Suse Linux
After losing my patience with Gentoo, I installed Suse Linux 9.1 this weekend on one of my spare systems Thursday. So far I am happy with it. It took me about 1 hour to install, but all of my Hardware seems to work the way it is supposed to.
I have been using Linux nearly exclusivly at home for the last year or so. I am mostly using it as a commitment to learn the skillset. I believe that Linux is becoming established enough to be able to compete with windows in the workplace. When it does, I would like to be capable of supporting it.
Quite a few schools are migrating to Linux using K12LTSP Using this technology allows them to substantially reduce their investment, as they can use their old computers as terminal clients, and do not have to replace them. It also reduces the time it takes to rebuild a workstation to one or two commands from the command line.
As children grow up being familiar with Linux, the fear and resistance to it will be deminished. Add this with the reduced cost of using terminal services and opens source apps, and it will be a difficult product for businesses to resist. Many employers such as IBM and the city of Munich are forging the trail by putting open source products on the desks of their employees It think that it is only a matter of time before other companies see that it is possible to survive without paying Microsoft.
To the end user, I think the transition from Microsoft to linux is pretty minor. Within a few days, I think that the competent computer user could adapt to the new tools that they would need to use. Using Linux with KDE is pretty simular to using Windows or Mac. Point and click.
In the IT shop the transition would certainly be more stressful, but an IT shop is paid to handle transitions like this, and for the long term savings, they should be willing to make the switch.
