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Heh, that's where I got it. Glad to be talking to a fellow techie.

Well, don't be too glad, if you're an OSNews fan: IMO, that site's really gone downhill in the last year, and you just need to read the comments on the "Mozilla staffer blogs about Linux's problems" article from a few days back to see why. It's like Slashdot with a fraction of the userbase and a less painful design.

They keep treating security as a feature. It's not a feature, it's a process.

Pretty much. They've got no clue about security, and the fact that they designed Windows to perform in a trusted computing environment speaks volumes. Apple is on the ball as far as OS security goes, IMO: its temp-admin priveleges system and password generation are two aces in the hole.

The biggest hurdle is getting at least one linux box into the mainstream.(your circuit city's, best buy's, and so on)

IIRC, some retailers tried selling Linux machines, and they flopped. A big problem is Linux's half-baked status: KDE and Gnome are absolutely terrible, and beyond that, it's daunting to switch from Windows to anything else. OS X is at least relatively recognizable in terms of GUI design, and the biggest hurdle will be overcoming the sense that everything is backwards (taskbar on top, minimize/maximize/close buttons on the left side, default desktop icons on the right side, etc)

Between the sheer numbers of machines around and the free nature this was bound to happen.

That and OS X apparently isn't as good a server as Linux (which IMO isn't as good as FreeBSD for that purpose.) Apple has a great home/workstation OS on their hands, at least. It's the reverse of Linux's situation.

KDE and Gnome are absolutely terrible, and beyond that, it's daunting to switch from Windows to anything else.

It's not that KDE is terrible (Gnome is, I'll give you that), it's just that it's not (yet) well laid out. I can do stuff with KDE that's so simple and intuitive that Windows can't even begin to match. For example: I pop in an Audio CD. I browse it. I see a Track Folder, an OGG folder, a WAV folder, and an MP3 folder. If I drag stuff out of the MP3 folder and put it on the local filesystem, it's converted on the fly. I can then just hook up my portable MP3 player and drag it over to that. On Windows I'd need all sorts of "MediaManager" programs which do who knows what.

^^^^^^^^^^IMO, that site's really gone downhill in the last year^^^^^^^^

Nah, I swing by to pick up a news story but rarely do I post.

^^^^^^^^^KDE and Gnome are absolutely terrible, and beyond that, it's daunting to switch from Windows to anything else.^^^^^^^^^^

They tried that a while ago. You used some of the modern versions? OSS evolves faster than anything else.

And yes, switching is daunting. But so is reinstalling every few months.

^^^^^^^^^^^That and OS X apparently isn't as good a server as Linux^^^^^^^^^^^^

I was talking strictly desktop users. Like myself. I have no servers.