Every Microsoft debacle peels off a few more users. I grew up on DOS as a kid and rode the Microsoft train through Windows 3.1, Win95, Win98SE, Win2K and WinXP but jumped ship to Ubuntu in 2008 after everyone had a chance to see just how bad Vista was. I was also increasingly conscious of the cultural shift in Microsoft: away from a legendary fidelity to API stability and toward an ever-shifting grab bag of disposable fashions and fads, starting with the compatibility break from VB6 to VB.NET.
My impression is that Linux is not some weard system that nobody uses anymore. Now it's a weard system that this or that person uses because they like to be different for difference sakeness.
I wonder how many more users Linux must gain untill people perceive it as something normal that they can just use.
>I wonder how many more users Linux must gain untill people perceive it as something normal that they can just use.
If that happens, it will happen after the people no longer notice what OS they're using and don't even know that they are using Linux (E.g. android, chromebook, etc).
No, I can see that evolution as well. I started playing with Linux in 1993-95 era and in that time it has gone from something you could only get if you went somewhere geeky and found a table with Slackware CDs on it, to something that the geeks knew about but no one else did, to "that hacker thing I've heard my geek friend talk about", to "that alternative OS that also runs on my cable box and I hear it has something to do with Android", and finally to "yeah my friend runs that cuz he hates MS and Windows".
In other words, it's true that to the average person, it's still kinda 'weird', but SO many more people know about it now and seem to always have "a geek friend that runs it" that I also wonder if we are approaching some kind of critical user mass.
If we get more Steam games on Linux, I can see this happening MUCH quicker.
