"What's troubling here for the nascent Linux-on-the-desktop movement is, well, how little progress this suggests it's made."

Very true. I've made the switch from Windows XP last year, to FreeBSD and Arch Linux. Both core systems run much faster and are more stable than XP. The problem is with the lack of quality applications. Both Openoffice and Pidgin Chat are two exceptionally great applications, but GIMP, Inkscape, Krita can't match Photoshop or Xara Xtreme at all. There is not a good open source AutoCAD substitute on the horizon yet. That's the problem. The most important applications aren't readily available for the Linux desktop. Until open source applications and games which are precisely similar to their proprietary counterparts are available for Linux, Microsoft will continue to dominate. I patiently look forward to the day this happens, because I'm more than willing to dump Microsoft completely, without using Wine, Virtualbox, or a dual boot.

With today's release of version 1.1.6, Wine is a lot closer to running Photoshop CS3 than ever before. (See http://wiki.winehq.org/AdobePhotoshop ). There's progress being made; Photoshop CS3 will be usable on Wine one of these days. Hopefully before CS5 is released!

Its a fact.I am using both of them in my system and i didn't come across with any kind of such problems.sometimes it also depends on the compatibility of your mother board as how efficient it is.
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dorson
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Its better to stick with widows as switching to linux will lead to some application loss and as you mentioned your people are comfortable with that then its better to carry on with that.Just try to make some enhancement as per your need.
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dorson
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This exemplifies why Linux advocates (like me) need to focus on how linux solves the problems of potential converts.
Linux advocates tend to explain why linux is better, but fail to explain how it is going to solve problems for the business owner or what have you.

One example might be (if it is a web development company): "Linux can allow each desktop to easily act as its own stable web server for testing purposes, so that changes to the source code won't be reflected on the live environment, and there is no need for a separate test server"

What does this have to do with Jack/Jill's desktop?

This person is referring to specialized tools they are expert with and use in their trade to make money. They also haven't really used the FOSS alternatives very much or keep up with their development.

Jack/Jill consumers, meanwhile, have lower needs, appreciate cost savings across the board more, and have lower existing investments (eg, mental skills) per product on average.

Also, who made this person representative of others? Some consider the privacy, reliability, or control issues of greater importance. Perhaps a real expert would prefer to be able and take a more active role in developing their tools.

Also, Linux is still lacking a large community when you go outside the developer tools.

Our product solutions and simplicity for user participation are still evolving, slowly but surely.

A downturn in the economy is likely to increase Linux/FOSS uptake and user participation.

The change is a gradual but eminent one. Cutting cost and stability are very important when choosing OSes. We are seeing more user-friendly programs that competes with known programs from the likes of microsoft etc. A linux/ubuntu desktop could be configured and would feel like a PC to an average user.

"Linux on the desktop: Small business owners aren't buying it"

Bull. Pick the most extreme example and generalize. A "branding and creative agency" who's users live and die by photoshop are a piss-poor example of "small business owners". From what we've read elsewhere about "creative" businesses that require photoshop, they are using Linux on the backend for rendering, processing, compute intensive tasks, network intensive tasks and storage. And using Unix/Macs with Photoshop for the employees that believe they require it. In the meantime they are investing money and coding time in improving Blender and other development apps for users that can use those tools.

And I wouldn't count on the "head" of a "branding and creative agency" as representative of small business if he hasn't heard of the main Linux alternative to his required development app, or the main FOSS alternative to MS Office.

I know of several service companies as well as several wholesalers who have switched first from MS Office on Windows, to OpenOffice.org on Windows, to OpenOffice.org on Linux. From Outlook to Thunderbird or Kontact or Zimbra, or eGroupware. From Photoshop on Windows to Photoshop on Linux to Gimp. From Verizon phone lines to voip lines, voip phones, Trixbox or Elastix for their phone/pbx solutions, from IE to Firefox on windows, to Firefox on Linux. BCM or Act on Windows to SugarCRM.

Migration is a slow process, but as the small business owners get a bigger and bigger taste of the FOSS applications that can replace MS and other proprietary apps, the faster they want to migrate.

"Small business owners aren't buying it"
I disagree. Those that are aware of FOSS are buying, or wanting to buy, or wanting more info. And as the economy slows, this migration is going to turn into a torrent.