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It's not so much the filesystem that decides how fast your drive gets fragmented or how badly; it's the OS's algorythm for deciding where to put each new file. Up until Microsoft introduced the NFS file system, their method of stuffing the beginning of each file into the first available cluster without checking to see if it were big enough guaranteed that every disk would get fragmented and need regular defragging. (I don't do Windows any more, and don't know how NFS handles this.) Linux uses a different method that both spreads files out across all of the partition and tries to find a big enough spot from the beginning, so that unless your partition is very close to full there will be few, if any fragmented files. I don't know if Linux does that on a FAT or VFAT drive, but I've got no specific reason to think it doesn't.

Then the next thing you will want to do, is be free of Windows altogether.
http://www.whylinuxisbetter.net/

Freedom to learn about anything

This assumes the user WANTS to learn about anything computer related. Anyone believing this is a benefit to the user is at disconnect with general userland. Here is exactly what the majority of computer users want to learn: "The absolute bare minimum required to do the tasks I want to do".

Well, this freedom 1 of the four essential freedoms for software users. Of course freedom 0 and 2 matter more to casual users of software (i.e. running and distributing the software as you wish).

It's like UNIX with proper multi-user management and a mature security architecture.

Ask 100 people off the street if this sentence makes ANY sense whatsoever to them. These people work AROUND spyware infections until they are no longer able to do so. These people are the ones that I saw at a fair who gave their name, street address, and their home phone number in exchange for a free ice cream cone.

Well, claiming that there is a silver bullet for security would be factually incorrect. However given the same user, a GNU/Linux system is much safer than a Windows system. But if people are unwilling to educate themselves, they will have to learn from experience. Just think about identity theft in the context of online banking.

It almost never crashes.

Getting warmer. Most people would agree that this is a desirable attribute, and definitely the strongest on the list.

Proper file system meaning no need to defrag your drive.

While most people would again consider this desirable, too many treat this like backing up - something they should do, they know is a good idea to do, but simply don't.

Well, I think it makes quite a difference. Recent Windows versions by default run defragmentation once a week. I.e. when you switch on a Windows machine it will be very unresponsive for the first 30 minutes.

To them, Windows is free because the cost of an OEM license is baked into the sticker price of their laptop.

Vista users who want to update their software would disagree.

Caveats:
-The Sims doesn't work, nor do any Valve/Steam games.

That caveat is included on the website.

-iTunes won't work. The comparable program (Amarok) will sync music, but doesn't access the iTunes Media Store, doesn't back up your iPhone (or activate it), and doesn't sync apps.

I consider the lack of iTunes presence an advantage!

-Many digital camcorders won't work (No AVCHD editing).

I don't know AVHCD. Most camcorders use DV1394 and you can use dvgrab (or a GUI frontend) to capture the stuff. Then one can use MEncoder which supports multi-pass encoding to compress the video. Admittedly video editing for casual users was a problem last time I checked.

-Printers could possibly work out of the box, could work with a bit of configuration, could work with a lot of configuration, or might not work at all. The same is true for some more obscure wireless chipsets, and some specialty hardware.

IMHO the Linux printing software which uses the Postscript standard gives you much better control when trying to bring something to paper.

Get a group of 100 people, present them your list, and then present them mine. Let me know if you need to start counting on more than one hand how many you can sell with your list.

Of course it's always seems easier to argue for the status-quo.

Opensuse 11.3 KDE is really, REALLY nice. I like it a lot. It worked with most of my hardware out of th

There's a website listing the benefits of GNU/Linux. IMHO the main things are:

• Freedom to learn about anything (e.g. SQL as you explained)
• It's like UNIX with proper multi-user management and a mature security architecture.
• It almost never crashes.
• Proper file system meaning no need to defrag your drive
• It's a lot cheaper.

There's a website listing the benefits of GNU/Linux. IMHO the main things are:

• Freedom to learn about anything (e.g. SQL as you explained)
• It's like UNIX with proper multi-user management and a mature security architecture.
• It almost never crashes.
• Proper file system meaning no need to defrag your drive
• It's a lot cheaper.

There's a website listing the benefits of GNU/Linux. IMHO the main things are:

• Freedom to learn about anything (e.g. SQL as you explained)
• It's like UNIX with proper multi-user management and a mature security architecture.
• It almost never crashes.
• Proper file system meaning no need to defrag your drive
• It's a lot cheaper.

