Charles Pilger (linked above) writes a great piece against the hope of some members of the (Brazilian?) Linux community that new MS Windows Vista will bring more users to Linux due to lack of hardware to run the hungry Operating System that Microsoft started shipping this days.

It's good to see a defendant of the open source community speaking clearly and focused about the challenges OS (specially Linux) community faces to win the "war" over Windows on desktops. He concludes the article saying something like "get games, get users". I somewhat agree with him.

He says that home users don't like to switch systems, to learn everything again and specially they don't like to lose all their apps they're used to. It's really an entry barrier for Linux to the desktops and one reason of the high levels of piracy in Brazilian "PC Para Todos" ("computers for everyone", in a lousy translation).

In order to get people moving to Linux, the OS community around them will have to guarantee users the same (or almost) of what they get in their Windows. And let not talk about the "my work computer" vs. "my home computer"... or why piracy at home is somehow tolerated while enterprise piracy is highly combated.

Related links for "Linux getting users because of Vista?":

Pilger's article translated to english by Google

More on the Brazilian program, in Portuguese

Labels: brasil, linux, opensource, pc para todos, piracy, windows

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