>Exactly, and who needs an ultra powerful microwave to nuke a little tv
dinner?
>The average user needs little more than entertainment and an office suit with
>little or no time wasted in learning how it works. For this, they are
willing
>to pay big bucks.
What's encouraging about Linux, is that there's no reason at all someone
can't put together a distro that's brainless to install, especially for
these "Web Appliances" of the near future that we keep hearing about that
don't have to be as flexible as PCs and don't have to support as many
hardware/software choices and comes pre-installed (a BIG part of the Linux
Curve goes away if the user doesn't have to worry about isntallation). I
would think that open source software could adjust to such changing
platforms more quickly than the big dummies at MS. Eventually, I'd like a
distribution like that to be so simple that it puts Red Hat out of
business. No offense to Red Hat, but hey, freeware is freeware. (It does
kind of baffle me that a company like Red Hat can go public and have their
stock do well - who the heck would gamble on a company that takes something
that everyone can get for free, slaps a name on it, and charges $80? Then
again, I guess Evian is doing pretty well for themselves. Besides, maybe
they're selling a lot of T-shirts.)
