I'm enjoying reading this conversation. In my 20-odd years of experience providing computer support to home and office users, it's my impression that most users care about three things: learning as little as possible, getting their work (or play) done, and exchanging files with other users. The way I see it, Linux is imitating Windows not because Windows is good, but because it's the de-facto standard. If you're designing a new car, it doesn't matter how different it is from a Chevy under the hood, but it had better have the controls in roughly the same places as a Chevy or very few people will take the trouble to learn to drive it. It is of course true, as Florin says, that babies point at things, but as they grow up they learn to talk, and you could go further and say that they learn to type instead of talking so much. But drivers don't operate their cars by talking or typing, and there's a good reason for that: inanimate objects (such as engines, tires, roadblocks, etc.) respond to actions, not to words. And although a GUI is more work for a programmer than a command line, it's no less natural for the computer, whose native language is not English any more than it's point-and-click. Where I'm going is that the OSes that gain desktop market share will be the ones that let people learn as little as possible, get their work done, and exchange files with other users. If that means more GUI and less command line, then I'm sorry, but there will be less command line. And if it means that Linux looks and feels and acts more like Windows in some respects, then as much as we hate Windows, that's where Linux will have to go to gain desktops. --Ben