yep, the same reason we now have xorg rather then xfree...

It is quite amusing that you are using flash as an example. The main use, today, for flash is to display videos. Most prominently youtube.

Guess which site recently converted all their videos to h.264, which is an open standard? And why did they do that?

The web is changing, and evolving to open standards. Why? Because big players like Google (youtube...) and Apple are working towards open standards. Sure, they are not working for the beauty of free software. But it is still positive.

In the long run, flash is dead. It is a question of selling your point to the corporate mindset. As long as only linux users could not run flash, managers of shoddily designed web sites thought: "it's only hackers, they don't have money and they should use windows on their PC anyway". Now millions of people complain that the site does not work on their iPhone, and they think: "We must do something about it, because iPhone users are a rising market".

A couple of reasons to consider:

- XP support will end next year (except for EEEpc and the like), more Vista-only apps will come.
- Malware
- Microsoft [spying] [on] [you]. Not as tinfoil-hat as you might think.
- in case of Vista: WGA, DRM hassles

All good points, I'll admit. I'll see how Hardy HGeron goes for me when I'm not feeling lazy.

Not to mention, if we're discussing Vista, UAC.
I just know some of their experiments are gonna go horribly wrong. Oh well, at least they're so bumbling they managed to order up a crate of chainsaws. Don't know what they thought they'd use them for, but they might come in handy.

Ubuntu and some other distros are making headway, but even then they are breaking standards and conventions set by the "debian standard". Ubuntu and openSUSE are good options because they make things simple. Linux users seem to think that everyone does or should know as much as they do on computers. People of all walks use computers, from kids to the elderly, and expecting all of them to navigate the command console and recompile kernels to fix problems is unrealistic. It just isn't going to happen.

People go to a mechanic to fix their car. Sure, they can learn how to do it themselves but not everyone wants to spend the time and energy. Anyone is capable of masonry, gardening, gravedigging, and so on if they took the time and energy to learn how to perform those trade skills. Hell, if you went to medical school you may be able to diagnose yourself. If you went to law school, or just read up on applicable laws, you could defend yourself in court. See where this is going? People pay other people to do the job so they don't have to be a superman skilled in everything.

Recompiling a program to work for your specific distro and/or needs just isn't a viable option for many people. For this reason, linux will always be a market minority. I have ubuntu installed, but it took me a few distros and a lot of time just to get the resolution of my laptop monitor to be the native 1280 x 800 instead of the "default" 1024 x 768. When I was searching for a solution online someone suggested recompiling the linux kernal to fix the problem. I have no idea how to recompile anything! Some people said they just gave up and used the 1024 x 768 resolution. This option was unacceptable for me. I finally installed ubuntu and was able to easily fix the problem using propriety drivers that ubuntu was able to acquire.

Moral of the story: linux in general caters to the highly informed user. Most of the population are not of this type and do not care to spend the time, money, and energy needed to become a guru. People are even willing to use (and sometimes pay for) windows rather than use a free OS with no easy support.

then again there are laptops like my sisters, that will at times make games that use the built in 3d card crash because of some flaw in the driver. thing is, the card maker, nvidia, tells her to go to the laptop maker, hp, for the driver. and they have not released a new one since 2006.

if one tries a third party modified driver that removes the checks nvidia have put in place, it works, at first. but sooner or later it will make the display stay black when the computer is booted.

osx, windows, they both are fine os's, if one stay inside the walled garden. stray outside of said garden, or do something "god" dont like and things come tumbling down.

linux, and others like it, basically tells you that the world is a wild and dangerous place.

hell, i recall reading that the people that work on acpi support for linux run into trouble because the chips have flaws that are covered up by the windows drivers, or are tested against the microsoft testing tools. tools that do not match the behavior of the intel tools.

and was there not a optical drive that would go into firmware update mode if it was poked by a signal that normally was used to toggle a option in rw drives? reason it was spotted was because a distro used it to check what kind of drive they where dealing with, and expected any sane drive to return a error on standardized but unsupported signal?

"Recompiling a program to work for your specific distro and/or needs just isn't a viable option for many people. For this reason, linux will always be a market minority."

I've used many varieties of Linux especially in recent years, and I haven't had to recompile a program since -- oh, I think I had to do it 15 years ago. Now that I think of it, that was recompiling Linux, not a regular program.

GNU/Linux and OSS in general is being held back because it's too open. Users are afraid of openness. We all want to be given the least amount of freedom as possible when it comes to consumer products so that we can be told what to like and how to like it, rather than having to choose ourselves. Free thinking and freedom itself is too much for the average joe to handle.

OSS will remain a niche until something like Mozilla Corp. who came and told users to use Firefox and like it.

Fact of the matter is that 'common people' don't think that much of\about computers. It's just like how we see a phone or a telly.. a means to an end. A tool to do a certain thing. Most will probably just check on the machine's brand, and the visible characteristics of the machine... and think of how fast\easy it can help them finish their office work.

Do OSS coder want to cater to them? People who essentially don't care about your work, your cause?