[BigSkyFreeper]

I'm pretty geeky myself, but I've heard Linux has a pretty steep learning curve. This I think, keeps people from bailing on Microsoft. Microsoft literally has the market on the "ease of use", as opposed to Linux where you have to do the work of configuring everything from the ground up.

[blackfarm]

Lindows is moreeasy to use than Windows i think and has cool programs to Use Like bibletime.

[FastCoyote]

"I'm pretty geeky myself, but I've heard Linux has a pretty steep learning curve. This I think, keeps people from bailing on Microsoft. Microsoft literally has the market on the "ease of use", as opposed to Linux where you have to do the work of configuring everything from the ground up."

I do IT and I have personally made the switch on my own projects (to FreeBSD, pretty much the same as Linux). Yup, the learning curve was steep, but the rewards in terms of price, stability, security and the ability to fix a broken system are worth the effort for me.

For the average Joe, it might not be time to jump yet, but the cost, licensing and planned obsolesence path of Windows make it a long term problem. Linux will catch up on the ease of use front. The changes due for the Longhorn upgrade of Windows due in '06 are interesting, but aren't going to make a hell of a lot of difference to someone doing a small business or surfing the web. So, there is probably some Linux in your future, especially on the server side.

[Jim Cane]

I'm pretty geeky myself, but I've heard Linux has a pretty steep learning curve.

It's no more difficult to operate than DOS (whose filesystem Linux supports)