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That isn't entirely fair, as Ubuntu admit that the upgrade process was broken in ways that should have been rectified during testing.

While Edgy is experimental in that it includes lots of new and unfamiliar functionality, it is NOT supposed to be an "unstable" release. Numbered Ubuntu releases are all "Stable". Admonishing people for expecting 6.10 to work is not valid. 6.10 is the version displayed on the homepage as the current release of Ubuntu. Nowhere there does it say "beware: ubuntu 6.10 is unstable and should not be used on production machines; it is also likely to fail during installation".

Dont get me wrong, i'm an ubuntu user, and I dont hold this against them. They've held their hands up and taken steps to avoid this cock-up happening again, but lets not rationalise it away as Edgy being an unstable release, because it is absolutely not. They just made some mistakes, and hopefully they have learnt from them.

Recently we have seen many examples of unethical business behavior from Microsoft Corp. Readers of this website respond like they are surprised.

Microsoft is just another company with an obligation to its shareholders to continually increase profits. The tactics it has used to do so have hardly been ethical, but the company is financially successful. What would you do in an authoritative position in Microsoft? Open Office's document format? Issue a press release to all major PC manufacturers that they are freely allowed to install other operating systems? Of course you wouldn't. You would use your authoritative position to make decisions that maximize profits. Just because none of you would ever enter such a position due to your beliefs does not matter.

What did you expect? Stop sitting around hoping that Microsoft will behave ethically and change its ways. It will not. The only way out is for a competitive (powerful, robust, and cost-effective) alternative to exist. Slashdot enjoys an educated readership. If you want to see this company's market share shrink for the benefit of the computing world, make a contribution of time and effort to Microsoft Windows' most cost-effective competitor. Join the Ubuntu Linux community.

Why isn't that WPA information on the ubuntu website?

The article missed this: a reply from one of the open suse devs to the ubuntu=devel list.Wow... When did open source regress back to a high school mentality?

--S

Ubuntu is sort of close... but by refusing to have anything proprietary it will never "just work" because graphics drivers and such aren't free as in beer yet.

Ubuntu 7.04 will have proprietary drivers installed by default to make way for AIGLX and Compiz or Beryl. And they are free as in beer, but they're not free as in speech.

There's a pretty big controversy a-brewin' at the wiki about the decision, but I think it's justified. Some compromises have to be made in order to survive a proprietary world, and it's still primarily free software. I don't want Ubuntu to be left behind as the last major OS without a compositing window manager after Vista launches. What really concerns me is how this'll go over after the Kororaa controversy.

Mark Shuttleworth is reminding the openSUSE devs of one of the choices available to them.

Someone sent an amusing response to the ubuntu mailing list:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/200 6-November/022578.html

The best part; OpenSuse's satirical response _____________ Kubuntu Edgy User

Someone sent an amusing response to the ubuntu mailing list:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/200 6-November/022578.html

If you want full-service, paid support, there is a link on the front page of ubuntu.com. Here, I'll give you this one for nothing:

http://www.ubuntu.com/support/paid

Your options from this point are as follows:
1. Do it yourself
2. Stop being a cheap-ass
3. STFU

You're the one that made choice to lock your data into a platform made by a company that does not care about it's customers. "wgatool" should have been enough of a warning. If something goes wrong, tough shit. It's not like there aren't alternatives. 98, 2000, XP and Vista run very well under VMWare for running apps, btw.

They could have at least used this for some free ones: https://shipit.ubuntu.com/

http://www.ubuntu.com/support/paid Databases formats can easily be interchanged. They don't have to be rewritten. And the training cost is one time only. In fact, if they have a gradual change and not a sudden one as they are trying, they would not feel the pinch.

Also, get Automatix to install codecs and apps that aren't included in the Ubuntu base distribution.

No, no, no, no! Please stop promoting this Automatix crap. It is still poorly implemented and is singlehandedly responsible for what is probably the majority of failed upgrades to new Ubuntu versions. If you recommend Automatix please also subscribe to the ubuntu-users mailing list and help the people that show up there with failed upgrades.

Better to follow the instructions for legally restricted formats or at least use EasyUbuntu which at least is saner than Automatix.

In addition, the GP explicitly said he wanted to use this machine as a web development machine, I don't know why he would need the restricted formats there anyway.

I just downloaded SUSE and I'm getting ready to play around with installing a Linux distro on my pc. However, with the new MS deal, I'm debating using this distro. What would be the recommended distro by Slashdotters? Ubuntu? This will be my first Linux installation and I want to use it for 1) getting more familiar with Linux. 2) development machine for web applications.

