Wow... another person sensitive to MSG:-). I know your pain all too well... MSG causes migraines, dizziness, anxiety, and general feelings of unpleasant weirdness in me, which is why I read this article and shuddered in horror. The last thing we need is to poison our food with more crap than it's already being poisoned with, IMO. It's already hard enough to avoid natural flavours, hydrolyzed proteins, autolyzed yeast, modified starches, etc..., which all contain high levels of L-glutamic acid (aka MSG).
My experience is largely the same as yours... I used to binge out on MSG containing products (Rice-a-Roni, instant mashed potatoes, etc...) as a child, and I think that resulted in my sensitivity.
The funny thing is that when I quit eating MSG, I lost 67 lbs in less than six months without doing a lick of exercise. I was still eating as much as I wanted (although most of the food I was eating was organic or prepared from fresh ingredient), but the poundage just melted right off of me. No complaints from me about that:D.
I don't know if you've ever tried this, but Vitamin B6 seems to speed up the metabolization of MSG. In fact, if I take Vit B6 before a meal that I know might contain some MSG, I usually don't react at all to it. YMMV, but I thought I'd suggest the tip.
Although I've only tried the less dangerous relatives of heroin (i.e. codeine, oxycodone, meperidine), my experiences with opiates would dictate that your statement is largely false.
I used to share your viewpoint, but I think I would largely disagree. The body does *want* a certain level of fat and sugar, but we're conditioned to eat so much of it since largely, North American food relies on fat and sugar for most of its flavour.
I discovered the joys of eating Thai food a few years ago, which is much lower in fat (there's a little vegetable oil used in each dish, and the cuts of meat they use are generally those considered to be lowest in fat) and usually has only very small quantities of sugar added to dishes. Most of the desserts are fruit-based and hence, quite low in both fat and refined sugar. Even though I ate like a pig, weight began melting off of me, and now eating the fatty, sugary foods that I used to eat leaves me feeling ill and dissatisfied.
Personally, I don't condone these lose-weight-easy techniques. If people want to lose weight, the key to doing so is simply motivation and self-control: regular exercise and common sense are more than enough to help you reach your goal in 99% of cases. And I think that modifying your lifestyle in this way is not only healthy for losing weight, but psychologically healthy; you learn to take better care of yourself, and you learn moderation - which can be applied to all areas of your life. Quick-fix solutions like this allow us to remain in an unhealthy situation where we retain our old patterns of mass consumption.
While I think Windows isn't without it's significant usability flaws, I have to say that I tried KDE 3 seriously for the first time today, and it was an absolute usability nightmare. I have no idea what people are talking about when they say that KDE is kindly-yet-computer-inexperienced-grandmother-frie ndly. I've been using computers seriously for 20 years now, and there were oodles of things that I either couldn't figure out how to do in the hour I used KDE, or that were incredibly unintuitive. I won't even begin to critique the KDE control panel. Talk about a nightmare of ambiguity, poor organization, and far too much complexity.
Not to mention - who thought up that hideous default sound scheme? I know that I'm going to have nightmares about it tonight. My skin was crawling for the few minutes it took me to figure out how to turn it off.
Not that Windows control panels are much better... Windows control panels are also hideously disorganized, with things in completely nonintuitive places (sometimes you have to access the control panel, other times you have to access certain features that you'd logically expect to be in control panels in menus instead, and other times you have to resort to running command line programs to get to windows that provide you with what you're looking for - e.g. ipconfig, msconfig), but I find that the user isn't quite so overwhelmed with options in Windows as they would be in KDE.
Mac OS X is the first operating system where the equivalent of the Control Panel (System Preferences) is logically organized and not overwhelming. I think that software designers should take a usability lesson here.
The "MacOS is open" line is really getting quite old.
As is the bitching coming from the people who consider it to not be open enough. If Apple completely opensourced all their core technologies (i.e. Cocoa, Carbon, Aqua, etc...), they would be hurting themselves immensely. If Mac OS X was ported to Intel architecture, many people who are now lusting after Macs would not have the same incentive to purchase one.
