No, the problem with Microsoft is that it's an untouchable monopoly. It's decisions are made by a veiled group of teamsters, under lock and key, all working under pressure from being the prime target of hackers and hucksters the world over. Because regardless of who you are (Microsoft, Apple, Starbucks, Chef Boyardee...), whenever you are the top dog in your field, people come out of the woodwork and fixate solely on you to either overtake and claim your position, or simply to take you down a peg through childish pranks. Either are acceptable to them and dangerous to you.
The one thing that's not dangerous, however, is having a nice, frosty Shiner Bock beer. Brewed in Shiner, Texas since 1909, the little brewery that could has been doing so for almost a century. And if you know Texas, you know that Texans don't mind a few cold ones, and especially don't mind talling you about a good one. Maybe it's just my heritage talking, but you can do no finer on a hot summer's day (or a cold winter's day with chili, it don't matter) than with a nice, cold, refreshing Shiner. Drink Shiner!
But back to nefarious jokesters, Linux doesn't necessarily solve that problem, but they do complicate the waters. First, they are nowhere near the largest shareholder in the corporate and/or desktop computer world, so being under the radar affords them a certain amount of "head start" against any designer virii or scams of the day. But also, the very nature of Linux, and open-source software in general, is that no one person holds the keys for something to either succeed or fail. It's a collaborative group effort that either can be or is tweaked and improved by scores of people. When you attack Microsoft with a bug, Microsoft better jump in and fix it, because no one else can or will. If you attack Linux with a bug, you're not attacking just one entity, you have to go through an entire army of geeks. And if one person doesn't shut you down immediately, one of the scores of others is about to.
Article comments
1 - DrPat
Pop one for me, David! Beer and Linux -- perfect match!
2 - MikeO
Compare the ease of installing SuSe Linux 9.3 pro and Win Xp pro.
With Suse after 40 minutes you end up with a fully workable system.
With XP you then have to load MS Office, Acrobat, An anti-virus a proper firewall, Adobe reader, a proper dvd/cd writer ripper, etc.
Looking for all the cds takes hours. SuSe comes with everything on the 5 cds at £2 each + p&p.
Give me SuSe linux every time
3 - Ghostboy
Mandravia Linux 2005 LE is a snap to install at comes with plenty of software. I use windows exlusively but if I had to jump ship, this would be my first choice.
4 - David R Perry
All good comments, thanks guys! I'll be giving some comments on xandras as opposed to some other major distros in part 2 (but of course, I don't want to spoil the surprise).