[ Thanks to Nobody for this link.
] “I was sitting in a cafe the other day with some of my
friends and we started discussing the merits of the various
operating systems. So I posed the question, “If you were a
small business owner, say less than 15 employees, and you needed a
computer system for your office, what system would you buy, and
why?” Let’s narrow it down to Windows, MacOS, or Linux,
OK?”
“After a heated debate, we decided we had to determine what kind
of business we needed this system for and what kinds of
applications we would be running. We agreed that the office
computers would have to be networked to share printing and file
access, and access to the Internet was a must. We suggested that
the office was a legal firm (2 votes to 1) and the main
applications would be word processing, client billing and
accounting, and some database and spreadsheet work. Some of the
categories to consider for the OS would be the availability and
cost of software, available training on the software and its
attendant learning curve, the amount of time and training a network
supervisor would require to manage the network, stability of the OS
and the applications, resources available for support, connectivity
options, hardware and vendor support.”
“No fair”, the Linux guy said. “You get computers already
configured!” While it was acknowledged that this was generally
true, we conceded that more and more PC systems are being sold with
Linux pre-installed. With Linux you have to know the monitor
refresh rate, vertical and horizontal sync rate, resolution, modem
type, sound card type, and the technical specs of every component
in your computer! What if you buy a second-hand machine? Who keeps
the documentation to a computer once it’s all set up?”