Frankly, I'm happy with Apple's business decisions, and they're one of the few companies that I feel any loyalty to (indeed, I feel disgusted with most companies). Apple has no obligation to open source anything, but in the spirit of good will, they've decided to open source a good number of things that will not jeapordize their revenue model, and I applaud them for this.
I buy Nike clothing not for the Nike logo, but because I find that Nike makes some excellent quality garments (I have a Nike t-shirt that I wore at least weekly, and six years later, it's still in fairly decent shape) and because I like the look of Nike clothes. I have absolutely no qualms about buying less well-known or no name brands when I find something that I enjoy, but I've generally found that Nike clothing draws my eye.
I switched to Linux in 98 because I was tired of Microsoft and because I was interested in learning more about *nix.
While I diligently stuck to using Linux pretty much exclusively (except for games, which I seldom play) for two years, I have to admit that I experienced a lot of frustration during that time.
While there's *some* Linux software that works very well, the majority of apps available to Linux are half-baked alpha releases that only do a tiny subset of what you *need* them to do.
Not to mention that trying to install programs can be an experience in frustration. Some RPMs break things, some 'make install's scatter files throughout the filesystem and don't come with a 'make uninstall' to clean up when you decide that you're not going to use the app anymore, etc... etc...
Personally, I liked the free as in beer aspect of Linux, but the free as in speech aspect was irrelevant to me. I don't really feel any inclination to examine other peoples' source code. I spend enough time writing and maintaining my own and that satisfies my urge to wade through line after line of C code.
When OS X Public Beta was released, I decided to pick up a cheap old iMac 233 off eBay to see what all the hype was about. Since that fateful day, I've been hooked by the elegance of the hardware and operating system and I've never looked back. It's such a relief to be able to mess with the internals of my operating system if I'm so inclined (due to the UNIX underpinnings of OS X), but never be forced to do so (as I found myself frequently doing with Linux). Now I own a PowerMac 733 and an iBook that I just bought last Friday, and both of them have surpassed my every expectation.
Yes, technology is going to make you obsolete, but only if you're unwilling to compromise. These days, with improving technology and amateur entertainment, people don't feel like shelling out a ridiculously huge sum of money to go see a movie in the theatres. The local theatres charge $13.95 CDN per movie here, and frankly, I just don't feel like paying that much when for the price of two admissions and a drink I can buy a DVD.
You're all just going to have to grow up and realize that you are being forced to relinquish some of your control over when and how we entertain ourselves. You do not need to be making 7-9 figure salaries; you're all just going to have to eventually settle for a paltry few hundred thousand dollars a year or suffer the consequences.
Simple. The most recently plugged in one becomes the default printer. All applications you print from offer you a drop down menu allowing you to pick what printer you want to print to. If you aren't content with the most recently plugged in one being the default, you simply launch the Print Center utility, click on one of your other printers, and click the "Make Default" toolbar button.
I'm also a switcher from Linux on x86 hardware to Mac OS X. In fact, I'm one of the earlier switchers - as soon as I heard about OS X, I became very excited, bought myself an old iMac on eBay, and picked up a copy of the OS X public beta.
Since that day, I haven't looked back.
I don't think we switchers are trying to convince you of anything. Out of personal experience, I can tell you that after years of frustrating sysadmin battles with Linux (not to mention dealing with non-standard, poorly-designed, overly complex user interfaces), it was a breath of fresh air the first time I tried Mac OS X. Everything just worked, and worked immaculately. My only complaint would have been the speed issues, but with the release of OS X 10.2, this has been taken care of and is no longer an issue.
Now I can spend my time being productive and actually getting stuff done instead of editing text files in Linux in an attempt to get a piece of hardware or some daemon to behave properly. And the best part about everything is that if I want to get my hands dirty and mess with the UNIX underpinnings and configuration files, I still have that option open to me. Only now, it's a luxury rather than a necessity.
