I’m personally of the opinion that the US government should force Microsoft to port all of their desktop software to Linux and make it comercially available for the same price for which they make it available on Windows.

This would allow users to switch operating systems and not have to relearn applications. It would effectively deprive Microsoft of their operating system monopoly.

I beg to differ with the writer of this article though about how tough it is to run linux. Linux has made a lot of progress since it’s first days. It is no longer absolutely necessary to know command line to get it to function. I have one machine that is nothing but a linux box. If I had spent as much time on linux, learning the ins and outs as I have on Windows, hunting malware, tweaking, and setting up the OS to run as I wish it, then I would be excellent with linux also. However, I still have the linux box mostly for surfing the web. It is a far safer system than Windows when going to these different netsites. The net sites I go to with the Windows box is very limited due to its openess and the ability of programmers to slip things in you don’t want.

It is not a cheap OS to run; Windows. You wind up running spyware removers, anti-virus removers, firewalls, and at some point, none of that is enough and for special problems you need yet more applications. While you can find freebees for most of those, predominately almost every company wants to be paid for your use. Not just once either. Most want paid every year to continue useage. Linux doesn’t have all that. The majority of applications are free and the updates are free. In that sense, it is far more worry free and far less costly to run.

This monoculture is exactly what has made firefox the popular browser to run. Ever since Microsucks won the browser wars, they have seen no need to do major updates to the IE until Firefox began to make headway in useage numbers. Even now, while they update functions finally in IE, it is still a problem with almost near certainty that every month or so a new security hole being found. Many of them, Microsucks has known about for years. It was always easier to blame the user than to fix the problem. In the end, the malware issues were what drove me to linux. I have never regretted going to it for general surfing.