There is a difference between home desktop and a office workstation. Linux is more then ready for a office workstation, it has been for a while. Ready for the home desktop? Absolutely not. Why? GAMES. People don't care if they can play xbill and all those other little fun games, although I like them. :) The average user wants to be able to play his/her Warcraft III, Medal of Honor, Everquest, etc. And he/she doesn't want to have to spend the better part of a day or week trying to figure out how to tweak wine so he/she can do this. I don't mind doing this, but then again I'm not the average user. I have been using Linux on my home desktop for 3+ years now. The only reason we dual boot windows xp is because my wife and I are also gamers. I absolutely detest wine and all it's mutations. I think it's a waste of time. You want something to run on Linux? Then port the damn thing to Linux already and stop wasting valuable resources on an emulator. Linux will never be a viable home desktop platform until development companies start porting their games to Linux, and stop relying on wine. So yes, Linux is more then ready for the workstation. Linux is far from ready for the home desktop of the average consumer and I think it will be for a long time to come.... and I think the main reason for this is wine. I have the feeling it's doing more damage then good to Linux on the desktop. Tough for new users, I agree. When it comes to gaming and you tell them they can use wine, you will lose almost all of your battles with that. Can you blame a user for not switching to Linux when they spend a month trying to get a game they like working in Linux and even then it's not guarenteed they will get it working? I can't blame them. As much as I hate windows and love Linux, I'm sorry to say, windows is the best choice in this situation. The prefered OS for gaming will *always*, own the home desktop (Home/Office workstation is a different story). I'm done my rant for the night, good night all :)
Trevor > I'm not using XP on my desktop. > > I didn't use / like Win2K untill SP2. > > I used windows 95 untill 98se. > > I will not use Win ME. > > What do I like? > I like windows 2000 for desktops, I like MAC OS X even better, but I > don't know enough. > > I like BSD / Linux for servers. > > I'm not convinced, not even close, that Distributions are ready for the > desktop. > > I'm watching a proficient windows user, in my apartment, strugle to get > his MSN to work on Mandrake 9.0 > > I'll help anyone switch. But without help... its tough for new users.