If I'm not coding, I *may* have a terminal window open, just to muck around in now and then.
If I'm coding, I'll have between three and six terminals open, but I don't find the lack of virtual desktops unwieldy in OS X. I simply hide applications I'm not using with Command-H, and then click their icon in the dock to redisplay their windows. Works fine for me and keeps my desktop fairly uncluttered.
I have a USB switchbox which shares USB Macally keyboard and my MS IntelliTrackball between my PowerMac G4 and my P3 550.
Now, I've had no problems getting the peripherals to be properly recognized when switched over in the following operating systems: Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, QNX RTOS, BeOS, and Solaris 8.
However, Linux USB support is still entirely flaky. I've tried multiple Linux distros (Red Hat, SuSe, Mandrake, Slack), and about half the time, the peripherals are recognized when I switch them from my Mac to my P3. About half the time they're unrecognized, and then, at that point, no matter what I do, they will not be recognized until I perform a hard-reset.
If even BeOS could handle this properly, I hardly see why Linux can't. I don't think my configuration is entirely unusual. Until this simple problem is dealt with, Linux will not be my idea of an advanced operating system.
If you're not opposed to using an emulator, it isn't too hard to locate a C64 emu and a disk image of ACS. I've been playing around with it for months now, reliving my childhood by trekking my way through Rivers of Light.
Orb, I would say, are the only primarily 'electronic' group that also don't loes the human element
My primary reason for liking the Orb. AHEPBTRFTCOFU is just a spine-chilling, delicious exploration into the realms of consciousness.
And I like Autechre for the exact opposite reason: there is no human element to Ae, as far as I can discern. It sounds like the music that might be produced by computers without any human intervention.
I clicked on your post to more-or-less find a list of all my favorite artists.
The only relevant one I found missing was -Ziq (aka Mike Paradinas, Jake Slazenger, Kid Spatula). The man is an IDM electronic music genius and should not be overlooked.
I find it fascinating that so many people who enjoy IDM are also big Stereolab-heads. I've recently developed a raging 'Lab addiction.
Let's not forget their Amber album, which is a masterpiece of ambient music, and was released in the early 90s, IIRC. It should definitely not be missed.
My favorite Ae is definitely ep7. Pure creative genius.
If you're in education, you can get a G4 pretty cheap. I just picked up a PowerMac G4 733 with a 15" LCD flatscreen for ~ $2,800 CD, including the tax. It's sweet!
WTF are you talking about? $4000 for a Mac? Only the very very top of the line mega-souped up PowerMacs and PowerBooks cost $4000. You can get an excellent, very fast G4 config for well under $2000.
While we can't change the concepts of days and seasons (because of the natural movement of the Earth around the sun), there's nothing stopping us from redefining the second, minute, hour, week, and month to use a base-10 system. Define a day as having 10 hours. Redefine the hour to have 100 minutes. Then redefine a minute to have 100 seconds, and base the length of a second with regards to this new system, so that a day is still the logical unit that it always was.
I wouldn't consider using any MS product on a computer that was designated to be a server - I'd definitely reach for OpenBSD, FreeBSD, or Linux in this case.
I wasn't arguing this at all, however. Please go back and read my post - I was addressing a comment made by the initial poster regarding the viability of Linux as a significant desktop presence.
Firstly, please get your facts straight before you speak out your ass next time. A quick check at the Apple Store reveals that you can purchase a G3 iMac for $799, which includes Mac OS X. This isn't an unreasonable price for a home computer. I'd be hard-pressed to believe that you could build your own PC of any quality for $300, but I can't speak authoritatively on this subject, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
Secondly, I fully acknowledged that Linux will always have a place in computing. However, the difference between you and an average home user is that you *know* how to build a computer and perform essential UNIX system administration tasks on it. These tasks are beyond an average home user, and unless they have a friend who is knowledgeable in Linux, they'd be unlikely to be able to use it at home.
