hi nikhil .. what college are u from ? as far as CS syllabus is concerned atleast bbay univ is making unix as std platform for do lab practs. right from FE.
no ofense intended but just trying to get across some facts. i suggest u discuss this with ur friend.
ask your friend to name all his favorite dev tools under his favorite os. now ask him does it run on mainframes,Servers, desktops, pdas, watches,... ?
also a very good example is the bug patching For your favortive OS You pay $100s for OS , $100s for dev tools, $1000s for databases, $100s for office tools, $1000s for servers. that too with restriction on num of users. how well does it talk to other OSes. and must we say anything abt security. ? then you pay huge sums for every release of ms product. then if u get a bug all u do for few mins is gaze at the beautiful screen .
then you buy an update that will cost u another $100's or so.
then you find out that the bug u r facing is resolved in forthcoming release, but still not all and the viscous cycle continues. so effectively solving a bug takes more than 2-3 weeksin BEST CASE if patch is not there. at times your bug is not very important for ppl to bother to solve it. so finally u have developed an application with several compromises.
For Linux You dont pay for the OS and with comes loads of free dev tools, suites, servers, databases, progarmming languages, name it and it has it. which takes atleast a month to unleash their basic features.
with that u get the source code so that you can tailor your OS to your needs. if u find a bug all u do is correct the code and recompile the driver/kernel or whatever.
if u can figure out post querries to lug grps. expect replies in few hrs.or maybe some one has already patched it for u . so ideally you have a bug resolved in few days WORST CASE.
all the more if u develop a killer app or patch a deadly bug you just might find your code on the way to next release of linux. also which os gives u this level of h/w s/w control and flexibility.how well does it talk to other OSes
can his fav applications make all this possible ?
also acc to me linux is not for dumb users.
if u want to develop a game or a word pad it might be easy, friendly in windoz but what abt real time killer apps? what is the stability of linx servers and others ?
i guess philip, trevor and others can write more abt technical issues..
what else... abt arts/sci/ comm ppl i guess they have more exposure coz they have more choices.
dont ever give a stupified look to such ppl ... just tell them to try and experience the difference. folks please react
take care Harsh