Clarence "Sparr" Risher

In explaining different OS choices to people, years ago I came up with the following explanation, which served me in good stead and has come up twice recently, so I thought I would post it here for future reference and comments.

Desktop operating systems differ on two major axes that are only partially orthogonal. First, how much you can do with them. Second, how easy it is to get those things done. Both of these are influenced by the design goals (what they want you to be able to do) and the implementation skill (what they are capable of giving you) of the architects and programmers.

Mac OSX makes the most common things as easy as possible. But it also makes some of the most complex tasks very difficult or impossible. If you are one of the 90% who are "normal", this is the best choice for you.

Windows makes a lot more things pretty easy, but also a lot more things kinda hard, and still some things you can't do with it, including things that you are supposed to be able to do but that are broken. This middle ground really only works because of existing market share, it's not an option someone would pick if all else was equal.

Linux has less easy tasks than Windows (improving rapidly), and a whole lot of harder tasks, but virtually nothing is impossible. Anything you can do with a computer (task-wise), you can do in linux. This is the power-user's domain.

As a simplification, consider ten random tasks, spanning the gamut of things you might want to accomplish with your desktop computer. Order them with the most common task first.

In Windows, the difficulty of accomplishing those tasks would be easy, easy, easy, medium, medium, medium, hard, hard, impossible, impossible.

In Mac OSX, those same tasks would be easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, medium, hard, impossible, impossible, impossible, impossible.

In Linux, they would be easy, easy, medium, medium, hard, hard, hard, hard, hard, hard.

So, the question is, how important is it to you that that 3rd or 5th task be easy? For most normal people, quite important. But for a power user, the importance shifts, based on how much you need to be able to get those last 2 things done at all. For me, that is very important. For you, maybe not. This is why you will never convince me to switch back to Windows, and I probably can't convince you to switch to Linux.