I don't deny that something might replace Windows eventually, especially with all their new licencing policies and business strategies.
However, in its current incarnation, I just don't think that Linux is going to be *it*. I'd love to be proven wrong.
And let's face it. Microsoft has been pulling crap on its userbase for years, yet it's still the dominant player in the desktop market. I'm not sure this will change. They screw us little by little, so that your average computer user doesn't even notice that it's happening. I thought the WinXP licencing would be the last straw, but no one I know has complained about it.
I don't use my PC much anymore for the simple reason that I don't like any of the OSes that are currently available for PC.
I've got 40 strong reasons why Linux will have a powerful desktop presence in the near future and Microsoft is running scared
Linux fanatics have been saying this for a *number* of years now. I got into Linux three years ago and used it exclusively. Every issue of Linux Magazine and Linux Journal that was released at the time sang the success stories of Linux, and how mainstream Linux adoption was just around the corner.
Well, it's three years later, and Linux still only appeals to a very small subset of computer users.
I think Linux had its chance to make it big when the stock market hype was building up around it. Unfortunately, it missed this chance by being unusable by the average person as a desktop OS, and a financially unsound choice to build companies or business strategies around (*cough* Corel *cough* *cough*).
Linux will, of course, never die. But I don't suspect that we will we see a significantly huge increase in the Linux userbase.
Especially now, with the arrival of Mac OS X - many Linux users, tired of waging constant (and unproductive) sysadmin war, switched when OS X was released *raises hand*. Hopefully someone will release a well-supported (in terms of both industry-standard software and hardware) UNIX variant for PCs with a consistent user interface experience. As far as I'm concerned, Linux doesn't cut it here. Linux offers choice, which is good when you're knowledgeable enough to make those kind of decisions. But the average Joe Blow doesn't want 30 different GUIs on his computer.
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Wow... another person sensitive to MSG :-).
:D.
I know your pain all too well... MSG causes migraines, dizziness, anxiety, and general feelings of unpleasant weirdness in me, which is why I read this article and shuddered in horror. The last thing we need is to poison our food with more crap than it's already being poisoned with, IMO. It's already hard enough to avoid natural flavours, hydrolyzed proteins, autolyzed yeast, modified starches, etc..., which all contain high levels of L-glutamic acid (aka MSG).
My experience is largely the same as yours... I used to binge out on MSG containing products (Rice-a-Roni, instant mashed potatoes, etc...) as a child, and I think that resulted in my sensitivity.
The funny thing is that when I quit eating MSG, I lost 67 lbs in less than six months without doing a lick of exercise. I was still eating as much as I wanted (although most of the food I was eating was organic or prepared from fresh ingredient), but the poundage just melted right off of me. No complaints from me about that
I don't know if you've ever tried this, but Vitamin B6 seems to speed up the metabolization of MSG. In fact, if I take Vit B6 before a meal that I know might contain some MSG, I usually don't react at all to it. YMMV, but I thought I'd suggest the tip.
Although I've only tried the less dangerous relatives of heroin (i.e. codeine, oxycodone, meperidine), my experiences with opiates would dictate that your statement is largely false.
I used to share your viewpoint, but I think I would largely disagree. The body does *want* a certain level of fat and sugar, but we're conditioned to eat so much of it since largely, North American food relies on fat and sugar for most of its flavour.
I discovered the joys of eating Thai food a few years ago, which is much lower in fat (there's a little vegetable oil used in each dish, and the cuts of meat they use are generally those considered to be lowest in fat) and usually has only very small quantities of sugar added to dishes. Most of the desserts are fruit-based and hence, quite low in both fat and refined sugar. Even though I ate like a pig, weight began melting off of me, and now eating the fatty, sugary foods that I used to eat leaves me feeling ill and dissatisfied.
