Can Linux beat XP in homes yet or NOT?

[Temlakos]

Mustafa Qasim wrote:
> Yes! I agree with you Mr. Erich but can you or anyone else tell me the 
> key factors that are involved when convincing or guiding a person how 
> much it is easy to move to Linux or how we can make it easy for them 
> to take a test drive of Linux and then make them realize that it's 
> really better their one.
>
> I thinks the "Satisfaction factor" comes here. What we need is to 
> build their satisfaction factor in Linux greater then Windows then 
> they'll naturally realize it instead of forcing them to make a blind 
> jump. No one here will make a blind jump and if we force them to do it 
> and after that we couldn't help them too much to keep them in ... then 
> they will never ever come back... :P ...
>
> so, what r the points to build the satisfaction factor of a person on 
> Linux?
>
First, consider the price. Many, many distributions are available free 
of charge. Those that are not, are available for service or media 
preparation fees that are quite nominal--that is to say, low--when you 
compare them to a single-seat license fee for Windows Vista Home (or 
whatever they call it today). /All/ distributions are free of 
/restriction/ on modification of code, copying among more than one 
machine, and so forth and so on.

Second, as many have pointed out, consider ease of use. (I will discuss 
interoperability later.) I can do all of my e-mail, browsing, word 
processing, spreadsheet building, presentation building, program 
development, and a host of other work using Linux and various FOSS 
applications. And as it happens, I acquired all of this software free of 
charge. I have even recommended Windows versions of some FOSS software 
(OpenOffice and Mozilla Firefox) to Windows users whose installations of 
MS Office or MS Internet Explorer were no longer operable because of 
registry corruption or other issues.

The third issue is interoperability--that is, will Linux open documents 
in certain proprietary formats? With some distributions, the answer is 
yes. With others, the best advice is to create documents in FOSS formats 
instead--all very well until someone wants to open a text, spreadsheet, 
or multimedia document /that someone else authored/ and distributed as 
MP3, WMV, MOV, or whatever. Happily, /even with Fedora/, solutions to 
that sort of interoperability problem are available--and if FOSS formats 
continue to gain in popularity, then this issue will become less acute 
and might even resolve completely.

But by far the most important issue is /technical supportability/. 
Technical support from a firm like Microsoft is often difficult to 
obtain. I know this because I intercede between technical-support 
departments on one hand, and end users on the other, as a consultant. 
The biggest problem is that technical-support "specialists" at these 
companies often make assumptions about the customer, assumptions that 
are simply without warrant. Whereas, if I publish a technical-support 
question to a list like this, hundreds of other users worldwide can 
start thinking about it, and often provide an answer within minutes.

Linux and other FOSS software is so much better supportable /precisely 
because it is open/. Now /that/ is practicality.

In the early days of FOSS, someone started an Open Hardware Standards 
Initiative. I'm not sure what came of that effort, but I do know that a 
number of hardware builders have gladly cooperated with FOSS-oriented 
driver writers, in order to increase their own sales. That alone ensures 
that Linux can drive most peripheral devices out of the box. This number 
can only increase with time.

Temlakos