The Security Mentor

With the fervor of a religious convert, your technical friend has been telling you that Linux will solve your security problems, run perfectly, and save your soul from the evil clutches of the Prince of Darkness.

It won't solve your security problems, of course, but Linux users are having a better experience than Windows users by leaps and bounds. Linux did avoid some of Microsoft's design choices that look bad in hindsight. Meanwhile the progress Microsoft is making looks real to me.

Linux will not run perfectly. When I find the operating system that does, I will switch to it.

What Linux will do today, which you could not take for granted even a few years ago, is run normal desktop computing. The remaining places where there are genuine weak spots are games and (in my experience) printing.

When your technical friend goes religious on you, refocus him with some down-to-earth questions like "Does this have something to do with why I can't fast-forward through the 'FBI Warning' on my DVDs?", "Can any of these evil things prevent me from viewing my own documents if I don't pay my bills?", and "Does this affect things that really matter, like historical footage and whistleblowers?"

Then do your own research with articles like the 30-day trial of Linux and weigh the level of hassle against what you would go through with Vista. (If you get tired of clicking through that article, skip straight to Brian Boyko's conclusions.