How about a comparison on merit, not marketing 1505

This is the essence of my disagreement with "billwg" over XP Home vs XP Pro, but you say it better. He appears to think in terms of price points for a given level of functionality and whether or not the user is willing to accept what he is being offered. He has this "appliance" mentality of which you speak. This is probably an appropriate mentality to have when your goal is to appeal to the mbutt consumer market, but it is not the right model for appealing to computing professionals.

Many Windows advocates seem to think in these terms. Everything is a target market with a specific set of needs. The idea that somebody might actually want a bag of tools that can be molded to the task at hand doesn't occur to them because they think in terms of mbutt markets. They ignore so-called "niches", or buttume that somehow they mbutt market product can be made to cover those "well enough".

This approach might be appropriate for home users, but for computer professionals it is just annoying. Hiding all of the works makes it harder for them to do their jobs.

Then there are the business users. They often want appliances for their employees but they want appliances that are tailored to their business. That's why they hire professionals to manage their computers rather than taking the home-user approach of "everyone is an admin". Linux is ideal for this because the professionals can configure the deployed systems to the exact requirements of the business rather than trying to bang a relatively rigid predefined setup into an approximation of the right shape using tools that few outside of Microsoft fully understand.

This is a suscinct explanation of why I prefer Linux. The fact that it is so malleable seems to cause great distress to people with the appliance mentality, but for a professional that is a selling point. I can configure exactly what I need for the job at hand.

While this may not be the "mbutt consumer market" model, there is certainly a large niche where a "bag of tools" is the right thing.

-- - Bob Hauck - A proud member of the reality-based community.