There is a NewsForge article up that claims the only way to have a reliable desktop for your friends and family is to switch them to Linux. The conclude this because the author of the article apparently has the Windows admin skills of a small puppy.
Like so many such advocates (spelled z-e-a-l-o-t) the author is mired in a world that seems to have stopped advancing at Win98. That seems to be when he went off the ranch and started drinking the GNU/koolaid at every turn. Ah well. Here is my reply:
“It was a nice idea for an article, too bad your credibility suffered so badly by showing how out of date your Windows skills are.
There are two types of users I “support”.
- People who just want to surf the web, and check email.
- People who want to be able to use a variety of software – buy a game, buy an application, run Quicken or whatever strikes their fancy.
Group #1 is a group of people that are trivially dealt with under windows. Put in XP with SP2, put in anti-virus and turn on the firewall. Outlook Express is fine and life is good. Take away their admin privileges. They will never have to bother you about odd problems unless hardware goes bad.
Group #2 is not going to be happy with Linux. “Hey, I saw this great deal for TurboTax, can I run that?” and so on would be common questions. Don;t talk to me about WINE – we are discussing users who know little or nothing by definition right?
Group #2 will give you some problems under Windows, but no more or less than they would trying to support WINE or Crossover Office problems.
Barring hardware failure, I have never had XP BSOD. I have never seen XP get registry corrupted and SP2 solved 99% of the common security issues.” – quote in context