yes, exchange.
and ms office.
when a user gets a ms word 07 document, you either must have word 07 or a reader.
that leads less-thinking (most) businesses to purchase ms office.
when office 2010 comes out, then the herd of lemmings will follow whoever buys it first and likewise plunge into the sea, thus keeping up with the joneses.

open office, anyone?

i suspect much more than 1%

lots of articles in the past year on this or that government or agency adopting linux.

lots of us loading linux on friends' former-windows machines (as they have no licensed copy of windows...)

and, on what else besides debian does one run network security tools? ok, that's too narrow...

and (i know this is hard to believe) some ppl are actually tired of malware on their pc and would switch if one of us hinted at it...

so, yeah, way more than 1%.

it's stable unless you allow kernel updates and that craps-out your wireless.
but nothing that a good deal of searching the internet and advice from good ppl at another forum couldn't fix.
after a couple of days. :P

not to mention the learning curve on the way in with wireless. :P
thank goodness for wicd.

however, with so much invested in it, i've grown fond of it, and hence it stays on the laptop. ;) :)

bit torrent is horrible or wonderful, depending on qty of seeded machines.

bit torrent is ok if several ppl give up cpu & bandwidth.

but ftp on a cluster of servers with adequate bandwidth works just as well

i do not believe the bit torrent protocol is any more efficient than ftp. perhaps i'm wrong on that. case studies anyone?

"like windows...."
well, the menu bar is unavoidably so, else we risk alienating linux from new users.
but that's where it ends for me.

command line?
unavoidable. in any os. any power user knows
it is too powerful of an asset.

standards <> exact sameness
nvidia and ati both implement radically differently in linux, but each is capable of stunning video performance
fluxbox, kde, gnome - get to the same point, sorta, but also are quite different in look, feel, and to a point, functionality
live cd - many distros, one goal - try before you, er, buy
so... standardization does not mean exact sameness

:laugh: you mean we have to leave this forum and go to another one to make suggestions back at this one?
o. my. lord.

what will they think of next?! :dry: :laugh:

standardization is the key to success
- ethernet
- pc - wide-open implementation of various (hardware) standards
- linux file locations
(sorry, changing that structure won't make a better os.)
- the look and feel of the standard menu bar
everyone knows file = save, save as, print
whether windows or linux

what causes loss in standardization is the years it may take to come to a standard, or a vendor jumping the gun and creating a pseudo-standard, incompatible with anything else.

w/o standardization, mine won't talk to yours.
there is no basis for trade (gallon, liter, euro, dollar)
nor communication (what language we agree to use)
etc.

<--- blank space left to clear the days, hours, minutes thingy...

hello.

most forums have a place
--- to chat
--- to report forum / website problems
--- to make suggestions about the forum / website

:laugh:
i don't ever fill in the blanks truthfully
the last thing i need is yet another site gathering stats on me...

newspaper.

skinny columns.
makes it easy to read lots o' text.

if i 'm posting looong questions / answers
i break it up into short, easy to read phrases
even if the sentence is long.

so, me, i have no problem with the posting area size.

ooo ooo what's that directly above me? could it be?
it is!
hello, eric! :lol: