@ Mark - You're missing the point...
1) I'm not putting Vista on my kids PCs, they have XP. When did I ever mention Vista?
2) I've never found a Linux MSN client that supports video & voice. I *know* this is because MS doesn't stick to standards, but that's not the point. The point is, it does not work & probably never will - unless MS adopts some FOS standards, which is highly unlikely.
3) Errrm... yes I do mean my kids (and my wife) are my users in this scenario. It's just an example. Most of the gOS target demographic will be in the same boat. See the title of the article - "gOS - a good OS for your Mum" - well, yes, unless "your mum" wants to use video or voice on MSN, for example. And, like it or not, the vast majority of the people "your mum" will want to chat with will be using MSN on windows.
4) You're right, I've not tested every game on the market. Maybe I'm just unlucky and it's just most of the ones I have that don't work. Still, it doesn't matter, it's *those* games I want to work, not other games. And, yes, those games probably won't work on vista either, but I don't care, they run on XP, which is what is installed on the game players' PCs.
5) Sounds like you don't know what shockwave is.
For example, try loading this game on Linux:
http://www.flash-game.net/game/41/snowcraft.html
More about the shockwave wine workaround can be found here:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Shockwave
The point I'm making is that, like it or not, there's still a few reasons why Linux isn't the best desktop OS choice for many PC users. I've been using Linux since Red Hat 5 in the late 90's so I know how much progress has been made to lower the technical barriers that used to rule out mass adoption. The barriers now are not purely technical ones, they are socioeconomic ones. FOS code-monkey propeller-heads never seem to grasp social or economic concepts very well though do they?
The good news for me though, is that the vast majority of server implementations I've worked on over the last 5 years have been on Linux. My commercial users have benefited from the lower TCO that this has delivered - freeing them from expensive proprietary server hardware / OS suppliers. This has been a fantastic outcome driven by Linux and the FOS software community, spurred on by a good dollop of bitter rivalry between some big players in the industry. The same forces are not at play in the domestic (or even the commercial) desktop PC market - PCs with Linux are not significantly cheaper than PCs with Windows and they have no compelling additional end-user features, they don't even look any nicer (ref. apple!). Microsoft has won the battle for the PC desktop, no it wasn't a fair fight, but that's just the way things are. Get over it, and move on.