Posts by KarlTh

BOFH: Licensing model

Vendor Tauntage

Is always a joy.

Red Hat scurries away from consumer desktop market

That's the phrase I was looking for!

"enterprise-level support for Linux desktops"

Ta.

You know what?

Person 1 with his hardware finds XP or Vista works out of the box and Ubuntu doesn't. Person 2 with a different set of hardware finds Linux works out of the box. Why does Person 2 have to call Person 1 a liar?

For my part, and this was with Gutsy Gibbon, I found that the builtin wireless card in my laptop would only work under NDISWrapper, and even then could not, even with WICD, be made to automatically connect on startup - I could have written a shell script, but just plugged in a spare dongle which was properly supported (well, after I'd downloaded a driver from an obscure place on the web because the m/f of the actual chip had stopped offering web downloads or somesuch, and this was a mass market Belkin dongle, not some car boot unbranded thing from Taiwan). On my desktop Vista works almost flawlessly, except for an annoying habit of losing USB HID devices on waking from sleep which comes and goes. In 1 GB of RAM.

Different people have different experiences in different circumstances.

OK. Work head on. I have to manage desktops for around 2000 users, and there's pretty much just me to configure them, for people who mostly have to be talked through getting to the control panel. I manage this by using group policies and SMS. How, exactly, would one manage 2000 Linux desktops in the same way? For me, Linux will be ready for the desktop when it natively (Samba, yes, but in my experience it's slower than native Windows on given hardware, and even then its domain and group policy support is only where NT4.0 was) supports an equivalent to active directory (for group policy) and SMS (for scheduled automatic software installation and publishing), without having to give users the keys to sudo. That's where MS is making its killing - whatever gripes you have about the OS (and I share them, believe you me), the fact is that I can do these things with readily available tools which I can learn to use without spending hours reading obscure manuals* in my Copious Free Time (TM)

I'm willing to be sold the wonders of a Linux desktop, but until it's got the manageablility that MS' domains and management software give me, I don't see how I could support it. Yes, I know about Zenworks, but question the wisdom of swapping one paid for solution for another.

I wonder which response I'll get? It's either "You idiot, you're too thick to do systems support if you don't know about <insert management package here>", which translates as "because I live and breathe Linux you should too or you're not a real techie" or "You should trust your users to manage their own computers", showing breathtaking naivity about the fact that Joe User (a) doesn't know that much about computers and couldn't find his way to the Add Programs part of Ubuntu no matter how easy it is once you're there and (b) doesn't want to either because he wants to use the computer, not configure it.

Go on. Wow me with the Open Source alternatives.

*Average Linux man file "Recursion: see Recursion".

Sales slide at PC World, Currys

It's variable

As I said before. I got a half-price wireless network dongle when I last bought a PC there (special offer you understand). The salesman basically said that all I had to do was take out the "PC Assurance" thing, which I could cancel after a month, and he'd throw it in for free. So I got it for the price of one month's "PC Assurance" which he admitted was a load of crap (although not in so many words). But he was one of the older ones, not a pimply youth.

The support guys may be hampered with the system restore thing - I used to work for Tech Support for Siemens and they would not sanction a hardware call until you'd eliminated any possibility of a software fault. Unless it was painfully obvious (like a monitor with no power light coming on) you had to insist on a software restore, which was as painful for the tech as for the customer, because after reinstalling the OS they'd have to have all the drivers reinstalled - of a drivers CD which had had the floppy based drivers copied onto it without changing the paths, so it still looked for all the driver files on floppy, and had to be redirected for every damned file copy operation. I still get cold sweats about those!

The ones who have potential are serving their time as we all have to before getting a proper IT job. The ones who are crap are serving their time before going into management.

Customer Service stinks

I bought a DAB radio/CD stereo for the kitchen from Currys. After nine months it stopped spinning up CDs. So I took it in to Currys. They had no suitable replacement as I needed Line In (to pipe sound from the lounge stereo) and insisted they could only offer vouchers as an alternative. I took them because there was no budging the store manager, but insisted I should have a cash refund.

Took about two weeks of emailing their customer disservice centre, who insisted that the store manager was within his rights. I pointed out that legally he was not, and got a reply back that they didn't know about that, but wouldn't budge. They claimed there was "nothing more they could do". I pointed out that that was not true, there was no law of the land nor of nature that forbade the store manager reaching into the till and giving me the cash.