Personally, I don't condone these lose-weight-easy techniques. If people want to lose weight, the key to doing so is simply motivation and self-control: regular exercise and common sense are more than enough to help you reach your goal in 99% of cases. And I think that modifying your lifestyle in this way is not only healthy for losing weight, but psychologically healthy; you learn to take better care of yourself, and you learn moderation - which can be applied to all areas of your life. Quick-fix solutions like this allow us to remain in an unhealthy situation where we retain our old patterns of mass consumption.
While I think Windows isn't without it's significant usability flaws, I have to say that I tried KDE 3 seriously for the first time today, and it was an absolute usability nightmare. I have no idea what people are talking about when they say that KDE is kindly-yet-computer-inexperienced-grandmother-frie ndly. I've been using computers seriously for 20 years now, and there were oodles of things that I either couldn't figure out how to do in the hour I used KDE, or that were incredibly unintuitive. I won't even begin to critique the KDE control panel. Talk about a nightmare of ambiguity, poor organization, and far too much complexity.
Not to mention - who thought up that hideous default sound scheme? I know that I'm going to have nightmares about it tonight. My skin was crawling for the few minutes it took me to figure out how to turn it off.
Not that Windows control panels are much better... Windows control panels are also hideously disorganized, with things in completely nonintuitive places (sometimes you have to access the control panel, other times you have to access certain features that you'd logically expect to be in control panels in menus instead, and other times you have to resort to running command line programs to get to windows that provide you with what you're looking for - e.g. ipconfig, msconfig), but I find that the user isn't quite so overwhelmed with options in Windows as they would be in KDE.
Mac OS X is the first operating system where the equivalent of the Control Panel (System Preferences) is logically organized and not overwhelming. I think that software designers should take a usability lesson here.
The "MacOS is open" line is really getting quite old.
As is the bitching coming from the people who consider it to not be open enough. If Apple completely opensourced all their core technologies (i.e. Cocoa, Carbon, Aqua, etc...), they would be hurting themselves immensely. If Mac OS X was ported to Intel architecture, many people who are now lusting after Macs would not have the same incentive to purchase one.
Frankly, I'm happy with Apple's business decisions, and they're one of the few companies that I feel any loyalty to (indeed, I feel disgusted with most companies). Apple has no obligation to open source anything, but in the spirit of good will, they've decided to open source a good number of things that will not jeapordize their revenue model, and I applaud them for this.
I buy Nike clothing not for the Nike logo, but because I find that Nike makes some excellent quality garments (I have a Nike t-shirt that I wore at least weekly, and six years later, it's still in fairly decent shape) and because I like the look of Nike clothes. I have absolutely no qualms about buying less well-known or no name brands when I find something that I enjoy, but I've generally found that Nike clothing draws my eye.
Agreed completely.
I switched to Linux in 98 because I was tired of Microsoft and because I was interested in learning more about *nix.
While I diligently stuck to using Linux pretty much exclusively (except for games, which I seldom play) for two years, I have to admit that I experienced a lot of frustration during that time.
While there's *some* Linux software that works very well, the majority of apps available to Linux are half-baked alpha releases that only do a tiny subset of what you *need* them to do.
Not to mention that trying to install programs can be an experience in frustration. Some RPMs break things, some 'make install's scatter files throughout the filesystem and don't come with a 'make uninstall' to clean up when you decide that you're not going to use the app anymore, etc... etc...
Personally, I liked the free as in beer aspect of Linux, but the free as in speech aspect was irrelevant to me. I don't really feel any inclination to examine other peoples' source code. I spend enough time writing and maintaining my own and that satisfies my urge to wade through line after line of C code.
When OS X Public Beta was released, I decided to pick up a cheap old iMac 233 off eBay to see what all the hype was about. Since that fateful day, I've been hooked by the elegance of the hardware and operating system and I've never looked back. It's such a relief to be able to mess with the internals of my operating system if I'm so inclined (due to the UNIX underpinnings of OS X), but never be forced to do so (as I found myself frequently doing with Linux). Now I own a PowerMac 733 and an iBook that I just bought last Friday, and both of them have surpassed my every expectation.
