On 08/26 01:15 , Mike Miller wrote: > That's just me, and people like me. For academics who mostly read and > write and don't do really serious number crunching or large-scale data > management, why not use Windows? They might fire up a web browser, run > Microsoft Word, and that's about it. It doesn't matter what they use and > they can just as well use any OS. One of the differences in the Linux vs. Windows debate today compared to what it was 10 years ago, is that Linux and OSX have (by virtue of competition in the marketplace) forced Microsoft to improve the quality of their product. So while the default tools you get with the OS are still crippled and limited compared to GNU/Linux, at least you don't have to reboot multiple times a day and lose data constantly because of buggy software. Fundamentally, Windows doesn't suck as much as it used to, and Linux has a lot more and better end-user tools now (and the world is more web-browser-centric), so there's less reason to choose one OS over the other. -- Carl Soderstrom Systems Administrator Real-Time Enterprises www.real-time.com