@Monkeh16 - First off - I'm going to preface this whole post by saying that I
have tried to use Linux on the desktop several times in the past 10 years, and every time I've been put off by one thing or another that was simply missing or did not work as well as Windows. Your attitude towards my post suggests that you think I'm deeply attached to my Windows environment, but instead, like you pointed out, it's mostly that desktop usage for *nix has been a large afterthought.
Monkeh16 wrote:
It's not a strength when it encourages people not to migrate away from software they should've stopped using many years ago. Putting it off makes things worse.
What happened to Apple when they dropped OS9 and then PPC support? They angered a lot of clients. Angering clients is not good for business.
Monkeh16 wrote:
Realtek drivers. Enjoy your 15kB/s.
Realtek speaks for itself.

Monkeh16 wrote:
Yeah, it took a while, and now it's more reliable and doesn't require third party tools to have full support for all the hardware functionality.
I can't say anything for the last few years, but trying to get Ubuntu wireless working nicely on my EEE 1005 was more trouble than it should have been.
Monkeh16 wrote:
Desktop usage has been a fairly large afterthought. Meanwhile, you use Linux every day more than Windows and don't even realise it.
I do realize it. I run my own Debian Squeeze VPS for my websites, and I have a pfsense box running as my router. I'm well aware that most of the websites (including this one) are run on *nix. These are still not desktop scenarios. IMO, the desktop environment for Linux still has a long way to go.
Monkeh16 wrote:
Yes, but this isn't a hardware issue, this is yet another shortsightedness issue.
Monkeh16 wrote:
I suppose that comes down to how capable you are of handling a non-point-and-click system and what your requirements are. You won't know until you try, blindly sticking with one solution because 'it works, mostly' gets you nowhere at all.
And still it's a valid suggestion and one you won't ever know the result of without trying it.
You're suggesting that people move from one solution that "works, mostly", to another one that "works, mostly". Why would people do this? Personally, I could work all day in a bash console to do administrative tasks. I
have dealt with a Fedora system as my primary desktop while I was doing my studies at UBC. I
haveworked with Ubuntu on my laptops. I
have administered CentOS and Debian servers. For a day-to-day desktop environment, I've made an
educated decision to use Windows. This may seem like a misnomer to die-hard Linux fans (I always get flak for this), but I've spent far more time trying to get Linux to work nicely than the equivalent working cost for Windows licenses for all of my systems. Where's the value in that? I'm not saying that Linux doesn't have its merits, but blindly suggesting to people that they should switch is not always a good suggestion.
Linux on servers? Great. Linux on the desktop? Not quite ready for prime-time. Soon (hopefully).