Take a pay cut, fuckers!
Yes, technology is going to make you obsolete, but only if you're unwilling to compromise. These days, with improving technology and amateur entertainment, people don't feel like shelling out a ridiculously huge sum of money to go see a movie in the theatres. The local theatres charge $13.95 CDN per movie here, and frankly, I just don't feel like paying that much when for the price of two admissions and a drink I can buy a DVD.
You're all just going to have to grow up and realize that you are being forced to relinquish some of your control over when and how we entertain ourselves. You do not need to be making 7-9 figure salaries; you're all just going to have to eventually settle for a paltry few hundred thousand dollars a year or suffer the consequences.
Simple. The most recently plugged in one becomes the default printer. All applications you print from offer you a drop down menu allowing you to pick what printer you want to print to. If you aren't content with the most recently plugged in one being the default, you simply launch the Print Center utility, click on one of your other printers, and click the "Make Default" toolbar button.
I'm also a switcher from Linux on x86 hardware to Mac OS X. In fact, I'm one of the earlier switchers - as soon as I heard about OS X, I became very excited, bought myself an old iMac on eBay, and picked up a copy of the OS X public beta.
Since that day, I haven't looked back.
I don't think we switchers are trying to convince you of anything. Out of personal experience, I can tell you that after years of frustrating sysadmin battles with Linux (not to mention dealing with non-standard, poorly-designed, overly complex user interfaces), it was a breath of fresh air the first time I tried Mac OS X. Everything just worked, and worked immaculately. My only complaint would have been the speed issues, but with the release of OS X 10.2, this has been taken care of and is no longer an issue.
Now I can spend my time being productive and actually getting stuff done instead of editing text files in Linux in an attempt to get a piece of hardware or some daemon to behave properly. And the best part about everything is that if I want to get my hands dirty and mess with the UNIX underpinnings and configuration files, I still have that option open to me. Only now, it's a luxury rather than a necessity.
[macosx:~] fink install perl
If I'm not coding, I *may* have a terminal window open, just to muck around in now and then.
If I'm coding, I'll have between three and six terminals open, but I don't find the lack of virtual desktops unwieldy in OS X. I simply hide applications I'm not using with Command-H, and then click their icon in the dock to redisplay their windows. Works fine for me and keeps my desktop fairly uncluttered.
I have a USB switchbox which shares USB Macally keyboard and my MS IntelliTrackball between my PowerMac G4 and my P3 550.
Now, I've had no problems getting the peripherals to be properly recognized when switched over in the following operating systems: Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, QNX RTOS, BeOS, and Solaris 8.
However, Linux USB support is still entirely flaky. I've tried multiple Linux distros (Red Hat, SuSe, Mandrake, Slack), and about half the time, the peripherals are recognized when I switch them from my Mac to my P3. About half the time they're unrecognized, and then, at that point, no matter what I do, they will not be recognized until I perform a hard-reset.
If even BeOS could handle this properly, I hardly see why Linux can't. I don't think my configuration is entirely unusual. Until this simple problem is dealt with, Linux will not be my idea of an advanced operating system.
If you're not opposed to using an emulator, it isn't too hard to locate a C64 emu and a disk image of ACS. I've been playing around with it for months now, reliving my childhood by trekking my way through Rivers of Light.
Orb, I would say, are the only primarily 'electronic' group that also don't loes the human element
My primary reason for liking the Orb. AHEPBTRFTCOFU is just a spine-chilling, delicious exploration into the realms of consciousness.
And I like Autechre for the exact opposite reason: there is no human element to Ae, as far as I can discern. It sounds like the music that might be produced by computers without any human intervention.
I clicked on your post to more-or-less find a list of all my favorite artists.
The only relevant one I found missing was -Ziq (aka Mike Paradinas, Jake Slazenger, Kid Spatula). The man is an IDM electronic music genius and should not be overlooked.
I find it fascinating that so many people who enjoy IDM are also big Stereolab-heads. I've recently developed a raging 'Lab addiction.