Ubuntu is well worth a go. It's probably the easiest and quickest distro to install and get up and running. Also, get Automatix to install codecs and apps that aren't included in the Ubuntu base distribution.

If it bothers you so much, why not try an alternative?

Fedora Core
Ubuntu
Debian
SUSE
Mandriva
Slackware
Gentoo

or any of these?

Or Mac, or BSD, or even Solaris? There's no shortage of options

There's a Wine package for Ubuntu that fixes a couple of bugs associated with WoW. The howto can be found on the excellent Ubuntu wiki at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WorldofWarcraft and details the instructions. It's pretty much a download the package and double click it, then run 'wine WoW.exe -opengl'. This ban rumor pops up periodically but I have yet to encounter any problems.

Hey all,

I'd just like to say (not that I have any sway in these matters) I
strongly disagree with the decision to revert to Dapper artwork for
Edgy. [If I have gotten the wrong impression about this please ignore
the silly rant below]

While I realise it might not meet the sabdfl's expectations or other
Canonical management folk, and ultimately it is his distribution, I
think that it is a bad idea to abandon the new, community driven, Edgy
artwork.

It's Edgy - that was meant to mean that dev's could put new,
disruptive ideas into the distribution without fear that they may be a
little rough around the edges. I think the same should apply to
artwork - it was meant to be an experiment in community created
artwork, and although it may be a little rough around the edges in
places, I think the beta art and the implementations on the wiki
*rock*

In fact the sabd himself said [on the artwork] "I'm sure there will be
rough edges in Edgy - that's the point " [1]

Here is some more links:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/EdgyPropo sals/Summary_18JULY2006
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/EdgyPropo sals/WallpaperProposal

plus everything under https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/EdgyPropo sals/

Before I go on this rant, there was a lot of talk on the mailing lists and the forums about what went wrong. This is just my subjective voice.

I've been following the mailing list since May, and saw as things started falling apart by mid-August. IMO there were many great contributions: niklas weidal did some absolutely gobstopping images. Who did some excellent GDM proposals, and many others contributed with original ideas later in August. However, the process was stifled somewhat to a rigid plan set out at the Paris Conference, and many contributors got very little further than submitting their first few efforts, before being rejected by "The Powers that Be".

There was a Proposal stage, with some great ideas thrown in (a summary of those ideas is in the link above). At the end of the Proposal stage Mark dropped into the mailing list to point at one picture as a basis for all of edgy artwork (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/EdgyProp osals/Summary_18JULY2006?action=AttachFile&do=get& target=lsplash.png). All further proposals were rejected by this point due to the Paris Plan, and the Council spent a great deal of time pondering on what to accept, and finally around mid-August decided to scrap all artwork unrelated to this image. Above all, it fell down to 3 member's contributions, which had encapsulated the "gloss" aspect that everyone was raving on about, but no one could figure out. Unfortunately, many users didn't like the selected outcome, as cogently put by one user on the mailing list: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-art/2006- September/003107.html (BTW this is not my opinion -- I thought the image question was very appetizing)

Not surprisingly, the existing contributors stopped helping out, presumably thinking their work was unappreciated rather than fixing the selected images, and when the final Polish stage arrived at the end of August, all the work was lumped onto 3 people. Around the same time there were a great deal of new contributors, yet they were all snubbed because they were not working on the existing artwork. Mark decided to revert to Dapper and try and brainstorm something with the 3 long-standing contributors. Whether that turned out well, I don't know, as I've long since stopped using Ubuntu as my distro de jour.

So, in the end the whole process became massively inflexible due to a one cycle pre-engineered artwork submission process, and a lack of direction from Mark when it mattered, because although plenty of people wanted to contribute, they couldn't. Yes, the story is much longer: there weren't the appropriate tools / the Wiki was a mess, but when I look at the Fedora Artwork process, they thrive on exactly the same toolset, so I don't think that can be used as an argument.

Here is some more links:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/EdgyPropo sals/Summary_18JULY2006
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/EdgyPropo sals/WallpaperProposal

plus everything under https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/EdgyPropo sals/

Before I go on this rant, there was a lot of talk on the mailing lists and the forums about what went wrong. This is just my subjective voice.

I've been following the mailing list since May, and saw as things started falling apart by mid-August. IMO there were many great contributions: niklas weidal did some absolutely gobstopping images. Who did some excellent GDM proposals, and many others contributed with original ideas later in August. However, the process was stifled somewhat to a rigid plan set out at the Paris Conference, and many contributors got very little further than submitting their first few efforts, before being rejected by "The Powers that Be".

