THIS is the link to forward to your windows friends

[wheeledgoat]

why they should try linux, and a hold-your-hand step by step guide complete with options explained, from a reputable 3rd party!

http://www.howtogeek.com/96541/the-painless-way-to-ditch-your-old-windows-xp-for-a-more-secure-linux/

[DrHu]

Er OK, but we all know how hard it is to make someone change: they have to want to
--basic psychology

• And being quite comfortable in the windows OS ecosphere, unlikely to make any rash moves
  --even if it is rationally beneficial

We can say that Windows OS, since it is a bundled (with OEMs' ) platform, that the cost or ongoing costs are not significant to most users
--and certainly not to any of the usual enterprise customers.

It is abundantly clear that alternatives to wiondows OS exist, and specifically in Linux's case are so alike in normal WIMP mode as to be pretty much indistinguishable for many users
--we can easily jump between Linux and windows: Apple's version is a little different, and I think takes some more getting used to

[js3915]

We can say that Windows OS, since it is a bundled (with OEMs' ) platform, that the cost or ongoing costs are not significant to most users
--and certainly not to any of the usual enterprise customers.

Think i would concur with this. Seems most OEMS get/sell windows for pennies on the dollar. When you buy a dell since dell sells / sold ubuntu machines.. Im not sure who does these days either way if i recalled from 5-6 years ago memory that if you built a windows machine vs a linux machine price wise was virtually similar. Not to mention that they would still try to push windows machine

[wheeledgoat]

I can't remember where, but I read an article that explained the licensing constraints Microsoft puts on vendors that sell machines with windows on them. As part of the contract, vendors are not allowed to sell a computer with windows on it that will also dual-boot into any other OS. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if this line of thinking was also expanded so the vendor was not allowed to sell a competing product/computer with an alternate OS on it for x% less than its windows-equipped counterpart.

Microsoft isn't a successful business by accident. I wouldn't mind, except for how much it's set our society back, technology-wise. Can you imagine the world today if open-source was mainstream and the vast majority of the planet wasn't brainwashed by MS Windows? We would be magnitudes better off, and probably more advanced.

[zolar1]

I just pulled my win7 hard drive out and put in a SSD drive with linux alone.

I was able to dual boot with linux and windows with win7 HD installed though.

I just went into the boot screen and selected which OS I wanted to boot from. CD/DVD, flash drive (and external HD). BUT I had to remove the flash drive/ext hard drive before going back to windows. I could NOT even have a flash drive or partition with a blank linux swap file on it! Windows would erase that partition!

I read that Ubuntu and maybe others have a way to dual boot via win32.

[wheeledgoat]

oh, you can definitely build your own dual-boot machine, it's vendors that are selling OEM windows on their machines that are subject to the license agreement (Dell, Alienware, etc...).

it's a pretty smart move on microsoft's part. Keeps the masses from getting exposed to alternatives. The only dual-boot machines out there are built by geeks who don't like MS to begin with, no real loss there.