Linux Fails The Family Test BADLY! 53

I do not understand why it would bother or gladden anyone regardless of what your experiences with Linux are.

It is free and customizable. If you like it, love it and contribute to it. If you are too dumb or too lazy to use it, don't. Is that so complicated ?

I have personally never used Suse (after moving from RH, I went to and stayed with Debian and Slackware), so I cannot relate to what your teenagers went through. However, I think your family has a far deeper problem than the choice of an OS (frankly, I think your kids would be better off with OS X than Linux or Windows). I remember my own teenage years well, and I remember being insatiably curious about everything. If your kids are not techies (or even curious at that age), do you seriously think they are going to do well in their professions (as a general question) later in life, no matter what those professions might be ?

I think your question would be better posed in a parenting or even a adolescent learning group rather than any OS group.

Returning to your statement that Linux is never going to make a dent in the family market, I say , "So what, even if what you say is true ??". Unlike M$ and to a lesser extent, Apple, Linux does not starve or flourish with corporate profits. Linux Torvalds is going to be happy whether the worldwide user base is 50 million or if it is 5 billion. In other words, your rant was quite irrelevant.

Linux is free, and its success is not measured by how many otherwise mentally incurious people might be induced to use it.