“Surprisingly, a large survey sample found people liked Linux for its user experience, because it’s challenging and fun to learn and reasons not related to Microsoft. The sample also found OS X users were loyal and liked mainstream applications like Photoshop. Windows users liked MS productivity tools the most.”
Why I like GNU/Linux:
1) It gives me the freedom to freely learn stuff about the system I’m using, modify it and make things work the way I want them to.
2) Being able to share this great operating system with others and the same good experience I have with it, without risking getting sued up da ass.
3) There are tons and tons of cool, great, wonderful software available for GNU/Linux that I can play with, tinker with and set my machines up to do pretty much everything I want them to do, the powerful command line interface allows me to write scripts that will do all sorts of neat stuff.
That’s the things I value the most about free- and open source software, these next three things just comes as a bonus:
1) Reliable, robust, stable, secure and all around better quality software, which I can validate personally by diving into the source code, which in my mind makes Microsoft a bunch of cowards, if Windows is as secure and they claim, why donøt they show us? Show us the damn source code so we can believe you!
2) If I don’t have the option I’m not forced to shell out cash for every damn program I need.
3) Free software and open source enables competition, KDE and GNOME are not enemies, far from it in fact! Competition is good for a healthy community, makes people innovate much much more …..
Also, I much much much rather wanna pay for free software, because it ensures everybody can get access to great software, I get the sourcecode so I can take things in the direction I want to take it…. and donations are never forced upon you, when I find a great piece of software like amaroK, I feel like I want sent them a few bucks to help future development and as a “thank you”.