>>43
I am an B.Sc. in Computer Science and have tried numerous Linux distros over the years. It might be a viable option for the occasional lucky person who installs the base system and it works reasonably out of the box (possibly with the addition of one or two modules/programs, it ain’t that hard). Also great for the tinkerer who wants to learn about computer systems, no arguing about that.
That said, would I want it on a professional workstation or production grade server?
No.
Reason: For daily use, all distributions I have touched were utter garbage compared to all of Microsoft’s offerings. Period. The system is very “nerdy” – feels like a toy, with obscure application names, weird help files and messages, and a good variety of awful workarounds obviously written by 35 year olds living in there mothers basement. The more cooks there are, the worse the soup will taste. I’m all for open source, but it seems that when it comes to operating systems, some degree of quality control and co-operation with the hardware manufacturers is needed. Perhaps this kind of stuff is best handled by a corporate entity.
The price of a Microsoft Windows license may be $200 – but what is its value?
Well, I have a $60/hr salary as an IT professional. I spent 40 hours getting a copy of Ubuntu fully working on a three year old Inspiron laptop. $2400. Windows install time two hours.