On 2008-01-05 17:38:28 +0000, Lobster said:

Mark wrote:

I think I will do a straw pole in the pub tonight just to see if Joe
public has the faintest idea about Ubuntu/Linux

Well I'll be honest and tell you that I do know what Linux is but have
never ever seen it, and that I'd never heard of Ubuntu until this
afternoon...

What happens if you need to share files (or even view them?) with any
of the other 99% of the world who uses MS Office, for example?
Presumably any of these OS are a non-starter, surely?

David

No they are not. You can use packages such as OpenOffice which offer
good compatibility for almost everything. The only area that is weak
is support for Visual Basic macros, but I have never seen them commonly
used by anybody with whom I do business.

One large advantage of Linux is its far greater stability than anything
from Microsoft - i.e. it's a proper operating system.

There are different distributions of Linux with different emphases.

Much info. here plus links:


http://distrowatch.com/


Ubuntu has become a popular distribution because it has good hardware
support, is easy to install and comss with a rich set of software
included; plus there is good language support.