A good stable distro like Debian stable, except made current and with a few tools to make things easier and painless, and we'd really have something. Hopefully the next release of Debian stable comes somewhere near this. Given something like that, Linux (or even *BSD) could become the commodity OS you just slap on any machine and get going.
Take a look at Xandros. Very fast to install. Automatic formating of your HD or resize Windows partition to make room. No package choices at install time, but all Debian packages can be installed through their interface or the apt-get system. Can read any NTFS partitions on your HD, and pressing the eject button on the CD drive unmounts the CD (sorry, but that annoyed me in RedHat 7).
It is free to use at home (providing you use the BitTorrent download. $10 otherwise), but there is a charge to use it in a business setting.
I've been using it at work for 4 months now, and I have not had any problems with it.
I think there may already be some distros that come near this, but I've been stuck in Debian-world for a while, so I don't know.
Now you can be stuck in the "Debian-world," and still have the nice UI.
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Full Frontal Nerdity? Ok. http://archive.gamespy.com/comics/nodwick/ffn/ffn. htm
A good stable distro like Debian stable, except made current and with a few tools to make things easier and painless, and we'd really have something. Hopefully the next release of Debian stable comes somewhere near this. Given something like that, Linux (or even *BSD) could become the commodity OS you just slap on any machine and get going.
Take a look at Xandros. Very fast to install. Automatic formating of your HD or resize Windows partition to make room. No package choices at install time, but all Debian packages can be installed through their interface or the apt-get system. Can read any NTFS partitions on your HD, and pressing the eject button on the CD drive unmounts the CD (sorry, but that annoyed me in RedHat 7).
It is free to use at home (providing you use the BitTorrent download. $10 otherwise), but there is a charge to use it in a business setting.
I've been using it at work for 4 months now, and I have not had any problems with it.
I think there may already be some distros that come near this, but I've been stuck in Debian-world for a while, so I don't know.
Now you can be stuck in the "Debian-world," and still have the nice UI.