The fact is, I read a dozen or so articles a week from both sides of this debate, to keep a fair perspective. {I run Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows Vista Biz x64, and…you guessed it – Ubuntu.}

What I’ve found is that the pro-Windows community is able to absorb allot more, because they have the market share – which comes with native proprietary programs-Crysis and everything Adobe-, driver support, and all the techs know it.(familiarity).

That seems to be about it. I mean, if you have a market share with advantages like THAT, it’s going to take years of -insert other OS name here- fanboys to even pop a dent in the ‘familiarity’ one.

But the Windows community is also often gullible, in general – no offense, PLEASE! – to whatever Microsoft says, because of the same ‘familiarity’ ticket. (How many people even know theres a choice in OS’s, on the grand scale of things? Uh-huh, like 10%? Maybe.)
I’m afraid one of your major points shows this all too well – the Vista licenses thing? Seriously? I mean, that doesn’t even make sense to my Mom. Those who are gullible are simply because they haven’t recognized varied sources for information, it’s just preaching to the converts.

The Linux community, because of it’s freedom of speech and code, as well as diversity of users, get the truth much more easily. Sure, there’s a bunch that say,’ Dude, WINE runs _Everything!_” or ,”Next year is the year of the Linux Desktop!” Or the best one,”Linux has great gaming! It totally compares to Windows!”
Yeah, next year is… next year, and what planet are you on?!

Don’t get me wrong – Ubuntu is my primary OS, and Vista SP1 _is_ the best Windows OS to date. i use Ubuntu because it is customizable, secure -IMHO-, and is gives me a freedom – when I realized that Windows wasn’t the only OS (nix Mac’s, they don’t count since they are hardware restricted), and that you don’t always get what you DON”T pay for…wow. It just showed me I can look at the big boys like MS with a critical eye now – with something to compare it to.

Windows has been playing with no opponents. And that’s not a game.

Everything else that Ubuntu needs relies on market share – which your comments show it may have.

I am running Ubuntu Jaunty (which will become 9.04 few months down the line) on a 5 year old 1.8 ghz p4 with 1 GiB RAM. I could run it with even something like 256 MB but do grid computing so use this machine to do my bit for grid computing.

Except for casual gaming, everything i.e. movies, music, documents and whatever I’m able to do in Ubuntu.

If I had a better graphics subsystem (i.e. an ATI 128 MB card or something) then gaming wouldn’t be an issue as there are lots of FOSS games which I know, just need to get decent hardware.

> Vista is a technological improvement over XP

I’m not a Windows administrator–thankfully–but I haven’t heard about a single thing that Vista does better than XP, from the business perspective of course.

Myself, I have had zero issues with Vista.

I would like to see more people explaining *exactly* what problems they have/had with Vista. Maybe then we can get to the bottom of it.

Loading the system with bad drivers, installing every Windows 2000/XP program imaginable (some that never worked in the first place, like bloated anti-vir s/w), freaking out over the indexing service, and pre-SP1 issues might be best left out.

Vista is a technological improvement over XP, with a .net system. There where some backwards compatibility compromises… But this is how progress is made.

People seem to look at Windows Vista, and make the choice to not see the significant improvements that have been made… And instead focus on any flaw they can grab onto.

Surely you jest… If I had to choose Windows I’d rather go with XP than Vista. But I do believe that you cannot call one OS “the best” if you won’t specify it’s usage. My requirements differ vastly from what Windows offers, so the best OS for my needs is not Windows, nor even Linux.

What’s interesting in the ‘window lovers’ reaction to Ubuntu (and I see this in many places) is an attitude similar to Linux users’ attitude to windows a couple of years ago: this grumpy disdain for the ‘opponent’ much like McCain’s grumpy disdain for the winning Obama. AND I don’t care one iota whether Windows is ‘winning’ or ‘loosing’ whatever those terms would mean. If windows thrives great! Good software loved by its users makes the world better. If it doesn’t great too. Software once state of the now defunct, that’s life and we move on to new and great things.