There's a website listing the benefits of GNU/Linux. IMHO the main things are:

• Freedom to learn about anything (e.g. SQL as you explained)
• It's like UNIX with proper multi-user management and a mature security architecture.
• It almost never crashes.
• Proper file system meaning no need to defrag your drive
• It's a lot cheaper.

There's a website listing the benefits of GNU/Linux. IMHO the main things are:

• Freedom to learn about anything (e.g. SQL as you explained)
• It's like UNIX with proper multi-user management and a mature security architecture.
• It almost never crashes.
• Proper file system meaning no need to defrag your drive
• It's a lot cheaper.

There's a website listing the benefits of GNU/Linux. IMHO the main things are:

• Freedom to learn about anything (e.g. SQL as you explained)
• It's like UNIX with proper multi-user management and a mature security architecture.
• It almost never crashes.
• Proper file system meaning no need to defrag your drive
• It's a lot cheaper.

A simple link to whylinuxisbetter.net would have done the job (truth and all).

A migration to Kubuntu 9.04 brings a lot more than people think for businesses:

GPL free software license means that a laptop theft becomes "just" a hardware theft, as opposed to hardware + software on it. You can also use CryptoFS to encrypt your data and if somebody actually manages to hack into your laptop the bad PR for GNU/Linux generated by hoards of Windows fanboys will drown any bad PR about your companies' inept IT department.

A decent privilege model. Apps shouldn't run with setuid/root and they don't need it since the user-dependent configuration resides in each user's home directory. This isn't a magic bullet for security, but other OS just have taken the first steps in this direction.

GnuPG for those USB flash drives to protect the files with something like a long password. But if user loses the password, the data is not recoverable.

Best imaging support. Using dd, rsync together with abstract storage devices and the virtual file system (VFS) one can do baxkup on device-level, partition-level or file system level without any exceptions. Using distributions such as Knoppix one can run the OS independent of the hardware without writing an image to the hard disk at all.

While GNU/Linux always was a solid multi-user operating system from the ground up, they recently added a hood with KDE/GNOME. However migrating users do notice the stability and lack of malware. The file system does not need defragmentation because it does not fragment in the first place. Virtual file system/device permissions and user groups form a solid basis for security which is free of feature creep and hacks.

Lack of courage, in my personal experience, is the second biggest reason why businesses stay with Windows, the first being inertia. However WGA, DRM, and vendor lock-in will continue to penalise businesses which are not willing to objectively evaluate their options.

1. What % of botnets are mostly infected Windows boxes?
2. Of those botnets, what's the average estimated % of infected Windows boxes?
3. Which other OS's have been found as zombies on botnets and what percentages are they?
4. How much ($) damage and disruption worldwide have botnets estimated to have caused?
5. How much ($) per seat does the average business lose in downtime (and engineer time to fix) when their employee's workstation has to be rebooted for a trivial update or virus infection / cleansing?

We know botnets are a Windows problem, they won't want to go on the record about it though. As Bill Gate's once said "our products just aren't designed for security".

From what I've been able to learn, the reason Linux doesn't generally need defragging isn't that it uses ext3; it's the way it decides where to put files. Instead of jamming them into the first opening it finds whether it's big enough or not, it tries to put it where it's got room to grow. It can't always do that, of course, but it does its best.

No, it does less seeking, because it doesn't have to go from one part of the partition to another just to read the rest of the file. And, I've been told (but can't cite sources) that Linux keeps the read/write head halfway up the disk instead of at the edge so that the average seek time is lower. Check out the section on disk defragging on Why Linux is better for more details. Also, next time you're talking to that friend of yours, ask why, if Linux does need defragging, no distro includes a defragger. (I gather that some did at one point but dropped it because nobody ever needed it.)

But the problem I see is compatibility with the "Windows" world.

But keeping to the point, please list the cool stuff newbie's would like to know?

My personal reasons are: because the system does not treat me as an idiot. I can find out how things work. If I want to get something working my way, then eventually I will. I can automate any tasks easily. If something is broken I can identify it to the lowest level, report it, fix it. All that while having secure and reliable system that does not deteriorate with time/updates.