Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

The strain due to the fact that most business desktops are locked into the Microsoft platform, at a time when both the Apple and GNU/Linux alternatives are qualitatively safer, better, and cheaper to operate, will start to become impossible to ignore.

From the preaching to the choir department: Tim Bray reflects that Apple and GNU/Linux will gain more ground on Windows in 2008.

Around our house we have only Mac and GNU/Linux too, and I completely agree that these platforms are "easier to install, less trouble to maintain, and more pleasant to use." Sure this is just my personal opinion, I have no stats or studies to back it up, but like I have said over the years - my opinion matters, get used to it!

Seriously, I have the pleasure of using Windows at my current day job, and I have used it in various other scenarios for decades now (since 3.1, including getting an MCSE in the NT4 days), so I am no stranger to it. I also get to constantly help my relatives, friends, and neighbors with their machines. I do not speak from complete ignorance.

I use a Mac because I feel like I get a very polished hardware product along with a great UI, and have my familiar Linux environment underneath (yes it's BSD, but you know what I mean). My kids and wife use Macs for the same hardware/UI and because they just work - there is very little hassle factor. There are things to nitpick over, sure, but they are generally minor.

The same is true of Linux. I don't have a Linux desktop (other than a server in the workout room that doubles as a desktop with KDE for watching podcasts and such), but the Linux server experience is fantastic nowadays. Yum handles it, I don't even hear about it, and the uptime for my machines is months to years (file servers, web/app servers, and the like).

Windows, on the other hand, as my experience has shown me, is a festering sore of crapola. Or as Tim puts it ". . . Windows boxes are mostly smoking, diseased, quivering heaps of goo."

Every time I have to go help someone with Windows I end up spending an average of an hour or two getting various malware detection programs installed (SysInternals RootKitRevealer, great tool BTW) and then getting spyware, trojans, and viruses UNINSTALLED.
And, if that weren't bad enough, how about all the supposed non malware CRAP that comes on, say, a new Dell. MusicMaker this, PhotoHandler that, PcCillin demo for 30 days, AOL, UseYourBurner, blah blah blah. I have to spend another 30 minutes with the unistaller and regedit/startup removal before I can get the CPU to calm the hell down and stop running all the nonsense in the background (one friend got a new Dell for Christmas, what a joy). Once the machine is "clean" come the updates. All in all it takes a lot of time to just get back to a basic working computer - and then it starts all over again in six months.

This year, thankfully, I succeeded in converting several of my friends and neighbors to Macs. The Macs have gone over great so far, and I have considerably less "hey Charlie can you help with" from the set that went that direction. I even went over to a few neighbors recently (who got Christmas Macs) and offered to help walk them through stuff, knowing they come from the Windows world. "Nope, got it, works great, love it." (One friend needed help finding the "uninstaller" for something, which on a Mac is move the app to the trash, done, but that was about it.)

So why is Windows still around? Well, deals with PC makers (that is your only choice when you buy a Dell, for the most part), the cost of PCs, gaming, the availability of software, and frankly Office/Exchange/Outlook.

Tim notes this in his article too, but I have been saying for several years that the MS hook, the reason Windows is still a player (at least in the business world) is Outlook/Exchange/Scheduling. Now there are alternatives that work pretty well, even Google for Domains (with gMail and gCal), but the "enterprise" set is still sold on Exchange. When one MS server gets in the building they seem to reproduce exponentially (and expensively).

All in all, I think Tim's prediction is spot on. More and more everyday non expert, and non think-they-are-an-expert, type people are discovering Mac, and to a lesser degree even Linux as a desktop (and Linux is getting a lot better in that department). I say that trend is welcome, overdue even (not just for those of us who were blathering about Linux 1997, and had been running it via 30 floppy disks for a few years before that), bring on the non-Windows world.

(Note: above "thinklinux" image cropped from: http://ftp.linux.org.uk/mirrors/ftp.gnome.org/teams/art.gnome.org/backgr....)