Fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) is a sales or marketing strategy of disseminating negative but vague or inaccurate information on a competitor's product. The term originated to describe misinformation tactics in the computer software industry and has since been used more broadly.

Had to look that one up. Wouldn't it be nice if the editors or perhaps even the article itself defined these strange acronyms?

Try Cedega ($5/month, minimum $15 dollar purchase) if there is just that one game you can't live without. Also, WINE has increasingly good support for DX9, so you might want to try that as well. I do admit, though, I do keep a seperate windows box just for gaming (but my main system is linux).

Those are the types of issues you should expect when using distributions like Gentoo and Slackware. If you want stuff to just work right away, consider using Debian or a Debian-derived distro, or perhaps even SuSE. But stay away from Fedora. It's been nothing but problems for me, and the alternatives are far superior.

Remember- the average IQ is 100. And half the people are dumber than that. Its a truely horrific though. (Yeah, yeah, I know difference between median and mean. On a bell curve like IQ its a good approximation to say they're equal).

Why don't you explain to her that she may not have to use Outlook, even if they say that she does?

Because IMAP and POP3 access have likely been turned off, leaving Microsoft's proprietary protocol. Or does Mozilla Thunderbird or T-bird Community Edition already speak that?

People don't want to switch because they think they need office. Simple as that.

You're not kidding, I used to work for one of the big-box style electronics places, and just about every average computer shopper was convinced they needed MS Office. Supposedly, I should have pushed them towards buying said fantastically overpriced suite. Generally, I asked them what they'd use it for... 9 out of 10 just wanted to be able to type a letter.

Oy.

I'd love to move some of my small office clients to OpenOffice or StarOffice, but they require the calendar and scheduling functions of Outlook.

Soon, you'll be able to use Thunder and Lightning [mozilla.org] against Outlook. If you can't wait, there's already the Calendar extension [mozilla.org], an implementation of the iCal standard for T-bird.

You don't have to continue the subscription, but you will not be able to download new versions. There is also an experimental version released for free.

I use Kontact, KOrganizer and KMail and all that. It connects to my company's Exchange 2003 server for calendar and address book and email and does it all better than Outlook.

What was your point?
-Neil

Doom3 (Legacy Doom for 1 and 2), Quake4 (3 and 2), RTC Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein ET, Unreal Tournament 2004 (and 2003), all have native Linux-clients, just to name some well-known games.

1st paragraph: Maybe that's just you

2nd paragraph: I have a hard time in Windows. Explain that if it's so intuitive. And GNOME has a graphical way of doing your startup program example as well.

3rd paragraph: Wow, that just.. everything you said was wrong.

In Windows, I can just right click on something and choose 'open with' and I'm presented with all of the possible programs that can open that file. In Linux...???
Yes I can do that in GNOME

The other big, big problem is the lack of standardised menus and behaviour for ALL PROGRAMS AND OS COMPONENTS.
Actually, there is a standard. The vast majority of programs follow them especially if you use one desktop envirionment like KDE OR GNOME. And to say that all Windows programs behave the same is garbage. Most programs have their own look and feel and do things their way. Or did you think Winamp and itunes have similar interfaces?

what does a right mouse click do in Windows? It always, always brings up a context menu of available actions. In Linux.. something, nothing, who knows.
Actually it... brings up a context menu of available actions.

Fourth paragraph: My girlfriend uses my computer without my help with no problem. She had never heard of Linux before she met me.

Maybe you and parent post aren't as smart as you think.

Neverwinter Nights more your cup of tea?

1. Package Management bad? You mean clicking on a file and having an entire app installed for you with no further interaction is bad? Yet you want the OS installed with no interaction. Would you prefer the user makes a mess of their OS by installing apps to wherever they like as windows currently does?
I believe we're talking primarily about switching to Linux from Windows here. Switching from OSX is a different story altogether since in my opinion the only reason to do that is to save money and have more control over the OS.

2. Its easier than installing windows. Never installed an OS that doesn't require user interaction - and I dont believe its possible to do that anyway. Imagine installing SuSE Linux only to get to the GUI and find that they assumed you speak German...etc. etc.

3. Separation of System and Apps? Works for me. Cant comment on OSX since haven't had enough experience with it. If you like it - keep using it - but understand that not everyone likes it.

4. Emulates poorly? Hmmmm, doesn't this mean its not emulating it? If you make it very different to windows, it will be perceived as hard to use. Keeping the look and feel similar and only improving on whats needed is just plain common sense.

5. not sure what you mean. Things are easy. Dont know too many people who "need" wizards that complain about windows even being too hard. People that dont need wizards may complain that it treats you like a moron - but in Linux you dont need to use wizards. Simple.

6. Pretty much how it is already in Linux - or would you prefer windows errors like "an error occurred".?

7. Development tools on linux are among the finest around. Syntax Highlighting works better, autocomplete works great, everything is integrated. When I use VS now I feel like its very lacking in features. Each to their own though. Package Management is the main way to install apps in most linux distros - it makes sense to use them. They work very well if used properly.

8. Copying the functionality of a similar app means it will be easy to adapt to and if another app is successful on another OS, why not base your app on the same model? As long as there is no copyright or similar infringement, it only makes sense from a usability perspective to follow the same guidelines.
Most Linux apps are written to fill a need, and they often do.

9. (9 comes after 8) Most people DO use office at home. I'd bet its the #1 reason people buy a computer - to type and print documents. The fact is, openoffice 2 is a great alternative. Still, there are reasons for sticking with one or the other.

Sorry to be so harsh in replying to your points, but there is a wider world out there. Personally I'm not into forcing people to switch, but I do often point out to people that there are alternatives to windows.

Windows often DOESN'T do everything people need - they are just unaware of an alternative or dont really know enough about the alternatives to want to switch. All just my opinion of course.

