I concur with your Statements. To elaborate on the specific point of "Windows: easy installs, Linux more difficult installs." The latter - difficult installs under Linux - is especially true if one starts with the sources (example, on CD), has no clue what a compiler is, and refuses to read any documentation. That said - I also make the following rash statements: Windows is provides a comfortable initial user experience. After this I find - it is not easily re-configurable - it is not easily extensible - annoying things like the cute "help sprites" can not easily be eliminated - designer assumptions often conflict with real requirements - there is a lot of undocumented stuff and no legal way of documenting it yourself - there is no inherent kernel protection - new installs casually overwrite system DLLs causing strange symptoms - but the new versions protect against this - so you need to install as administrator and end up overriding! - for an experienced user, the experience quickly becomes condescending - and finally ... when restarting after it froze and I had to hard-reset, it admonishes me that I should have shut the system down properly. That is truly annoying! I strongly feel that one should only have to install something once and therefore the install experience should not be over-emphasized. /Hans