Unfortunately, most aspects of society revolve around Microsoft products to do business. The university I currently attend uses and publishes PowerPoint (tm) slides for lectures. CS 1321 includes labs that require us students to learn Excel. Linux, although used by the IT department to run vital network functions (web, email, etc), is not supported. Likewise at work, either the system admin refuses to allow such an hybrid LAN, or strongly discourages it (that is, the use of a non-Windows OS on his/her network).
Last year, I was one of those people that read Slashdot using a Windows OS and IE, but advocated Linux while bashing Windows. I am now proud to be Windows free almost entirely (still have that Windows XP install on my laptop that I never boot into but still hang on to for those very rare occassions). This is in spite of my college's affinity for Microsoft. In fact, they offer "free" MSDN copies of major Microsoft products (XP, 2000 All, VS.Net, etc) to all CS students. For the Excel lab I used OpenOffice, which did the job very well. Soon, I am going to try to push professors to not publish.ppt files soley, but also export them to html format. I and the LUG I belong to will also try to make other suggestions along the same lines.
Sorry, I digress. My point is the world revolves around Microsoft because the rest of the world does, representing a positive feedback loop. Microsoft has even targeted schools of all levels so that people grow up with their products. An infrastructure based on Microsoft products has already been established and will be as impossible to destroy/rebuild as other infrastructures like highways/roads. Microsoft uses this to their advantage. Linux developers and Apple, on the other hand, try hard to make products that coexist with this existing Microsoft dominated infrastructure.
Those that use Microsoft don't want to do the extra work Linux/Mac users must do to do the same task. Ease of use for the products, weak/nonexistant virtues among users, requirement by jobs/school to use the products, etc are all factors that contribute to this unfortunate condition in question. Most people just do not realize why they should use anything else. Sad, yet true.
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Unfortunately, most aspects of society revolve around Microsoft products to do business. The university I currently attend uses and publishes PowerPoint (tm) slides for lectures. CS 1321 includes labs that require us students to learn Excel. Linux, although used by the IT department to run vital network functions (web, email, etc), is not supported. Likewise at work, either the system admin refuses to allow such an hybrid LAN, or strongly discourages it (that is, the use of a non-Windows OS on his/her network).
.ppt files soley, but also export them to html format. I and the LUG I belong to will also try to make other suggestions along the same lines.
Last year, I was one of those people that read Slashdot using a Windows OS and IE, but advocated Linux while bashing Windows. I am now proud to be Windows free almost entirely (still have that Windows XP install on my laptop that I never boot into but still hang on to for those very rare occassions). This is in spite of my college's affinity for Microsoft. In fact, they offer "free" MSDN copies of major Microsoft products (XP, 2000 All, VS.Net, etc) to all CS students. For the Excel lab I used OpenOffice, which did the job very well. Soon, I am going to try to push professors to not publish
Sorry, I digress. My point is the world revolves around Microsoft because the rest of the world does, representing a positive feedback loop. Microsoft has even targeted schools of all levels so that people grow up with their products. An infrastructure based on Microsoft products has already been established and will be as impossible to destroy/rebuild as other infrastructures like highways/roads. Microsoft uses this to their advantage. Linux developers and Apple, on the other hand, try hard to make products that coexist with this existing Microsoft dominated infrastructure.
Those that use Microsoft don't want to do the extra work Linux/Mac users must do to do the same task. Ease of use for the products, weak/nonexistant virtues among users, requirement by jobs/school to use the products, etc are all factors that contribute to this unfortunate condition in question. Most people just do not realize why they should use anything else. Sad, yet true.