For most people time spent tinkering with their OS is not fun, or useful it's just wasted time...
Great way to miss the point entirely. Way too many incompatible distributions. It's like "Linux" is like a thousand different operating systems, each incompatible with each other in little ways.
Maybe before Debian. Not anymore. It sounds to me like in week two and six your cartoon guy broke something himself because he had no clue. Hardly the systems fault.
Actually no. It's about the process of getting addicted. Making using computers fun again. They won't get it unless they've actually at some point used Linux (and I don't mean off a live CD). All I know is I was able to do everything I wanted to do, and more, right out of the box. I was installing games from CDs, downloading apps from the Internet, and even programming my own apps.
You bought Linux in a box? I certainly wasn't aware that windows shipped with a functional programming environment "out-of-the-box". Now Linux on the other hand would allow you to do just those things... I can't remember the last time I heard someone complaining about bluescreens or memory errors with Windows
I have a friend whose brand new laptop, running Vista Home Premium throws up a BSOD whenever she listens to rock music in Windows Media Player. It'll play all other kinds of music just fine, but will BSOD once she plays any kind of rock music. If you have any suggestions at all, how to fix this bizarre behavior, I'm really all ears. I've already tried everything I could think of, and a few things "just for the hell of it". Now if it was Linux I could've taken this issue up with everyone at the local LUG. Since it's Windows, I reckon she'll just have to buy a new Windows PC (for work), and install Linux on the laptop (for that rock and roll feeling). Ive been using it for 3 years and the only 1 time i have messed with the kernel was simply for interest, not out of necessity.
And that my friend, was the point of the comic. Like I said. Without having used Linux - they'll never get it. I agree it's pointless to argue about opinions, but there still a very important non-subjective topic that can be discussed, and that is the fact that Linux is very scattered.
There are basically two distributions. Redhat/CentOS for enterprise level users, and Debian (including Ubuntu) for everyone else. Writing an application that works across both, is a much more trivial task, than writing one that works across the XP/Vista gap.