Finally had to write to head office with threats of legal action. Got my money back.

On the other hand, once ordered a dishwasher from Currys online. When it came, it didn't have one of the features it was advertised with. Phoned them up, pointed out the goods were not as sold, and I had a contract with them to supply goods which did have the advertised features. Within a week the unit was replaced by Currys with another one costing £150 more at no cost to me.

So I suppose it depends who you get.

London store brews £50-a-poop cat-crap coffee

Ah well

At least someone benefits from the separation of fools from their money.

Loopy Vista pre-SP1 update fixed with pre-pre-SP1 update

Should add...

..I believe that whether you get offered SP1 or not depends on whether MS thinks your drivers are all fully compatible or not. There is a list of questionable drivers and machines with them are not offered SP1. Apparently.

OEM?

Nope. Mine's an OEM Packard Bell and it picked it up on automatic updates.

I just wish...

...SP1 had solved the issue it was meant to - where USB HIDs don't reappear on waking from sleep. Happens a lot less since SP1, but *still happens*. You wake it up, it makes the "USB device disconnected" tha-dunk noise, and your USB mouse or MC remote control doesn't work. And that particular USB port won't work with any HID device until the next sleep/wake. OK, you can work around it with a USB/PS2 converter for the mouse or just moving the device to another port, but it's a PITA.

Other than that, Vista's working fine for me, as is Ubuntu on my laptop, although the latter's a bit slow. Doesn't like the on-board Wireless adaptor though; only works under NDISWrapper and I can't for the life of me get it to autoconnect on boot (even with WICD) although the USB dongle will.

Microsoft discloses 14,000 pages of coding secrets

Actually...

Last time there was an actual leak of code from MS it was found that the coding itself was mostly of high quality. The reasons for the problems were there in the comments, IIRC - various sometimes quite acerbic and even obscene comments from the programmers about the kludges and hairy workarounds they had to use to get round MS' usual issues - backward compatibility and ease of use, mostly. How many people have got into issues with Vista because they're trying to run some ten-year old app written for NT4?

it's bloated and inefficient not because it's badly coded, but because MS' Men In Suits insist on it doing silly things.

HP Proliant USB key riddled with worms

@Greg Williams

Easier than that. Just put a file on them referenced by autorun.inf which is called "DriverInstall.exe", purports to be installing drivers for the USB stick (most numpties don't know they're not required) and most people will happily wave it past UAC or XP's warning messages.

Global-warming scientist: It's worse than I thought

@Steve Roper

The level will neither rise nor fall. The water displaced by the ice is exactly equal to the amount of water created by the ice melting - that's why it floats at that level. Ice is less dense than water to exactly the same extent that it floats above the water.

Archimedes.

1 KG of water (a litre) will freeze to a little over a litre of ice. But when it floats, it will displace exactly 1 KG (a litre) of water. The water level therefore doesn't change.

Royal Mail sites hit by downtime cock-up

@b shubin

Yeah, but the secondary system should still work, if slowly and prone to timing out. This is completely down; it looks like there is a single point of failure and it's hosed.

@anonymous coward

What sort of crap excuse is that? Whatever happened to redundancy, clustering, virtualisation? A hardware failure shouldn't bring down an important service in this day and age.

Microsoft gives XP an extra two years to live (kinda)

@AC

Damned Small Linux?

XP/Vista - few pointers

As far as I'm aware, activation will carry on working indefinitely. Security patches will continue to be issued until support completely stops in 2012. I'm more concerned about when W2K Server security support is going to be withdrawn. Installing patches on reinstalling should be much reduced by XP SP3 (which is already downloadable as public Beta - I'd consider doing that on a new or re-installation).

UAC is not a pain, it's 'su' or 'sudo' for Windows, and performs the same function and is there for the same reason. The implementation is remarkably similar to Ubuntu's, where you designate particular users as "administrators" but still require their confirmation to make system-wide changes or access parts of the kernel. You can turn it off, but then you've decided to make the old Windows NT/2000/XP compromise of security for the sake of usability - just as in Ubuntu you can enable and run as root if you're daft enough.

Cut down Vista without some of the eye candy? That's Home Basic isn't it?

I don't think there's any drive to "make" people upgrade their existing PCs; from a sceptical start I quite like Vista, but I wouldn't dream of upgrading an existing machine unless I very specifically wanted Media Centre (which is, or should be, if Microsoft had made more of it which they should have done, Vista's killer app). MS is, however, not surprisingly, trying to limit the number of *new* PCs out there with XP on them, not wanting to increase the XP support base further into the indefinite future.