Eskimos don't eat whale blubber because it tastes good. It's the only thing on the menu at the arctic buffet.

What? will the files just magically fly onto a person's hard drive in the right place?

You're saying your "packages" shouldn't be "managed"?

I'm saying packages shouldn't exist. Period.

There are not any other techniques for software installation.

Tell that to the millions of Mac OS X users. They will laugh at you as they merely drag Applications to the Applications folder.

What you're used to is just a really broken form of package management where any "package" is allowed to overwrite any library with its own (possibly vendor mangled or outdated version of a) library and do whatever it takes to get itself working. Screw any other things on the system. And no package is aware of any other package. And there's no liability for what package broke the system.

THere's this concept called "Bundles" where all shared libraries, language packs, and binaries for multiple architectures are stored in a single folder that appears to be a single application. Let me give you an example of what this allows. THe one time I installed Real Media player on OS X, Safari was running, I dragged it to /Applications and without restarting Safari and without Running Real Media, Safari was immediately aware of the Real plugin, loaded it, and used it. Welcome to no package managment.

My mother does spreadsheet manipulation of survey data. She got a new laptop for the project, but it didn't come with any office suite. So, I told her she could get OpenOffice for free, downloaded it and walked her through the setup, and told her a bit about how to use it. The next time I came home (a month or two later), she told me she got fed up with it after having to re-learn how to do some of the stuff she took for granted with MS Office. So she just dropped the $100 for the academic ed. and went with the tried and true.

In short, YMMV.

Then your head IT guy has selected the wrong products, probably without testing them, for your company. My system (Windows Server 2003 Enterprise as my development desktop, 2.8 GHz P4, 1 GB RAM, 256 MB nVidia FX5700,...) is wired up like a pinball machine here with everything from virus checking, spyware protection, even packet monitoring and logging and CPU load runs 1-3%, period. Heck, SQL Server doing absolutely nothing at the moment usually grabs more CPU than the rest of the system combined. What's interesting is that for individual use every product I use is free and pretty durn cheap for a business license.

The problem here, as I see it, is far too many IT types don't bother to test everything, especially vendor claims, against realistic setups before committing to the dotted line. Furthermore they don't make the case to management about the total costs, including all factors, to upper management. Lastly, upper management doesn't trust the average IT department to speak the truth, let alone deliver on their promises. I see all of this over and over in the field, when I'm called in to consult, and in the industry journals day in and day out. Actually it's sad that I have to be called in to (sometimes) give the exact same information and recommendations as an IT department simply due to the fact that I refuse to lie and I have always admitted immediately when I don't know something (but I'll go find out). I guess that makes me weird but engineering doesn't usually let you get away with BS. As I keep saying, nuclear meltdowns are sooo messy.

You are attempting to apply Windows concepts to Linux, which is why you are going to be disappointed. Linux is not Windows.

I'm sick of car analogies, so I'll try a dog analogy. When you are training a dog, you can't apply two-legged concepts to it. The dog won't get them and you will end up pissing yourself off. You have to think in terms a dog will understand. A dog doesn't get the concept of punishment except right after the event {in which case it is just another case of cause and effect, this time an undesirable effect of a cause which it will endeavour not to repeat}. A dog doesn't see you getting a tin of dog food out of the cupboard and opening it; it sees you catching something and skinning it. A dog doesn't think it's a person: it thinks it's a wolf and you {despite the leg count} are the alpha wolf in its pack. {If you give it the wrong signals, it thinks it's in charge. And it probably won't know what to do, living in a two-legged environment, so it will mess up really badly.} And so on.

Every Linux distro has its own preferred method of installing packages. With Debian and Ubuntu, it's apt-get; with Gentoo, it's emerge; with Mandriva, it's configure my computer->install software; with SUSE, it's YAST. You didn't state what distribution you were using. If you were using GNOME, I'd guess probably Fedora or Ubuntu. But that's by the by. Your distribution has its own preferred way of installing software. {There are many ways to accomplish this task. The people who set up your distro picked a way they liked, and expect everyone else to do it that way. They were there first and they had to make some rules for the sake of their own sanity.}

With Windows the standard method of installing software is to download a self-extracting executable archive, which contains pre-compiled binaries and automatically installs them somewhere. This is possible because (1) Windows only runs on Pentium / Athlon-type processors, (2) every Windows installation has the same kernel call points, and (3) Windows is actually a little more flexible than Linux with respect to the locations of libraries -- by default, it will first look for a library in the same directory as the program that asked for it. On the downside, (2) means that the Windows XP kernel is cluttered up with remnants from Windows 2000, Me, NT, 98, 95 and 3.11; and (3) means that the hard drives of Windows machines are cluttered up with copies of the same libraries, installed in different locations by different programs.

With Linux, things are a lot more flexible in general -- in fact, Linux is known to run on at least a dozen incompatible architectures. So the canonical method of installing software is to download an archive which contains source code -- which will compile for whatever processor is in the target system, extract it, compile the source, linking it against the installed kernel and libraries, and install the freshly-created binaries. Usually a script is included which will check that the build environment is complete, to avoid disappointment: if you know how to interpret the error messages you get from an abortive attempt at compilation, then you can fix things and it will work next time you try.

However, if you can make certain assumptions about the target system, you can actually install pre-compiled binaries on a Linux system. If you are a distro maintainer, you have pretty much stipulated what versions of libraries and other important base tier software are going to be installed. You can compile binaries against this setup and they will install and run correctly on another machine with the same setup. Slackware .tgz packages contain just the files which need to be installed: if the file is unpacked in the root directory, then everything will be deposited in the right place. Debian's .deb files, and others' .rpm files, go a step better by incorporating some metadata wh