@Vadim Peretokin You mean get companies to write proprietary software for Linux? (Like how ID software made Quake for Linux). That's going to be controversial... More below: @ Simon Lugi Don't be put off by Allen. He's obviously just got offended by something you said. Maybe cos you called him a geek (which we clearly all are). I don't think your comments were out of touch - and telling anyone their comments are out of touch is entirely counter-productive with what we're trying to do here - which should be to get as many people's honest opinions and ideas as possible. You do make some very good points (while I don't entirely understand the four Ps). You are entirely right that most people (technology enthusiasts aside) see computers as a tool to solve whatever their personal or company's problems are, and so we are going to need to show that Ubuntu is a viable solution and user-friendly for people working in all different sectors. You can argue that people don't switch cos they haven't heard of Linux. And that might apply to some. But I know loads of people, all of whom I have tried to persuade to use Ubuntu - and they ask whether it can do what they want it to: - will it run all my hardware? - mostly. But probably with a bit of effort on your part - does it have any bugs? - unfortunately yes. But if you put in the effort you can work around most of them - can I play games? - a few - but none of the cutting edge ones. This is not a particularly attractive prospect to them. Gaming is a huge area that Linux has never been that strong in - and, I think, a massive reason why people don't want to switch (this certainly applies to most of my housemates). You can argue that this is just because software houses don't bother to write games for Linux, and if we had a larger market share they would. But there's also the issue that (from what I've heard - correct me if I'm wrong) DirectX is vastly superior to OpenGL - one of the few good things Microsoft has actually produced. So maybe if we did get more software houses on board with Linux, they would not only create games for us, but hopefully use their expertise to improve OpenGL and make it more competitive. Sorry Simon, I got off topic slightly. The point is, I agree with you. We need to very deliberately get a foot in the door in as many different sectors as possible. However, it would be more useful if you could think of some plausible ways in which we could do this. Robin. 2008/7/12 Simon Lugi