Trend, Sophos and McAfee flunk Vista SP1 anti-virus tests

@Steve

users != administrators is the vital point here. Nothing made more difference to the issue here than that one thing. The amount of successfully installed Malware I'm finding on our Windows domain with users as just users is minimal to non-existent.

This is why UAC is a selling point to me on Vista; it makes it a lot easier for *no-one* to have to *run* as an administrator, and even if someone decides they will anyway, they still get prompted before that administrator token is used.

Now if some of the developers out there who have never moved on from NT4* could get their head around the fact that their software has to run for standard users...

*I've lost count of the number of stupid apps which try to write into the Program Files directory when they run...

@Gordon Feyck

I'm partly with you. My ePO server tells me that of the 4000 odd PCs I support, we get only a handful of infections, the vast majority of which are twerps who've followed links that any Nimrod should have realised were to malicious websites. And it's almost all on PCs where we haven't been able to wean users off having admin access to their PCs (for complicated political rather than technical reasons). When NetWare login scripts were our main configuration method, we found we had to let users have admin rights, and we got regular issues with viruses sweeping through the organisation. Since we got AD and SMS to manage things we've demoted end users to ordinary users and killed that stone dead. I actually think that spyware and adware, and inbetween conware like WinFixer and WinAntiVirus are a far worse issue than viruses and trojans proper these days.

Creative climbs down over home brew Vista drivers

@Anonymous Coward

I know. That's why they shouldn't use it. Weasels.

Management speak

Any company using the phrase "Going Forward" has gone to the dogs. What's wrong with "in the future" or "from now on"? It's called the "English Language".

Fixing the UK's DAB disaster

If it weren't for

Virgin radio I wouldn't have bothered - they only transmit on appalling MW over most of the country.

Adware slips between pages of e-book

@Dr. Vesselin Bontchev

But it's not hard to make it autorun:

"The removable media device setting is a flag contained within the SCSI Inquiry Data response to the SCSI Inquiry command. Bit 7 of byte 1 (indexed from 0) is the Removable Media Bit (RMB). A RMB set to zero indicates that the device is not a removable media device. A RMB of one indicates that the device is a removable media device. Drivers obtain this information by using the StorageDeviceProperty request." (same link)

I wouldn't be surprised if hardware manufacturers like to "help" people by enabling autorun in this way.

Microsoft looks to fix bugs with desktop search

@joel

"Up a directory" in Vista can be done by clicking on the bar above the window where the path is shown as something like "HDD -> Users -> FredBloggs -> Documents" or whatever - you can click at any point in the chain. I think it's called a breadcrumb or something (presumably a Hansel and Gretel reference)

Spyware 'scammer' sued over PC pop-up invasion

@Mike

Ain't that the truth. First bit of troubleshooting for most of these "solutions" when they don't work is "ensure pop-ups aren't blocked".

And whilst you're at it, break out the vaseline and bend over.

Vista SP1 downloaders bite back

@Uwe

No. 69MB Download. Not 400+. I wish people would actually read before posting. The 400MB download is the administrative install for people who have whole networks of machines to upgrade. I like SP1 because my Vista is definitely faster since the upgrade (and it's always been pretty nippy under my 1GB machine, at least since I took Norton's crap off) and it's resolved the HID resume from sleep issue.

@Jim Coe

Fair enough. But the point here is that *I* have had similar problems with Ubuntu and SuSE in different environments. And just as my bad experiences with them does not mean that "Linux is crap", any individual's experiences with Vista do not mean "Vista is crap".

Horses for courses as they say. When there is a *native* Linux equivalent to Windows domains, Group Policy and SMS, then I would consider Linux on the desktop where I work. Until then, it has to be Windows, with all its attendant issues. That's because my needs - in a systems team of three for three thousand users, most of whom are not particularly skilled in IT and for whom it's peripheral, if important, to their roles - require a very high level of control, automation, inventory reporting and controlled customisation. That Linux doesn't meet my needs doesn't make it bad, just not for me in my current role. Similarly, that Vista doesn't meet some other people's needs doesn't make it bad, just not for them in their circumstances.

