Linux will it challenge windows soon

[bluedolphin]

in the news at the moment some big companies are changing to linux ....for the home user is it going to be the same?

[lisaj]

This is not 'news'. The fact is that people hate Microsoft products and have done for many years. They need to use them purely because of compatibility issues, so that your documents can be read by your 'colleague in accounting', and that you have a driver for your peripherals (which are commonly only supplied for Windows). Companies hate spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on Microsoft licenses and do not want to. There is no alternative however: The problem with Linux is that is has been too complicated for anybody other than a computer scientist to understand. It is however free, will continue to be free, and there are literally thousands of free software products for it (including a full whack version of Office - OpenOffice.org) that don't cost a penny. Now that the Linux powers (RedHat & Debian) are beginning to make Linux more user-friendly, the hardware powers (IBM, HP, Dell) are beginning to make money from Linux powered machine sales, and other hardware manufacturers are bothering to make Linux drivers for their hardware, you'll see a very quick transtition to the Linux platform across all spectrums because there is an incentive to do so. As soon as the software people want to run is there on Linux and takes as little effort to install and use as it does on Windows, people will switch - guaranteed.

[j2buttonsw]

Try RedHat Linux 8.0: it is quality: very user friendly, no command line nastyness, and it has a massive driver library.

[j2buttonsw]

Oh, BTW an inordinate amount of web servers run Apache (which is on RedHat Linux 8.0). Go to www.redhat.com and down load the 5 .iso files - you need quite a good connection though.

[manfredini]

I don't think the challenge will come soon if at all. I believe that Linux is a more robust system than Windows and intensely dislike Microsoft having dealt with their rather shoddy products in the past few years. However, XP is a step in the right direction while by no means perfect it's a huge improvement on windows. I think Microsoft may have an operating system that is equal to Linux in five or so years and given microsoft's size, it is likely to squeeze anything else out the market. As for the home user, swap over and try it, i think Linux is great, but you'll have to learn a new system, is the average home user going to be up for installing Linux? Never mind learning a new system? I don't think most will.

[GeordieSteve]

Most of the Eastern business already run Linux to save on cash. I can honestly see the same happening over here as soon as Microsoft change their licencing and decide you now have to pay a yearly fee to use their OS's.

Time to start learning Red Hat me thinks!