Complaining about Windows Vista is a national past time on
Internet forums these days. Windows Vista "costs too much," "has
onerous product activation," "requires too much hardware," etc.
These complaints are often followed up by a very simple boast: "I'm
just going to switch to Linux (or Mac)."
But in today's landscape, how viable is that statment? Is the
threat to switch to Linux an empty one, or is it entirely possible?
Linux on the desktop has been viable for years, especially for
programming gurus who can solve their Linux problems by simply
writing new software. It also seems to be viable for Mom and Pop
end-users who just want a machine to write letters, send email, and
browse the Web (although, admittedly, a guru will probably have to
set it up for them).
But what about power users, such as the typical audience of HardOCP
- those who know how to build their own computers, but not compile
their own programs? Or people who may not know how to do something,
but aren't afraid of taking the time to figure it out? Is Linux
truly an alternative? Can they do everything they did in Windows?
The truth is, we didn't know, but we very much wanted to find
out.
To properly explore these issues, we took a cue from Morgan
Spurlock and made the decision to use Ubuntu Linux as our home
operating system for 30 days.
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