IMO, there are only two major obstacles for linux adoption on desktops:
1: No game support. As long as games for the PC are for Windows primarly, Linux will never get any kind of adoption on high/mid-range home PC:s. And as long as Windows is the primary platform on home computers, games will be made primarily for windows...
2: Microsoft Excel. Simply put, Excel and Word are head and sholders above the competition. There are alternatives, sure (open office, google docs etc) but none that really measure up - especially in the spreadsheet market. As long as MS retains that competitive edge, Windows will be the preferred platform on business computers.
Yeah, that's been a huge problem for Apple. :)
PC gaming is fading out, anyway - most serious players prefer consoles.
This is the one reason why I keep bringing my Mac Book Pro to work every day. I'm the only person in my organization who uses linux (Ubuntu on a desktop) and Openoffice.
Openoffice usually mangles a word or excel document I try to open, so I have to use my mac version of MS word/excel. But this isn't because MS word/excel is better (at least for a casual user like myself...I find that creating documents with OO and converting them to PDF to send to my colleagues works great), it's because MS probably works at keeping the two incompatible.
>2: Microsoft Excel. Simply put, Excel and Word are head and sholders above the competition. There are alternatives, sure (open office, google docs etc) but none that really measure up - especially in the spreadsheet market. As long as MS retains that competitive edge, Windows will be the preferred platform on business computers.
I *HATE* Excel with the hatred of a million burning suns. Management types tend to be idiots who want to use spreadsheets ALL THE TIME... especially when the intended use of the information therein would be *FAR* better handled by a database.
I merely strongly dislike Word; it’s truly a horrible program... especially when you delete some text/paragraph and it alters formatting [usually in awkward ways]. If proper formatting is a requirement for your document, such as legal or scientific works, I’d strongly recommend WordPerfect above Word simply because of the superior manner it handles formatting. (I still use WP11 in preference to MS Word.)