^ I'll wait for the bounce back. The code my Windows students write gets used by everyone. The code my Linux student still writes is usable by no-one other than himself. When you dress up Linux so that it is easy to use - guess what? It looks like Windows and costs the same but is still always 50 technologies behind whether it's OLE or COM or web or development tools etc.
It's as simple as Ooohhs vs Uhggaaaaaaaaaaaaaahs!
Good luck with your problem. Last dumb Linux problem we had was due to us using the wrong shell.
PS
Here comes a big TB prediction. Which ever OS makes it easier to develop 'Str Trek' like interfaces will be the OS that wins. That is what will drive things. When continuous speaker-independent speech recogniton (for example) comes in the OS with the better development environemnet will kill the competition.
I can just see Linus and his open buddies trying to compete with Microsoft with all its third party development companies (Borland, Dragon etc) making continuous speech recognition work! (not). The third party tools may eventually be developed for Linux but guess what - it will cost the same amount of money!
My main prediction is that the OS to support ultra advanced interfaces will win. 99.99% of us will be using the high tech stuff ("Write me a database driven web site with these three tables and these indexes . . .") whilst there'll be these Linux guys still writing the code into code editors (and loving it of course).
[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 10-30-2002]