Agreed. I just saw Cex live recently, and while the turnout was small, his set was absolutely fantastic.
Let's not forget their Amber album, which is a masterpiece of ambient music, and was released in the early 90s, IIRC. It should definitely not be missed.
My favorite Ae is definitely ep7. Pure creative genius.
*nods* in agreement @ the dance music comment.
Hey from a fellow Canuck, then :-).
If you're in education, you can get a G4 pretty cheap. I just picked up a PowerMac G4 733 with a 15" LCD flatscreen for ~ $2,800 CD, including the tax. It's sweet!
WTF are you talking about? $4000 for a Mac? Only the very very top of the line mega-souped up PowerMacs and PowerBooks cost $4000. You can get an excellent, very fast G4 config for well under $2000.
Easy solution.
While we can't change the concepts of days and seasons (because of the natural movement of the Earth around the sun), there's nothing stopping us from redefining the second, minute, hour, week, and month to use a base-10 system. Define a day as having 10 hours. Redefine the hour to have 100 minutes. Then redefine a minute to have 100 seconds, and base the length of a second with regards to this new system, so that a day is still the logical unit that it always was.
*Agreed completely*.
I wouldn't consider using any MS product on a computer that was designated to be a server - I'd definitely reach for OpenBSD, FreeBSD, or Linux in this case.
I wasn't arguing this at all, however. Please go back and read my post - I was addressing a comment made by the initial poster regarding the viability of Linux as a significant desktop presence.
Firstly, please get your facts straight before you speak out your ass next time. A quick check at the Apple Store reveals that you can purchase a G3 iMac for $799, which includes Mac OS X. This isn't an unreasonable price for a home computer. I'd be hard-pressed to believe that you could build your own PC of any quality for $300, but I can't speak authoritatively on this subject, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
Secondly, I fully acknowledged that Linux will always have a place in computing. However, the difference between you and an average home user is that you *know* how to build a computer and perform essential UNIX system administration tasks on it. These tasks are beyond an average home user, and unless they have a friend who is knowledgeable in Linux, they'd be unlikely to be able to use it at home.
I don't deny that something might replace Windows eventually, especially with all their new licencing policies and business strategies.
However, in its current incarnation, I just don't think that Linux is going to be *it*. I'd love to be proven wrong.
And let's face it. Microsoft has been pulling crap on its userbase for years, yet it's still the dominant player in the desktop market. I'm not sure this will change. They screw us little by little, so that your average computer user doesn't even notice that it's happening. I thought the WinXP licencing would be the last straw, but no one I know has complained about it.
I don't use my PC much anymore for the simple reason that I don't like any of the OSes that are currently available for PC.
I've got 40 strong reasons why Linux will have a powerful desktop presence in the near future and Microsoft is running scared
Linux fanatics have been saying this for a *number* of years now. I got into Linux three years ago and used it exclusively. Every issue of Linux Magazine and Linux Journal that was released at the time sang the success stories of Linux, and how mainstream Linux adoption was just around the corner.
Well, it's three years later, and Linux still only appeals to a very small subset of computer users.
I think Linux had its chance to make it big when the stock market hype was building up around it. Unfortunately, it missed this chance by being unusable by the average person as a desktop OS, and a financially unsound choice to build companies or business strategies around (*cough* Corel *cough* *cough*).
Linux will, of course, never die. But I don't suspect that we will we see a significantly huge increase in the Linux userbase.
Especially now, with the arrival of Mac OS X - many Linux users, tired of waging constant (and unproductive) sysadmin war, switched when OS X was released *raises hand*. Hopefully someone will release a well-supported (in terms of both industry-standard software and hardware) UNIX variant for PCs with a consistent user interface experience. As far as I'm concerned, Linux doesn't cut it here. Linux offers choice, which is good when you're knowledgeable enough to make those kind of decisions. But the average Joe Blow doesn't want 30 different GUIs on his computer.