Most debit cards in the US are through some major credit card company so they work fine... However, many American teens (particularly the 13 to 16 demographic) don't have debit cards either.
No one's really asked my fiance or I why one of our computers is a Linux box. The decision to stick a toe into the ocean of Linux came for several reasons... At the time it was originally decided that this computer needed to run Linux, my fiance had a roommate who wouldn't buy his own computer, liked to download mp3s illegally, and in the process would bring home all sorts of nasty computer viruses. Fed up with having a mostly dysfunctional computer due to his roommate, my fiance decided to abandon Windows for Linux... Deciding what distro to use was difficult at first... Despite all the information out there, deciding what flavor of Linux to use was impossible, we tried several before one stuck... The first that we tried was Ubuntu/Kubuntu because we were told by many people that it was easy to use... Indeed it was, except for the fact that we found it to be horribly rigid and weren't able to do things we wanted to do with it, and documentation was less that stellar... and the network card in the computer kicked the bucket shortly after we installed it... This may be purely conicidental, but we took it as a bad omen.
Windows was then reinstalled for a few months, and then there was an article on Slashdot about the Enlightenment desktop (to which we said "Ooooh. Shiny." to the screenshots) and it was from Enlightenment that we discovered Vector Linux. Vector Linux made a short appearance on the desktop, just long enough for my honey to decide that if he were to stick with Vector Linux, he wanted to order the deluxe version that's not available for download on their website... Not liking to mail checks, and the fact that their paypal ordering didn't work was giving me errors at the time caused him to change his mind and try something else.
Then he decided he wanted Gentoo. I don't know exactly why or how he came to the conclusion that Gentoo would be the perfect distro for him... but it was decided. Now, Gentoo is not the easiest distro to install, and especially not for a Linux n00b, and there was a failed attempt at it... However, there was a fellow that my fiance had gone to college with that we knew used Gentoo... After a scan of the phone book, we called him and he came to my fiance's rescue and we bought him beer and he's become my fiance's linux tutor.
We switched (at least on one computer) because Linux is something that's valuable to know how to deal with, because we don't have much money to sink into Windows and Windows based products, just because we can.
In some ways, Linux is far more advanced than Windows, in other ways, it lags quite a bit behind... My main critcisms of Linux are where UI is concerned... I've yet to find a distro that has the right balance of hand holding for the user... It seems like there are two extremes, you have distros that babysit the user and don't let them do anything and distros that push you off the cliff into the unknown... Neither have made me feel terribly positive about my Linux experience. I think Linux has a lot of promise, which is why I support the efforts of the Linux community as a whole.
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Most debit cards in the US are through some major credit card company so they work fine... However, many American teens (particularly the 13 to 16 demographic) don't have debit cards either.
No one's really asked my fiance or I why one of our computers is a Linux box. The decision to stick a toe into the ocean of Linux came for several reasons... At the time it was originally decided that this computer needed to run Linux, my fiance had a roommate who wouldn't buy his own computer, liked to download mp3s illegally, and in the process would bring home all sorts of nasty computer viruses. Fed up with having a mostly dysfunctional computer due to his roommate, my fiance decided to abandon Windows for Linux... Deciding what distro to use was difficult at first... Despite all the information out there, deciding what flavor of Linux to use was impossible, we tried several before one stuck... The first that we tried was Ubuntu/Kubuntu because we were told by many people that it was easy to use... Indeed it was, except for the fact that we found it to be horribly rigid and weren't able to do things we wanted to do with it, and documentation was less that stellar... and the network card in the computer kicked the bucket shortly after we installed it... This may be purely conicidental, but we took it as a bad omen. Windows was then reinstalled for a few months, and then there was an article on Slashdot about the Enlightenment desktop (to which we said "Ooooh. Shiny." to the screenshots) and it was from Enlightenment that we discovered Vector Linux. Vector Linux made a short appearance on the desktop, just long enough for my honey to decide that if he were to stick with Vector Linux, he wanted to order the deluxe version that's not available for download on their website... Not liking to mail checks, and the fact that their paypal ordering didn't work was giving me errors at the time caused him to change his mind and try something else. Then he decided he wanted Gentoo. I don't know exactly why or how he came to the conclusion that Gentoo would be the perfect distro for him... but it was decided. Now, Gentoo is not the easiest distro to install, and especially not for a Linux n00b, and there was a failed attempt at it... However, there was a fellow that my fiance had gone to college with that we knew used Gentoo... After a scan of the phone book, we called him and he came to my fiance's rescue and we bought him beer and he's become my fiance's linux tutor. We switched (at least on one computer) because Linux is something that's valuable to know how to deal with, because we don't have much money to sink into Windows and Windows based products, just because we can. In some ways, Linux is far more advanced than Windows, in other ways, it lags quite a bit behind... My main critcisms of Linux are where UI is concerned... I've yet to find a distro that has the right balance of hand holding for the user... It seems like there are two extremes, you have distros that babysit the user and don't let them do anything and distros that push you off the cliff into the unknown... Neither have made me feel terribly positive about my Linux experience. I think Linux has a lot of promise, which is why I support the efforts of the Linux community as a whole.