Wow, it was late last night when I replied, I sort of rambled, no I did 
ramble, must have been the beer ;-)

Linux is on the verge of becoming a corporate standard in the "server" 
market.  Many large companies have tested Linux and are satisfied that 
is has what it takes to be on the "server".  Linux is still struggling 
to gain even a foot hold on the workstation in the corporate world  (in 
the USA at least).

"What the world needs now is 'Linux sweet Linux' "... The most simple 
distribution of Linux for the workstation, one my mother could install 
and run.  I'm not kidding, I get calls from Arizona for help.

If a Linux distribution was built (and maintained) by a diverse group 
(somewhere in Minnesota) that could be said to replace M$ products 
_without the user knowing it_. It would be worth more in business 
dollars then any of us can imagine.
That is what a Linux distribution must do to get the average consumer 
and business to change.  It must be a mindless installation, the average 
consumer watchs 28 hours of TV per week  Ever have someone call a 
monitor a TV, I have.
See the following link for more information on how we spend our TV time.
      
http://antimatter.no-ip.org/TV%20and%20the%20%20mind%20of%20the%20public.htm

Yes that diverse group would charge for the product "you get what you 
pay for".  The American consumer needs to pay for something to feel they 
are able to say "I payed for it now you fix it!".  Free tells the 
average consumer "it's really not that good so we can't sell it".  
Americans want to pay so they can have a vested interest.  People spill 
hot coffee on themselves and sue because the coffee so was hot, even if 
they made it at home.

It would need to be small with a GUI that is similar to M$, it would be 
able to run "any" windows application [games, word processing, 
spreadsheet, etc...] without doing any additional work. Upgrades and 
Updates would need to be very few and very far between, at least 3 years.

Don't show them any error messages because they don't understand error 
messages.  I believe the vast majority of I/T professionals can figure 
out what an error message says.  How can we expect a consumer to 
understand an error message. My wife is the greatest of business of the 
many business people I know.  I wont let here touch an error message for 
fear I wont be able to reproduce it.
The only message that should be displayed is
    "Your Computer Needs to be Restarted, it Will Run Better After 
Restarting" and a button that is labeled
        "Restart"

<nutshell>
I'd call the distribution a "car" like name because the consumer would 
only put electricity in to it to maintain it.  That is the whole thing 
in a nut shell.
</nutshell>

Yes, it needs to be idiot proof, have a good price, and never break.

<rant>
OH,  games like "Deus Ex 2" the new one, (a friend bought it and it wont 
work) the game writers need to get out of bed with the video card and 
hard disk manufactures and M$.  I personally wouldn't buy that game to 
save my life.  They printed the box and had to add the specs as a 
sticker, you know your in trouble when they do that. The sticker says 
Direct X 9 required, but they only include Direct X 8 on the CD, WTF.  I 
haven't found a CAB file viewer to look in to the CAB files 600+ MB 
files, to find files missed by the installer. What else, The error 
messages "Flesh can't execute" is this porn!  Then the stupid console 
wont let the mouse function in it.  I finally found the error talking 
about missing files in the console and couldn't use the mouse "Flesh 
can't execute" ???  I copied the error and put it in a txt file on the 
desktop so he could find it and print it.
    At least the beer was cold.
</rant>

Putting on the fire proof suit, standing in Lake Minnetonka (brrrrrr), 
holding a fire extinguisher.

Sam.

<snip>


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