[jiggy2011]

This is of course true, more Linux use would improve hardware support (of course would have the side effect of people writing more crapware for it too which is probably what you got them to switch over to avoid).

The problem is that your unlikely to get your aging relatives to lobby the hardware manufacturers and even if you do it doesn't really solve their immediate problem and they're probably going to ask you to re-install Windows.

The problem is that there are many relatively minor things that can be deal breakers for lots of people in terms of operating systems. For example if they use netflix or decide they want to run a particular game or bit of hobby software if that is not available for the OS then they will probably want to switch away even if it makes their overall experience across the board worse.

This is one of the reasons for continued survival of IE6 in corporates, even though it may have lots of things wrong with it there might be that 1 piece of enterprise software that won't work in anything else, that is basically required to do their jobs so they can't move away.

[slowpoke]

>The problem is that there are many relatively minor things that can be deal breakers for lots of people in terms of operating systems.

True, but that exactly is one of the greatest sources of hypocrisy in these discussions. Windows has lots (and in my opinion, more) "relatively minor things" which can be deal breakers - except that those are ignored or simply waved aside as "that cannot be helped" (when more often than not it could).

It's incredibly annoying because this bias is completely ridiculous and in many cases makes rational arguments almost impossible.

>This is one of the reasons for continued survival of IE6 in corporates

And this is also the reason why we should refuse to support this prehistoric excuse for a browser and force these enterprises to rewrite or upgrade their software, or face being cut off from the internet. I frankly do not care if some idiotic corporation had the fabulous foresight to base their entire internal infrastructure on a piece of software written as an extension to an application that can be expected to be outdated in a few years (wow, what a sentence). Every person with half a brain should realize that this is a tremendously retarded idea, and everyone who doesn't should be fired and replaced. Including managers.

[jiggy2011]

Not sure what Windows deal breakers would be? Unless you have a specific reason for wanting to use a Unix OS.

Sure you have more problems with virus/crapware etc but getting their long suffering nephew to come around every few months to re-install everything may well be less of an inconvenience than not being able to use their Windows only cross stitch software or train simulator etc.

Problem regards IE6 is that many of these apps will have been built when IE6 had ~90% market share so nobody bothered to build stuff for anything else (not saying they should have done this, but they did).

They may not have the budget or time to rewrite the app (or the contractor who originally wrote it may no longer be around or not want to touch it again). My point is that looking at badly rendered websites and having poor usability may still be better for them than losing use of this app.

Many peoples jobs will revolve around using 1 or 2 corporate apps and any web browsing functionality will be a far second priority.

[slowpoke]

>Not sure what Windows deal breakers would be? Unless you have a specific reason for wanting to use a Unix OS.

See, that's what I'm talking about. Lots of the crap Windows throws at you is simply accepted because people do not even realize anymore that it's crap.

To name a few which annoy me every time I am forced to use Windows:

-No or very limited customization of the entire GUI (or the OS in general, for no reason whatsoever - this goes for OS X, too, btw).

-Forced mouse usage, either because it's impossible to do something with the keyboard or it's highly inconvenient to do so.

-Hiding basic functionality (for example, showing/hiding hidden folders) deep in some non-intuitive system menus.

-Often being forced to do something in a specific way because someone at Microsoft thought this should be the only way to do something, whether that's intuitive and/or efficient or not. More often than not, it's neither.

I could go on like this for hours, but I'll admit that I am in fact biased myself. Still, many of the things that annoy me have been noticed by people I know (and who use Windows) as well. Any single one of the points I noted above are deal breakers for me.

>Sure you have more problems with virus/crapware etc but getting their long suffering nephew to come around every few months to re-install everything may well be less of an inconvenience than not being able to use their Windows only cross stitch software or train simulator etc.

I don't think so. That's what wine is for, and 95% of all programs will run flawlessly with it. If you set it up correctly on a user-friendly distro, they will not even notice the difference.

Maybe you can even find free (as in Freedom) alternatives. For lots of applications, these exist, and for the most part, they are either on par or sometimes better than their Windows-only counterparts. I already try to convert people to cross-platform applications on Windows (for example, Pidgin) so they could more easily switch to a better OS some day.

>My point is that looking at badly rendered websites and having poor usability may still be better for them than losing use of this app.

And my point is that badly rendered websites is the price those corporations will have to pay if they want to continue to use their application. The retarded, foresight-lacking decisions of corporate management years ago are no - I repeat, NO - reason for catering to IE6 users. It's like we are rewarding their stupid decision when instead we should punish it - by stopping to support (and consequently, block access for) IE6, completely.