Will PC manufacturers change the selection of windows ?

[gravaera]

Yo:

It is my opinion that an OS environment that is decently designed, can run critically needed applications (commonly used server packages, Microsoft Office, Photoshop, AutoCAD, etc), games, and has a proper user interface (both at the command line and graphical level) and has a significantly lower sale price (say US$20.00 - US$60.00) than MS Windows will be able to gain ground very quickly.

Price is a much bigger driving influence for adoption than I've seen it given credit for so far in this thread. A decent NT32 compatibility layer + a POSIX compatibility layer will probably yield very promising results if shipped at a low price, on top of a kernel which offers the promise of the ability to scale to much higher needs. For example, a kernel which supports NUMA, a generic binary-portable driver interface, and has an asynchronous native API (along with other features), will probably be very attractive to users of all types (casual, gamer, server-admin) if the userspace environment constructed around it is focused highly aggressively on ease of use, even down to the command-line environment, should the user choose not to run the GUI (server, etc).

Unique features, feature richness, and all of that have a huge role to play, but the ultimate determinant of uptake will probably end up being raw cost -- cost of procurement, cost of transition, cost of retraining. You can easily make the latter two costs negligible if you take the time to create a decent user interface, and some solid compatibility layers.

--Peace out,
gravaera

[Mikemk]

Yo:
...

I agree with all of these points.

[Kazinsal]

Troll #4?

I'm thinking it's marketing drones personally.