I'm using Vista at home because of Media Centre. Yep. Pensioned off the telly. Saved me buying a hard disk recorder. I understand there's a Linux alternative, but experience tells me it would take a week to tweak it to my requirements.

OK for me

I'm glad there's a bit more balance these days - people for whom things have worked are posting alongside the minority with issues. I see [i]far[/i] more problems with people knee-jerkingly downgrading brand new systems to XP because "eny fule no" that Vista is crap.

Except on every machine I've ever used that has it, which have all been fine. Like this one. I have (SP1 is meant to have fixed it; we will see) an issue where USB HID devices are sometimes lost on waking from sleep. But to compare with that, I have a Linux laptop where I have to use an external USB wireless dongle because the builtin one only works with NDISWrapper and absolutely refuses to connect automatically on startup. I find the intermittent Vista bug less of an issue than the Ubuntu one which happens every time.

But that's just me. Everyone's experience is different.

So what's the easiest box to hack - Vista, Ubuntu or OS X?

On the money

are the posts pointing out that the real weak point is the WetWare. I'd wager that 90% of *real world* inappropriate disclosure of computer data (which is what actually matters in the end) and creation of botnets comes down to social engineering.

Even on the notoriously hackable XP/2000 + IE combo I reduced real world infections by Malware by about 99% by finally separating users from the admin rights which they'd historically become accustomed to believe they were entitled to have and run with - admittedly, at the time when the only remote mass configuration options we had were NetWare login scripts, which run as the user logging in, this was pretty much true. But I digress.

A better use of time than this contest would be finding the writers of software who expect the user to have admin rights on Windows boxes and putting them up against the wall. Mind you, they'll be out of a job soon anyway because their shite won't work on Vista with UAC.

Roberts WM-201 Wi-Fi internet radio

Nice idea, but...

Rather expensive. But the biggest worry I have with these devices is that they must be dependent somewhere on some service which tells it where the internet radio streams are to be found. If whoever runs that goes to the wall, what then? Sooner or later, any service like that will be obsolete.

Microsoft rolls out Vista SP1

To correct the usual FUD

Full administrative install is 400 odd Meg. Home user/single PC download is a lot less.

List of programs broken is tiny and the only one used by more than half a dozen people is ZoneAlarm. And there is a compliant version available. Does anyone actually check the extent of these issues before responding with the usual "MS is shite" stuff?

I used to dislike MS before I started reading the Reg. The ill-informed and over-dramatic FUD on here has made me more sympathetic to them.

Cut to the Web Server Core: Windows Server 2008

@tardigrade

Absolutely, and I use the command line extensively in both Linux and Windows. But I'm the Windows specialist in our shop; if I'm not here then the Padawan has to do the best he can, and he can better find his way around using the GUIs. In an ideal world there are enough gurus on any technology to be there all the time, but this isn't an ideal world. GUIs are indeed more limiting, *but* they have the advantage that you can look around and see what options you have. In Command Line world, you have to already know that. Yes, I also know about man files and so on, but IME the old joke "Recursion: See 'Recursion'" was just made for Linux documentation ;)

@julien

That approach is fine. The problem is that sometimes the time required for the support team to gain the skills required for a given technology does not fit within the timescale of the deployment required for a project. Again, it's real world against theory.

So I am not advocating using a motorbike to do a car's job. What I am advocating is using petrol cars over deisel when I have lots of petrol available and the deisel won't be delivered for another month, and I need to get into town tomorrow.

@Rui

I think you're confusing what *you* want a server to be with what other people might want it to be. Cheap and efficient are nice, but there are other factors which *in a given situation* might over-ride these - lower admin overhead, current skills set, existing infrastructure - you name it.

Case in point - I'm involved in a project putting lots of servers out at small sites to do some network monitoring - MRTG, NTOP, web caching, DNS, file storage, print serving - the gubbins. Clients are Windows 2K/XP and will have to remain so because of some of the software they're running, and because with our support ratios we need tools like SMS to manage stuff. I built identical servers on both Linux+Samba and W2K3. W2K3 won, even with the licencing cost. The reason was simply that the W2K3 version, *with our current skills set*, was far easier to manage, troubleshoot, configure and implement. It was also slightly faster on file and a lot faster on print, on comparable hardware. That's real world, neither MS evangelist nor Linux evangelist.

It is time for the OS wars protagonists to grow the hell up. There is no "best" for everything. It's not even as if one platform is *always* the best for a given application. There are too many other factors to consider.

