For compatible distros, I meant that I would like to see drivers written for peripheral card that work in Fedora something point something, but don't in Ubuntu something point something.
The manual stuff is true in other OSs, but it would be especially important to have them up to date in Linux that comes from millions of contributors.
I meant that the user interface is atrocious especially in Linux world. Sometimes ASCII screen seems to be A-OK, but for some reason I seem to recall that bad user interfaces by Microsoft were one of the reasons Linux started to gain momentum. Yes, this was once given as a reason to migrate to Linux. Unfortunately, I find out that the Linux software and operating system UIs aren't any better.
My experiences of the user support is that it is non-existent. This is partially related to distros being incompatible, but if they are, who are you gonna contact? Also, lots of primary peripheral device functions are still lacking under Linux, like USB for example. In best cases, the peripheral card (I'm not going to details about this one) manufacturer provided drivers for a specific Linux version (yes, it didn't work in newer versions), half of the card functionalities missing - yes we only found out that later when the primary job of the card was implemented.
These features were advertised, but not implemented. So, in this case it was about transferring responsibility of the hardware developer to the actual user. Surely that Linux was cheaper for the hardware manufacturer, but turned out to be really expensive to us, and we would have gladly paid the extra hundred bucks to get the Windows CE version and stabile developing platform that follows. Guess if we are going to use open source software again any time soon?
Linux being antiquated is matter of viewing things. I thought we wanted to get rid of the damn console, but in Linux everything seems to be built on top of that. Yes you don't see this when normally using it, but try developing stuff for peripheral cards...
Ubuntu probably counts as mainstream, but it definetely is not a real time system as advertised.
-Implementing a different technology or switching to a new one is sure to cost money, especially if the company doesn't have the expertise to do such and implementation or that the employees need formation on it. While it may cost a lot on the first shot, it may pay big time on the long run.
And then there is the Limux project, where the cost savings don't seem to happen:
http://limuxwatch.blogspot.com/It is a question to me if the projected cost savings really happen. The French police has been able to cut costs with Linux, but how about their computer support? Sometimes changes cause costs to move from one department to another. I'm not saying it did in this case, but being employed by the state I'm suspicious about the government cost saving programs - they usually turn out to be money wasting programs.
Though the economic downturn may simply force a shift from Microsoft licenses to open source software. However, specialised software that I use is most likely never going to be free for any operating system. I'm not sure about what is the price of WinXP & Office -combo for corporations in large numbers. It is much less than the home user pays, of that I'm sure and it is odd that French report such high savings.
Disclaimer: I do think that Linux could work as a home computer operating system, but it is absolutely horrible when it is being used as a hardware development platform. Millions of dependencies where you must get the right version of something (not updated version, the RIGHT version) only to find out that something else breaks couple of hours later.