There was a Proposal stage, with some great ideas thrown in (a summary of those ideas is in the link above). At the end of the Proposal stage Mark dropped into the mailing list to point at one picture as a basis for all of edgy artwork (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/EdgyProp osals/Summary_18JULY2006?action=AttachFile&do=get& target=lsplash.png). All further proposals were rejected by this point due to the Paris Plan, and the Council spent a great deal of time pondering on what to accept, and finally around mid-August decided to scrap all artwork unrelated to this image. Above all, it fell down to 3 member's contributions, which had encapsulated the "gloss" aspect that everyone was raving on about, but no one could figure out. Unfortunately, many users didn't like the selected outcome, as cogently put by one user on the mailing list: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-art/2006- September/003107.html (BTW this is not my opinion -- I thought the image question was very appetizing)

Not surprisingly, the existing contributors stopped helping out, presumably thinking their work was unappreciated rather than fixing the selected images, and when the final Polish stage arrived at the end of August, all the work was lumped onto 3 people. Around the same time there were a great deal of new contributors, yet they were all snubbed because they were not working on the existing artwork. Mark decided to revert to Dapper and try and brainstorm something with the 3 long-standing contributors. Whether that turned out well, I don't know, as I've long since stopped using Ubuntu as my distro de jour.

So, in the end the whole process became massively inflexible due to a one cycle pre-engineered artwork submission process, and a lack of direction from Mark when it mattered, because although plenty of people wanted to contribute, they couldn't. Yes, the story is much longer: there weren't the appropriate tools / the Wiki was a mess, but when I look at the Fedora Artwork process, they thrive on exactly the same toolset, so I don't think that can be used as an argument.

Here is some more links:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/EdgyPropo sals/Summary_18JULY2006
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/EdgyPropo sals/WallpaperProposal

plus everything under https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/EdgyPropo sals/

Before I go on this rant, there was a lot of talk on the mailing lists and the forums about what went wrong. This is just my subjective voice.

I've been following the mailing list since May, and saw as things started falling apart by mid-August. IMO there were many great contributions: niklas weidal did some absolutely gobstopping images. Who did some excellent GDM proposals, and many others contributed with original ideas later in August. However, the process was stifled somewhat to a rigid plan set out at the Paris Conference, and many contributors got very little further than submitting their first few efforts, before being rejected by "The Powers that Be".

There was a Proposal stage, with some great ideas thrown in (a summary of those ideas is in the link above). At the end of the Proposal stage Mark dropped into the mailing list to point at one picture as a basis for all of edgy artwork (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/EdgyProp osals/Summary_18JULY2006?action=AttachFile&do=get& target=lsplash.png). All further proposals were rejected by this point due to the Paris Plan, and the Council spent a great deal of time pondering on what to accept, and finally around mid-August decided to scrap all artwork unrelated to this image. Above all, it fell down to 3 member's contributions, which had encapsulated the "gloss" aspect that everyone was raving on about, but no one could figure out. Unfortunately, many users didn't like the selected outcome, as cogently put by one user on the mailing list: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-art/2006- September/003107.html (BTW this is not my opinion -- I thought the image question was very appetizing)

Not surprisingly, the existing contributors stopped helping out, presumably thinking their work was unappreciated rather than fixing the selected images, and when the final Polish stage arrived at the end of August, all the work was lumped onto 3 people. Around the same time there were a great deal of new contributors, yet they were all snubbed because they were not working on the existing artwork. Mark decided to revert to Dapper and try and brainstorm something with the 3 long-standing contributors. Whether that turned out well, I don't know, as I've long since stopped using Ubuntu as my distro de jour.

So, in the end the whole process became massively inflexible due to a one cycle pre-engineered artwork submission process, and a lack of direction from Mark when it mattered, because although plenty of people wanted to contribute, they couldn't. Yes, the story is much longer: there weren't the appropriate tools / the Wiki was a mess, but when I look at the Fedora Artwork process, they thrive on exactly the same toolset, so I don't think that can be used as an argument.

Here is some more links:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/EdgyPropo sals/Summary_18JULY2006
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/EdgyPropo sals/WallpaperProposal

plus everything under https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/EdgyPropo sals/

Before I go on this rant, there was a lot of talk on the mailing lists and the forums about what went wrong. This is just my subjective voice.

