Brett327 said:
I'm no linux expert by any means, but it's primarily an OS for extreme geeks and computer experimenters that doesn't really lend itself to use by the general public.
Mmm that's been changing over the years. I've run multiple computers simultaneously since 2001 and I've always run Linux on one machine. I run a web server, FTP server, SSH server, etc, and Linux naturally lends itself to that. It's also great if you want to get into development (programming), or just general screwing around with your computer. Linux really lends itself to investigating how your computer works and tweaking it.
Lately there is a big push to get Linux more mainstream. The problem is, it's not centralized. There are so many distrobutions, but the big ones (Red Hat) are really trying to make it mainstream.
While I'm sure there are nifty GUIs and emulators, there's essentially no software written for it that is of much use to most of us.
Plenty of GUIs, in fact, a shit ton. You have more desktop manager options in Linux to fill your hearts desire. You can even make Linux look exactly like Windows or Mac. It's much more versatile thank Windows or Mac any day in that respect.
As far as software, lots of stuff has come out. OpenOffice is a great product that is a near copy of MS Office. Corel and some other big companies have written software for Linux. You're right though, in general, the big programs may not be available, at least not in a form you immediately recognize. Most Linux stuff is open source, which is good as there are a million programs to do a million things... but bad because there are a lot of poorly written programs as well.
Let's face it, the old debate about stability of the Windows OS compared to Mac has been largely rendered OBE since the more stable NT/XP kernel. Windows is by no means perfect, but it's the standard - embrace conformity. I wouldn't recommend deviating from Windows unless you have an extremely esoteric computing requirement, or are interested in experimental computing for its own sake.
Brett
The NT/XP kernel is pretty good. Windows XP is definitely the best OS that MS has ever released.
The good thing about Linux is, say you have a shitty older computer, maybe a Pentium 100, or a 486... well Windows XP doesn't run on them, but Linux DOES. I used to run a server that was a 150 MHZ Pentium with 32 MB RAM... it ran like a dream because I was running Linux. Fast and efficient. Windows can't say that.