[jaguar]

Hmm, for alot of pro stuff you have a point but i see the real battle at home desktops for now. This is why mandrake excited me, its nearly as easy to pick up as windows, all nice pretty GUIs. Comes iwht *shitloads* of apps including KOffice. SO far i've converted almsot completely 4 people, one of them used to be a msft zealot too! Eventully ill migrate them to Debian =P.

Games already have a 80% piracy rate, and the killer app I believe for Linux will be when games are simulatoiniously for both Windows and Linux. XP should help too, upgrade your graphics card and your OS dosen't work? Fuck that! If Transgamers come though with the DirectX port that will help *alot* too.

Standarisation is a huge issue i know, and really is the crux of the issue...
People will never pay for software unless they are forced to (this goes back to my previous point on another thread about digital replication and basic economic structure.

I think people will liek the way, for free they can download Mandrake, install it with a nice, easy to use GUI installer (which is something IMHO debian do need to work on) and have a working desktop, with easy config tools and all the apps you could need. Shit easy to set up net access too! The other one is the Apt-like update system, makes it very easy to keep everything up to date and get new apps (thier 'cooker' servers which are part of the update program have literally thousands of RPMs constructed for Mandrake making it very easy to get what you need). Mbpark and UNdertoad both have a point, but its getting alot closer and i really do feel Mandrake have the right idea, particualry this gaming edition. I'm really hoping they release a free version that has scripts fo grab common games off windoze partitions and set up Wine for them, that alone would help convert alot of people.

And sorry but ill give up my photoshop when they pry it out of my dead, cold hands =P