I've been following the mailing list since May, and saw as things started falling apart by mid-August. IMO there were many great contributions: niklas weidal did some absolutely gobstopping images. Who did some excellent GDM proposals, and many others contributed with original ideas later in August. However, the process was stifled somewhat to a rigid plan set out at the Paris Conference, and many contributors got very little further than submitting their first few efforts, before being rejected by "The Powers that Be".

There was a Proposal stage, with some great ideas thrown in (a summary of those ideas is in the link above). At the end of the Proposal stage Mark dropped into the mailing list to point at one picture as a basis for all of edgy artwork (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/EdgyProp osals/Summary_18JULY2006?action=AttachFile&do=get& target=lsplash.png). All further proposals were rejected by this point due to the Paris Plan, and the Council spent a great deal of time pondering on what to accept, and finally around mid-August decided to scrap all artwork unrelated to this image. Above all, it fell down to 3 member's contributions, which had encapsulated the "gloss" aspect that everyone was raving on about, but no one could figure out. Unfortunately, many users didn't like the selected outcome, as cogently put by one user on the mailing list: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-art/2006- September/003107.html (BTW this is not my opinion -- I thought the image question was very appetizing)

Not surprisingly, the existing contributors stopped helping out, presumably thinking their work was unappreciated rather than fixing the selected images, and when the final Polish stage arrived at the end of August, all the work was lumped onto 3 people. Around the same time there were a great deal of new contributors, yet they were all snubbed because they were not working on the existing artwork. Mark decided to revert to Dapper and try and brainstorm something with the 3 long-standing contributors. Whether that turned out well, I don't know, as I've long since stopped using Ubuntu as my distro de jour.

So, in the end the whole process became massively inflexible due to a one cycle pre-engineered artwork submission process, and a lack of direction from Mark when it mattered, because although plenty of people wanted to contribute, they couldn't. Yes, the story is much longer: there weren't the appropriate tools / the Wiki was a mess, but when I look at the Fedora Artwork process, they thrive on exactly the same toolset, so I don't think that can be used as an argument.

Here is some more links:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/EdgyPropo sals/Summary_18JULY2006
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/EdgyPropo sals/WallpaperProposal

plus everything under https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/EdgyPropo sals/

Before I go on this rant, there was a lot of talk on the mailing lists and the forums about what went wrong. This is just my subjective voice.

I've been following the mailing list since May, and saw as things started falling apart by mid-August. IMO there were many great contributions: niklas weidal did some absolutely gobstopping images. Who did some excellent GDM proposals, and many others contributed with original ideas later in August. However, the process was stifled somewhat to a rigid plan set out at the Paris Conference, and many contributors got very little further than submitting their first few efforts, before being rejected by "The Powers that Be".

There was a Proposal stage, with some great ideas thrown in (a summary of those ideas is in the link above). At the end of the Proposal stage Mark dropped into the mailing list to point at one picture as a basis for all of edgy artwork (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Incoming/EdgyProp osals/Summary_18JULY2006?action=AttachFile&do=get& target=lsplash.png). All further proposals were rejected by this point due to the Paris Plan, and the Council spent a great deal of time pondering on what to accept, and finally around mid-August decided to scrap all artwork unrelated to this image. Above all, it fell down to 3 member's contributions, which had encapsulated the "gloss" aspect that everyone was raving on about, but no one could figure out. Unfortunately, many users didn't like the selected outcome, as cogently put by one user on the mailing list: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-art/2006- September/003107.html (BTW this is not my opinion -- I thought the image question was very appetizing)

Not surprisingly, the existing contributors stopped helping out, presumably thinking their work was unappreciated rather than fixing the selected images, and when the final Polish stage arrived at the end of August, all the work was lumped onto 3 people. Around the same time there were a great deal of new contributors, yet they were all snubbed because they were not working on the existing artwork. Mark decided to revert to Dapper and try and brainstorm something with the 3 long-standing contributors. Whether that turned out well, I don't know, as I've long since stopped using Ubuntu as my distro de jour.

So, in the end the whole process became massively inflexible due to a one cycle pre-engineered artwork submission process, and a lack of direction from Mark when it mattered, because although plenty of people wanted to contribute, they couldn't. Yes, the story is much longer: there weren't the appropriate tools / the Wiki was a mess, but when I look at the Fedora Artwork process, they thrive on exactly the same toolset, so I don't think that can be used as an argument.

this looks pretty good

It's got a link to it in TFA.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Specs/EdgyArtworkP lan/Produce/Incoming/CurrentDefault
I quite like it.

DOH!

PS
RE: Slow Down Cowboy!

Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.

What idiot decided that no one would be allowed to post corrections!!!

Look, either allow people to edit their posts or allows correction posts!!!

Start
I noticed that those textures on the front page are annoyingly vivid stuff that I would never want on a desktop.

But searching through the maze of submissions I found a few that I thought were cooler that what's was in there.

But really, there was a lot of annoying artwork, all better packaged as optional than as default.

As far as I can tell Ubuntu installation disks are currently limited to CD size, not DVD size, so there probably isn't a lot of extra space for alternate art. Given that fact, I think artwork really belongs in a separate package.

I'd rather see features than artwork given the choice. If it were up to me, it would come with a firewall control gui, Wine, Eclipse and Sun Java etc. Though it's not as bad as Linspire in requiring an internet connection to get any features.

I wonder why there isn't a DVD install version for people who won't have access to the internet after install. That would be awfully useful in packaging for countries where fast internet access isn't a given.

I suppose that the licensing is the reason there's no Sun Java, but since Java was just GPL released this week, I hope future versions will have it.

While I will freely admit that I have NOT seen Edgy installed, the login splash seen on this page and labeled as the Dapper login splash (which, theoretically anyway, they rolled back to for Edgy), is clearly different from every login splash listed here, as the new artwork for the Edgy release.

And, doing a bit more searching, we can see that the Dapper artwork is very different from the Edgy artwork linked to. Again, this may not be what actually shipped with Edgy, but it's what we're told shipped with it. You seem to have firsthand experience with it; which set of artwork did ship with it?

While I will freely admit that I have NOT seen Edgy installed, the login splash seen on this page and labeled as the Dapper login splash (which, theoretically anyway, they rolled back to for Edgy), is clearly different from every login splash listed here, as the new artwork for the Edgy release.

And, doing a bit more searching, we can see that the Dapper artwork is very different from the Edgy artwork linked to. Again, this may not be what actually shipped with Edgy, but it's what we're told shipped with it. You seem to have firsthand experience with it; which set of artwork did ship with it?

While I will freely admit that I have NOT seen Edgy installed, the login splash seen on this page and labeled as the Dapper login splash (which, theoretically anyway, they rolled back to for Edgy), is clearly different from every login splash listed here, as the new artwork for the Edgy release.

And, doing a bit more searching, we can see that the Dapper artwork is very different from the Edgy artwork linked to. Again, this may not be what actually shipped with Edgy, but it's what we're told shipped with it. You seem to have firsthand experience with it; which set of artwork did ship with it?

You did read assuming right didn't you? Or is that a big word? Anyway, from the posts I'd read I've seen links to this that were claimed to be the new artwork rather then the work being metioned, so I thought I'd see what Edgy Eft actually looked like.

So if you've got something more useful and less trollish to say, please, spit it out.

How about this or this or maybe even this

I don't know that any of those were the artwork in question... but there you go. I know they're all from the same contributor, but art.ubuntu.com is really slow right now... for some reason... hmmmm...

How about this or this or maybe even this

I don't know that any of those were the artwork in question... but there you go. I know they're all from the same contributor, but art.ubuntu.com is really slow right now... for some reason... hmmmm...

How about this or this or maybe even this

I don't know that any of those were the artwork in question... but there you go. I know they're all from the same contributor, but art.ubuntu.com is really slow right now... for some reason... hmmmm...

Oh, I see it's a nickname:

Ubuntu 6.10 (The Edgy Eft): October 2006
http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/releases

Starting with the Edgy Eft release the artwork team introduced the concepts of Theme Teams. Theme Teams are small, independently operating groups of artists working on creating a desktop theme. These teams are coordinated by the Artists in Chief (AiCs) and receive support and feedback from the AiCs as well.

Some other work-in-progress designs from an earlier stage:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/ Specs/ EdgyArtworkPlan/ Produce/ Incoming

Is that it? What's 'edgy' about that?

If that is it, then this looks to be an earlier stage in development:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Specs/EdgyArtworkP lan/Propose/Results

... which is mildly interesting but hardly worth the pun.

I believe this was the last Edgy artwork.

Digging around the wiki, this is what I could come up with...

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Specs/EdgyArtworkP lan/Polish/Incoming

Now, assuming this is the art in question, which I wouldn't know for sure, not only is this a completely shitty non-article, it's also a terrible headline. The whole 'edgy' pun attempts to make it sound like they had naked women or something, when in fact it's plain old boring splash screens with round letters and glossy effects. Snore. I guess they had to do SOMETHING to attempt to make this look like it might be newsworthy, so why not throw a potentially sensational headline out there.

