3 articles, written by a newspaper reporter, about his experience using Windows on the corporate network. (These are from his personal blog)
(start at the 5th paragraph)
(start at the third paragraph)
(start at the 5th paragraph)
THIS IS THE TYPICAL PC USER EXPERIENCE.
His experience is typical of the resignation many people feel at the unpredictable and nonsensical things they have to deal with. "Resignation" is the correct word here. It's not that they think its the best choice; they
have no choice. I firmly believe that the real reason Windows became so popular was not because of its user interface, or that "grandma" can install it (she can't). The real reason is because Windows made it easy for just about anyone to become a developer, or at least to think that they have become a developer. Microsoft had it right. Make a series of tools that pretend to make programming child's play. Who cares if these tools introduce all kinds of interdependency and versioning problems? Who cares if these tools produce programs with nowhere
near the robustness of C, C++, TCL/Tk, etc... No, these problems don't hurt the developers at all. The developer gets a reduced product delivery time, and a radically inflated product support contract, just to keep the program running, and surviving through DLL hell.
Yes, Windows can run over 100,000 applications. So what. This is simply too much. There is so much junky software out in Windows-land that it is hard to find the decent stuff. I don't say this as a grouchy Unix guy. I have spent my time supporting Windows systems in small and medium-sized businesses, and my experience is consistently that Unix (FreeBSD or Linux) would be easier to support in almost every case, as long as the company wasn't limited to a Windows-only version of the software they depended on. Industry-specific software is the worst. I remember one insurance compay customer who had to run through the main CD install, and a whole tray of floppies containing patches and upgrades, every time she needed to install a new workstation, and if certain things weren't done in just the right order, kablooey!! With each new releas, invariably, something wouldn't work right, and we would have to wait on the phone for over an hour for someone to finally tell us to just reinstall it, and it should work. FInally we would discover that the documentation was wrong, or that some DLL was newer than expected, etc...
I'm not trying to say I would put Linux into the hands of the average Windows owner and say "go to town". (Actually, in some cases, it is almost this easy). My point is, the reason Windows is the de facto standard has almost nothing to do with useability, and more to do with Microsoft's timing on the market, and the plethora of 'fast-food' programming that they encouraged.
Yes, a lot of this is indicative of how much computing in general sucks, not just Windows computing, but it seems to me these end-user-land problems are always worse with Windows. -------------------------------------------
Big Brother: "War is Peace" -- Big Business: "Trust is Suspicion"
(
I haven't laughed that hard in a while, took me completely by surprise 
), but Open Source gives them the ability to change functionality that they don't like, or add it where it's lacking. This is the real power behind it. Want a better firewall? Go for it, use all the same libraries the OS uses, feel free. Or download one someone else has written and edit it to your specifications.