I believe the major issue is lack of consumer software available in the Linux community. I'm not saying that I don't find tons of open source projects and some of high quality, but there's nothing to compete with the top of the line proprietary graphics and audio software available on Windows and Mac. For a developer Linux makes the most sense, it's lightweight and therefore fast and can run Eclipse and other full on IDEs and generally there's a compiler available for every language and to target many systems (VMs or Processors). So for a dev like myself it makes perfect sense, however for someone I work with who strictly does creative work, ever having to deal with the command line is probably too much to ask. They have lots of work to do and if the software available doesn't make their work as fast as it can be on a Windows or Mac OS machine then it just can't sell. Believe me I'm all for Linux and FOSS and Ubuntu, but I think for it to really happen the open source community needs to step up the game with regard to media editing/creation software (ffmpeg is great but explain it to a video editor, granted the video editing GUIs for Ubuntu I've found are very fast, but just lack advanced features). As it stands today I think we have the following large groups of computer users: Developers | Love Linux, works great for them, all the tools you need nothing you don't, fast, easy customization. System Admins | Love Linux, works great for them, cheap solution good performance good security history can run J2EE and other enterprise scale application servers/containers. General Public (mom & pop) | Are frightened of change, have been fed the Windows bread all their professional lives. Linux can work for them and well but they need some help to get started (e-mail, web-browsing all great, UI is easy enough for these tasks, it's fast did I mention that). Media/Content Creators | Tools are not up to par cannot really use Linux on a Day to Day basis simply because the tools are not refined or in-depth enough to match their Windows/Mac OS counter-parts. If a corporation like the one I work for was offered the opportunity to have all of their employees work without licensing costs for OS upgrades and knowing everyone is getting the best bang for their buck out of their hardware, and would be supporting just 1 open source OS, I don't think anyone would be complaining and this bug would dissolve quickly. I believe LibreOffice/OpenOffice are good alternatives to MS Office and the e-mail clients are fine, I think another major area that needs to be addressed by the open source community is Exchange server. GMail has made some strides in providing a replacement but it's not 100% in terms of group contact management and other features that Exchange offers for businesses. So I say we create the following and get this bug closed. Replacement for the following: Final Cut/Premiere Pro Tools Exchange/Outlook Photoshop Illustrator Here's the list I can come up with of possible replacements in Ubuntu, but none seem totally up to par: Video editing http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/top5-linux-video-editing-system-software/ (I've used KDen live not the others here, it was as I said above fast but not feature full) Audio editing Rezound or Audacity, Rezound seems to be dead with regard to development, Audacity is okay but again not great UX/UI interactions and not a ton of features. In terms of Mail servers I believe they're just missing the calendar side of exchange, and contact management/integration in Active Directory, though perhaps there's an alternative for that I'm unaware of https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MailServer I've also heard good things about Citadel and Zimbra and had a brief stint playing with Zimbra but got caught up in other work, some others talking about it here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1231456 Photo Editing: GIMP, decent but hard learning curve, kind of slow to start up and generally work-flow in PhotoShop seems to be smoother, although this coming from someone who has used PhotoShop far more. SVG editor: Inkscape, haven't used this one honestly just assuming from what I've heard from those who have that it's not as easy to use as Illustrator (granted the Adobe suite has been refined by paid engineers for some time and is still a resource hog) I think hardware vendors will support Linux more once consumers demand it, and not before. So yah currently that's my two cents. Please respond and tell me how wrong I am and point me towards all the bad ass software I'm missing out on :). Thanks for reading if you got through that, -Shaun PS I would love a Lenovo with Ubuntu pre-installed (and no Windows OEM fee to boot). On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 5:32 AM, MDV