If you want my prediction (and who would), I think MS is going to get friendlier towards Linux (we've already seen this with the MS/NetWare deal). MS know what I've said above, and they know that savvy engineers will want to use a mixture of stuff according to requirements. The better their stuff integrates with other peoples', the better they can maintain a position in the server room. The are, I think, beginning to realise that their dream of a world of MS only shops just ain't going to happen.

Paris, because she is too thick to get involved in OS wars, as opposed to those who are clever enough to do so, but not clever enough to see the silly tribalism for what it is.

So disappointed

by the Core mode. I cannot for the life of me see why this is something which is a "long term design goal" and not fairly readily achieved. Something which is as simple as changing the default Runlevel in *nix is apparently a complete bear in Windows? My suspicion is that MS know full well that Windows engineers like GUIs. The mistake they're making is thinking that we use these GUIs by RDPing onto servers (hence their rather blasé "just RDP to the server" workaround to the Admin tools on Vista issue); we don't. We install the admin tools on our desktops and manage servers remotely. I don't want eight RDP windows open to manage eight DNS servers; I have a single MMC console with all of them in it.

Quake rocks Britain

What was disappointing

Is that the moment it's actually suddenly of immediate interest, you couldn't actually get onto the BGS earthquake site. But seeing as it's an .ac.uk domain, an doubtless therefore running on a 486SX server circa 1994 which they can't get the funding to replace, I'm not entirely surprised.

Scotland Yard careers website defaced

Support

W2K is still in support. The default configuration is however notoriously insecure. I wonder if someone hasn't installed all the patches and run the security lockdown tool?

Vista SP1 kills and maims security apps, utilities

Is this Mac or Vista

"Mac have got it nice, everyone is a user; if you have admin privs assigned to you, you have the GUI sudo interface pop up to increase privs for that operation (all automatic). Better still, there is the nice little padlock which seems to require sudo privs to unlock in addition to what ever it is you're updating, double layered security, admittedly same password, but it stops automation in it's tracks."

Exactly what the much maligned Vista UAC feature does. One of the bizarrer aspects of the "Vista is shite" meme which seems to be spreading unquestioned through communities like this is the way in which when Microsoft finally Does The Right Thing Which Linux And Apple Were Already Doing, it gets labelled as "annoying" and more "how to turn UAC off" articles spring up than you could shake a stick at. Clearly the attachment some people have for XP extends to wanting to make Vista as insecure as XP was.

Paris, because she'd not turn UAC off, even if it was simply because she wouldn't know how.

Nevertheless

The words "a supported version is now available" do appear more often on the KB article than the original item would lead one to assume.

Security boffins unveil BitUnlocker

@Anonymous coward

"I think that the ONLY thing that can ever stop a determined and reasonably skilled hacker is when they have children. Then they don't have time for this crap."

Unfortunately, the sort of hacker involved is extremely unlikely to have children, until such time as the various bits of kit advertised in down-market jazz mags are capable of being fertilised.

5,000 NHS records vanish with latest lost laptop

But in reality

What actually happens is either:

1. High-ranking user asks about access via 3G or somesuch, is told it will cost X, and says "bugger that, I'll do it this way"

2. High-ranking user doesn't bother to ask, he just does it.

It'll get worse

until people realise that when their IT department tells them that something is a bleedin' stupid idea, whether it be carrying around confidential data on laptops, sticking their passwords on post-its, sharing usernames and passwords around like biscuits and every other brain dead thing that they do, it actually *is* a bleedin' stupid idea, and they shouldn't do it. But no. They'll trust some spotty kid to solve their IT problems, but the professionals in their IT departments know nothing.

You can lead a horse to water.

"I'm a doctor and I want my sausages".

This'll be some doctor who's been "clever" and "knows more than his IT department" and has "solved" the problem of not having access to this database all the time by creating an Access DB, hitting the "import data" button and, well you can guess the rest.

The "real" database will be Oracle, MySQL or SQL Server, or hosted by a clinical supplier somewhere in Birmingham in a data warehouse. The problem will be (and always is) the chair-keyboard interface. Even if you only give 'em a web interface so there's no data source for them to misuse the buggers will cut and paste it "because I need it to screw up^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h do my job"

Paris because in one way she's a dream user. Too thick to copy secure data to anywhere it shouldn't be.

Linux desktops grow and grow and grow

Yeah but no but yeah but

>> But don't expect the vast majority of Windows users to transfer if you make it difficult.

