I am a fellow South African, I stand behind the free movement 100%.

One thing that concerns me about the free movement is that there is no standard!!!

EG: Ubuntu vs Fedora

Installation proceedure differs when using GUI (One uses yast the other adept)

When *nix systems become standard out of box, with a simlar feel, with easy usability it will become popular, only after usability has been address start looking at visuals.

Compatability between M$ products needs to be a standard, it should not be up to the end user to install wine etc. to get M$ products to work, or better yet have products very similar to the mainstream titles like Photoshop and Dreamweaver.

Your average M$ computer user is someone that does not understand what goes on behind the curtains of window$, so for someone like this to migrate, it is very difficult.

Without ease of use *nix systems will never (I say never, but proove me wrong pleeaaasssee) become main stream.

The fist things that need to be looked at:

1. Ease of use (for someone that has never used a PC before)
2. Point and click installations with GUI setups (NETWORING GUI–>PPPOE)
3. Central Storage for installed apps (eg: M$ Program Files) I know *nix mostly used /etc/ or /usr or /var
4. Compatability (Wine just has not got it 100% yet)
5. Visualls with smooth fonts.
6. Easy Driver Installations (When necessary)
7. Media support (Easy to install or out of box support)
8. Hardware Compatability (almost there already)
9. Easy customisation through GUI

One thing is for sure *nix systems will not get avarage M$ users to switch untill the first 5 are up to standard. When the first 5 are up to standard *nix systems will rival any M$ based system for ease of use, and production. As my productivity is reduced on *nix due to having to use console to change files access restricted files, change system settings, install apps that don’t have installers etc etc.

But overall once *nix system is setup and running stability is second to none.

But again the average M$ computer user is installing and removing software on a daily/weekly/monthly basis, which again will reduce productivity if it were on *nix system.

These are my observations and views, and I strongly feel that *nix has potential to be the greatest OS’s, but this can only happen if *nix community starts to standardise, and hopefully produce a product that will be able to end M$ reign as most used OS.

The pic of the tree for the desktop is pretty cool… but, I’m sure that in general the interface could have looked better.

Or operated a little better. I’m still a little disappointed with Ubuntu being a fairly average user of an Operating System. I actually desperately want to change from Windows, but Ubuntu just hasn’t captured me as much as I’d like.

Hope there is more to come, nonetheless, and encourage you to keep going!!