[H]Consumer has an interesting article on-line today that details the author's experience after spending 30 days running Linux. They performed the experiment because of the common complaint that Vista's hardware requirements and product activation issues are huge turn off, and the claim made by many users on various boards that they plan to "switch to Linux.
"Will the consumer really switch to Linux over Vista's annoyances? I believe a few will but the majority won't - this isn't an operating system for the easily frustrated. Certainly the group of people who get easily frustrated at the thought of increased DRM in the Vista system and the group of people who would get frustrated at the Linux learning curve probably overlap a great deal. However, for those who stick it out throughout the learning curve period, the rewards are great."
If you haven't played with a couple of Live Linux distros, we highly recommend giving them a shot. What you'll probably find is that no Linux distro offers all of the amenities of Windows, but that they're almost all perfectly fine for general use and would make a perfect OS for some small businesses which need nothing more than to run an office suite and browse the web. Ubuntu and Fedora are great places to start.
Marco Chiappetta
Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com