>It's not difficult; just NOT WINDOWS and as far as I know, Linux users don't really *have* any expectations of Windows users transferring to Linux - theres no "battle for hearts & minds" going on. If they want to use Linux: meh, great; if they want to stay with Windows: meh, great. It's not like there's a commercial organisation dependent on hoovering up new users to remain successful.

I think a lot of people are getting the impression that they do. A constant problem on Windows forums is Linux Fanboys telling everyone that the solution to every problem they have is to "install Ubuntu".

But I take your points. I've often seen Windows users, when presented with a solution, say "**** this, I'm going to install Linux!" - because, unfortunately, the Fanboys have made them think that they won't have driver issues, bugs, problems to solve and so on on Linux - that it will "just work". It'd be interesting to see if a month later they're bitching that they can't get their mouse to work on Ubuntu (which they won't if they've got an SiS chipset, a PS/2 mouse and haven't edited the kernel line, for example). Presumably the next thing they do is buy a Mac. Or a Speak and Spell.

So, where are we?

I think we'd agree that there *are* some Linux users who enjoy parading their superior knowledge rather than actually helping. There *are* some Fanboys out there who think they're on a mission from Linus to get everyone using Linux, and that is best done by implying that all their woes will be gone the moment they slide the Ubundu DVD into their drive. There are newbies, mostly from Windows, who have swallowed the crap and start acting like divs when they find that *they've still got to learn how to use it!*

The question is, then, how to tone down the Fanboys, since they're the root cause, along with Lusers who expect to be able to use their computer - Windows or Linux - whilst knowing bugger all about how it works? We need to make people aware that Linux is *not* a Windows replacement - it is a different approach, a different OS which *may* suit some users better. To me, as an IT professional, it's a tool - I'm currently evaluating a Linux solution and a Windows server solution to the same problem, and it's far from clear so far who's going to win. But if your idea is a PC which works *out of the box* to play music, watch telly and surf the web, then actually I'd point at a pre-installed Vista Home Premium (with Firefox, naturally ;) )

But enough musing. I've got to try to build this bleedin' thing I need on OpenSuSE now.

Helpful responses

The reason I didn't balance it with a helpful response was that in that particular exchange there were none - just more techspeak. I honestly think that many Linux users just can't think down to the level of the newbie. They're used to speaking to other techies, and really don't understand that "just unzip it with tar, compile and make sure you edit the conf file for your flavour of linux" is NOT a step by step instruction!

Fine, believe that people should "put in the hard work". But don't expect the vast majority of Windows users to transfer if you make it difficult.

IME, the help offered by other users in Windows forums is more detailed, less sneering, and a lot friendlier. I run both (because contrary to Geek WIsdom(TM) there are times when Windows is the best solution just as there are times when Linux is, and the reasons for either aren't always technical ones) and have to glean solutions from both. I agree that MS' support stinks, but so does every bloody company's.

Linux' problem

Is, I'm afraid, Linux users. Well, some of them anyway.

Linux forums are full of helpful people, who like to make their help as difficult to use as possible. The following exchange is based on a real one I saw a few days ago (details may be technically wrong because I can't be arsed to get them right for the purposes of this illustration).

LinuxNoob: I have a problem getting a garbled screen display on Virtual PC 97 running Ubuntu. Can anyone help?

DisparagingLinuxUser: Huh. Anyone could have solved this with ten seconds googling.

NotVeryHelpfulLinuxUser: You need to reconfigure your GUI to 16 bit colour.

LinuxNoob: Thanks, but I'm a noob. How do I do that, step by step?

NotVeryHelpfulLinuxUser: You need to edit the xorg.conf file

Get the point? What use is that last comment to a Linux noob? What changes should he make? How does he edit the file? Where is the file?

Linux adoption risks plateauing out where it needs to move from technically adept new adopters to the non-technical masses. The above exchange might be just enough clue to someone who isn't terrified of a command line and experimentation, but is no use to the putative grannies who are allegedly adopting Linux in their millions - but notably only when grandson is a Linux fanboy who is able to set it up for them. Yeah, it's easy once it's working and doing what you need, but there's the rub - getting it working.

So the biggest booster for Linux will be existing Linux users who drop the "you wanker, you must be a total idiot if you're using Windows" attitude, and learn to be helpful, even if it seems like you're talking to a three-year-old.