different strokes different folks
I started on the apple IIe, my brothers computer. We would buy magazines and run the little batch programs it had in them to see our amazing results after, lol
Then onto ms dos, win3.1, win95, winnt, w2k, wxp, and now Vista
Bill Gates wanted to bring computing to average people, not some elite groups of xxx whatevers. Now this could just be my humble opinion, but I believe it's fact.
meanwhile, the other people thumbed their noses at the average consumer, apple with it's OSx with it's "creative" folk, IBM with it's OS2Warp (partially codeveloped by MS) business/corporate market, and Unix fostered by some AT&T people with it's behind the scenes tech types.
While everyone did this and that, MS really wanted to make things for the consumer. That is how they got where they are today, not some supposed monopoly claim that isn't entirely valid.
During our Dos days and moving into Windows and the GUI we had our run using the text line commands and what not. With MS, that was viewed as something to get away from...and they did so. Then they became full force GUI and people started to try and make snide remarks.
Meanwhile the supposed gui that MS copied was still monochrome, had only 1 mouse button and didn't understand the meaning of multi-tasking. You save a file and that's all you did until it was done.
So people tried to insult MS/Win...and still to this day. But you have Linux desktops that of course, want to offer the rich gui of...Windows.
Things that MS push or support and make it better for consumers. USB and DirectX. Firewire/IEEE 1394 came out and just stagnated..."no need to improve"...but in the MS/windows world....there is always improvement. Apple thought firewire was theirs...didn't innovate. They had a part in USB...but MS took it and embraced it...so now we have USB 3.0
Same thing for 3d and Directx vs OpenGL. When someone doesn't want to improve upon something...don't blame MS for taking the alternative and evolving it.
Of course, now they are trying to keep 1394 inline with usb...and also there are some efforts to revamp opengl.
Many corporate entities and many clueless consumers, want to blame MS/Windows for things, but it's like the prime example of 3dfx:
3dfx - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
If MS sells WinX to consumers, and you don't, and you see 50million people buying WinX while 100,000 people buy your non consumer friendly product, who do you blame? Easy answer in this litigious society, top dog, MS.
Nix variants can be more viable if they want to be, just by becoming a consumer product, not some supposedly snooty elite use product only for the gifted minority.
It's past the year 2000, time for the OS to be done and done, and all the consumer does is use it...not try to recompile or run obscure command lines to get going.
In the end I like it all, but I dislike the misplaced blame and finger pointing, and the presumptousness of certain ideas. Do it, do it well...do it better than MS (truly and not just in the opinion of individuals) and it will be used over an MS product.
I have my legit Office2k3 and Office2k7 and eventhough I've downloaded openoffice, I'm not going to really use it.
If an os is not ready for consumers, as i don't believe any Linux distro is yet, just don't pretend it to be. I am not even sure if the Linux community is cohesive on this subject...do they ALL want to make a consumer friendly OS for the masses or just some? Open source, yet fractured right?