America - the land of free technical choice as well.
Operating systems programmer in another life long ago (anybody remember OS/360?), I appreciate that, today, a bit-twiddler worth his/her coding salt can find a way into *any* XP/Linux/Unix system kernel.
It's heartening that the passion of such debates (OS X vs OS Y) still rage as it's from such that creativity and innovation will emerge. It's an evolutionary development process afterall.
Thing is....My current install of XP Pro w/ SP2 has run for weeks on end with nary a hiccup. Pretty reliable albeit with Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, and Firewalls up front.
Linux? Tried it and just can't muster up the interest. Microsoft works for me. Period.
Guess I'm just set in my ways and would rather surf FR than tweek around with RedHat these days. Life is too short.
Funny, I switched my dad's computer from W2K over to Mandrake Linux 10.x. Showed him what icons to click for web browsing, e-mail, word processing and spreadsheets.
Oh, and solitare. Gotta have solitare.
Haven't had any complaints, problems or issues (virus', spyware etc.) from him on it since. The systems only been down due to power outages that ran longer than the UPS could power.
I don't know where everybody gets the idea that to use Linux you have to be proficient in command line, bash programing or tweeking the kernel. Yes all those options (power) is there and more, but if my 79 year old, computer illiterate dad can use it, anyone can.