Comment 380 for bug 1

People don't usually buy computes to run Microsoft Windows on, or to run GNU/Linux on. They buy computers to do their word processing, spreadsheets, web browsing, email, ebay selling, playing DVDs, playing MP3s, accessing the media files they 'own' etc.

So long as a user isn't addicted to specific windows-only applications, encouraging people to move to Linux is very easy.

A big step is to demonstrate to people they don't need to use Microsoft Word or Outlook. It only takes clicking on the Openoffice icon and literally 30 seconds for someone to realise they don't need MS-Word. In fact, I have been helping out in a computer shop and moved everything to OpenOffice. On several occasions, customers have asked if it has 'word' or 'office' on it and on those occasions, when the customer clicked on the OOWriter icon, they discovered to their satisfaction that it had, in their mind, 'word'.

In any case, Microsoft seem to be working on this bug very effectively. They have introduced WGA (Microsoft call this "Windows Genuine Advantage") which in the traditions of true doublespeak, disable unauthorised copies of Windows. Microsoft are cracking down on sellers distributing computers with unauthorised copies of Windows. And hopefully, they'll introduce WGA for other programs which benefit from Windows Update, such as Microsoft Office. As Microsoft snip away at the borders of the network which has built the value of the windows platform in order to raise revenue to warrant the current MS share price, we'll see increasing space on the desktop for genuine Free Software.

Added to this, users migrating to MS-Office 2007/Vista will have a usability shock which doesn't exist with a migration to OpenOffice.