Having tried to adopt Linux several times, I too get infuriated when people claim "ease of use" as a Linux attribute. It's simply not true, and wastes many people's time.

Ironically, I think that the one group Linux is suitable for is everyday users with very simple and unchanging needs -- people who only want a browser and email and will never update anything.

For advanced users (most people here, I guess) Linux is more problematic. I consider myself fairly well-versed in computer tech, but I have hit plenty of brick walls with Linux. And yes, like others, I found Linux support forums less friendly, and less supportive, than their Windows equivalents.

The other problem for advanced users is that you normally have a batch of key programs/utilities where Linux equivalents are not good enough (for me they would include Photoshop, IDImager, Movie Magic Screenwriter,  and Roboform, but there are others). Running two OSs in parallel seems pointless.

I accept the cost benefit of Linux for the most undemanding users. For others, the cost/benefit analysis is not that simple. I have wasted countless hours trying to make desktop Linux work for me. That effort was never repaid with anything approaching the ease of use of my Windows systems.

My Linux experience has not all been negative -- the Linux-based NAS OS NASLite is one of my favourite software products, which I have happily used on my home NAS for years.

I have yet to try your program, DanJak, so forgive me for diving in here so quickly, but I have a strong feeling that keyboard navigation would be something that the kind of person who buys dialog box extenders would expect as a minimum. It's a small niche market, and keyboard fanatics form a significant part of that market (dialog box extenders and avoiding using the mouse are both all about efficiency).

I use a combination of File-Ex and the AHK script Folder Menu. Folder Menu overcomes some of the clunkiness of File-Ex, and one of its essential features is that it allows me to assign keyboard shortcuts to whatever folders I choose. The two work well in combination.

Then again, what about independent citizen journalism and discussion? Blogs, forums, even Facebook groups. I see them having at least as much power and relevance as a local paper, which may be more prone to influence from local deep pockets anyway. True though that sometimes not enough citizens will really run down a story to quite match up to *good* investigative journalism. On the other hand how many "towns" have good investigative journalism for local events?

- Oshyan

-JavaJones (March 09, 2010, 06:06 PM)

As I alluded to in a previous post, once upon a time (i.e. 20 years ago) more or less very town would have at least one newspaper with a well-trained team of journalists (I'm talking about the UK here). Today, falling newspaper sales mean that is a thing of the past. And no amount of "citizen journalism" will replace it. Again, going back to my previous post, 20 years ago, journalists would attend every local council meeting. Meetings were divided into "part 1" (public) and "part 2" (private), where everyone apart from councillors got thrown out. Of course the private meeting generally contained the interesting stuff. It was part of the journalist's job to leave the meeting with the part two documents in his/her pocket (no, they didn't steal them -- it was all down to contacts). Good journalists could turn a vague whisper into a finished, accurate 250-word story in 20 minutes because, somewhere in their overflowing contacts books, they would have the names and phone numbers of everyone worth knowing on their patch. Citizen journalists tend either to ride hobby horses, or dip in and out on an ad hoc basis as subjects interest them, or as they stumble across news. Citizen journalism has a lot to offer, but it's no replacement for a professional newsroom in every town.

Expect wasteful local government spending to grow exponentially in the coming decades. And you won't know about it until it's too late to save your taxpayer pounds/dollars.