Here are some links to screenshots of the artwork in question:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Specs/EdgyArtworkP lan/Polish/Incoming/
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Specs/EdgyArtworkP lan/Polish/Directions/

Here are some links to screenshots of the artwork in question:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Specs/EdgyArtworkP lan/Polish/Incoming/
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Artwork/Specs/EdgyArtworkP lan/Polish/Directions/

Found some... with some digging. Peace, Tropic and Blubuntu.

Found some... with some digging. Peace, Tropic and Blubuntu.

Found some... with some digging. Peace, Tropic and Blubuntu.

Seeing teenagers download my favorite OS for free ... bothers me.

seeing the experience cheapened in the eyes of others because its running on unsupported hardware bothers me.

As I stated earlier, my favorite operating system is Ubuntu. I'm not going to go into all the reasons why, however I will say that the number one thing it has over OSX is that it can win converts without having to spend hundreds of dollars on new hardware. I have to take off my shoes to count the number of people I know who say "My next computer is going to be a Mac." But they aren't about to throw away a year old computer to upgrade the operating system (which is what they're interested in). With Ubuntu, they can (legally) download the ISO for free, burn it to a CD and install it on the hardware they've already got. And like a Mac, it just works. I installed Ubuntu Dapper Drake on my computer, and every piece of hardware was automatically recognized. Now, if I could go out and buy a copy of OSX, install it on my computer and have it work as well as Ubuntu, I'd be more than happy to fork over a couple hundred dollars, and I may consider a Mac for my next hardware purchase, but I'm not about to get rid of perfectly good hardware because it won't (legally) run the operating system I'd prefer.

And Microsoft already does do this; last time I checked I couldn't recompile XP to run on my PPC PowerMac. None of Microsoft's licenses are even close to open source, while a number of Apple's key technology are.

Why would anyone want a dodgy copy of Vista? Linux won didn't it? Did you mean this?

Being free is not good enough as for most users as for them Windows is essentially free being that it comes on their computers. And don't start in on me about how linux is ready for the desktop. I tried to switch an still desperately want to. But I can't get SUSE nor Ubuntu to recognize my Linksys wireless card that windows picks up and installs automatically, Without the need to spend four days fighting with ndiswrappers.

Free is a very motivating factor. Applications for Linux are maturing at a rapid pace. People will switch when they realize they can do everything they want without paying a dime for additional software. They'll also get a kick out of having a simple, clean interface that isn't cluttered with applets, ads, and inconsistent applications. They'll come in droves when the average user has mature and full featured applications that fulfill their needs. This isn't far off. In my opinion OpenOffice, Inkscape, and the GIMP don't have far to go to become 1st class citizens in their respective software categories. Firefox and Evolution already are 1st class citizens. As for your Linksys wireless card, they have broadcom chipsets which are supported for the most part. You'll need the firmware for the card though. Here's a doc for how to install it on Ubuntu. Whatever distribution you use you'll need to use the fwcutter utility and the firmware to get a broadcom card working.

I wouldn't be so sure. Google are mid-development of their in-house developer desktop OS Goobuntu, an Ubuntu derivative made by Google for the task. Furthermore don't forget that Google's next biggest 'market' is in Asia, where Linux desktop growth is formidable to say the least, far surpassing desktop Linux growth we've seen elsewhere in the West. Don't forget also OS X isn't a migration target for whole governments and their administrations either - comprising a large chunk of the so-called enterprise market.

OS X growth is still very much confined to the (comparably small) western world domestic market by and large.. Vendor lock-in (of which Apple offers the most extreme given the marriage of hardware and software) is increasingly unfashionable large desktop deployments. Linux is the 'people's OS' - free for the public - fast moving and enjoying rapid growth on the Desktop. Google appears very aware of that with their recent and growing support for the Linux desktop (Picassa, Google Earth, upcoming Google Desktop for Linux).

Finally I'd be very surprised if there are in fact more OS X users than Linux desktop users. If that is the case, it certainly may not be that way for long given the growth we've been seeing - albeit of the radar of retail-market quantified 'market share'.

This article brings up a very good point as do you.

Linux experts can and still do slough through the pain of perfect Linux installs but the rest of the world isn't impressed. Give them something they can use that works well with everything else. Ultimately it looks like Linux is getting there

Not to sound overly optimistic but there are people out there addressing the problem. This is exactly what Ubuntu team is going to focus their effors on in the next major release - http://fridge.ubuntu.com/node/605