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Brčko, Bosnia & Herzegovina
I'm a part of the tech department for an awesome investigative journalism network called OCCRP. I'm really passionate about open source software, artificial intelligence and information security. My open source contributions are now merged with projects like reddit, elementary OS and the Tor Project. I'm running a personal blog where I share my personal stories. You can connect with me on Twitter: @r3bl_.
Authored Comments
It's good to see schools that are Linux-friendly. Unfortunately, that rarely happens in the development countries (like mine). Our ministries of education are happy to sign the agreement with Microsoft and place their products into every single school possible without even considering the alternatives. They even brag that they got a good deal by doing so because Microsoft gives them some kind of a discount. The same thing happened in Croatia, Serbia and it is now happening in my country Bosnia & Herzegovina (they're in the process of negotiation). :(
I rarely had any problems using Linux that a simple Internet search was not able to resolve. When I had them, I was using a Beta version of the operating system. Developers were here to help me out. It feels really great to have a developer explaining to you directly how to resolve some issue. That couldn't happen on Windows of course.
I disagree with the claim that Windows is much more friendly than Linux. New popular distros are pretty easy to use. I would say even easier than Windows by my previous experience. While I was using Windows 8 (before the .1 update), it took me a month to figure out how to actually shut down my system. I ended up searching the Internet and I felt quite stupid because I couldn't find a GUI option even with my 10+ year experience with the computers. I would never figure out that Charms thingy on my own.
About the viruses, I agree with you on every single point. But you're forgetting something. Linux is completely open source. Even in the case that Linux got hit by a virus, a researcher could just inspect what exactly did the virus do, noticed the developers and the patch would be released within days (if not hours).
As for the applications, I disagree. Every single thing that my family used back in Windows days was just a browser, an email client, Skype, picture viewer, .pdf viewer and something to play videos. Of course, everything was available on Linux. Since you're talking about casual users, casual users do not really need a lot of professional software, do they?