Why is this part titled "The Black Hand"? Well, because I started this series using a nations metaphor. Citizens of Windows who expatriate and immigrate to Linux will be "foreigners" in Linux.

Penguin Pete gets into the fairytales... welocome to the computing republics of Windows, Apple, and Unix; all ruled in remarkably different ways.

Recently I’ve noticed an increases in the number of people I know who are migrating from Windows to GNU/Linux. Either my tireless advocacy is grinding them down, word is starting to spread. Perhaps they’ve actually seen Vista in action and decided to jump ship now. Either way there are some things they are going to miss when they make the leap.

"I read Negroponte's statement presenting the OLPC XO as a platform for Windows in the most ironic circumstances possible: during a week of preparing, under a deadline, to migrate personally to an XO. I made this decision for one specific reason: freedom..."

It's the problem of legacy and Microsoft's ridiculous integration strategy. Windows is a fat client for a thin world. There's no future place for the desktop client. Computing is shifting from the desktop to the device and server. Windows, particularly Vista, has too much middle-age girth to dance with the lithely crowd.

Windows may boast the lion's share of the desktop education market, but the economic and technical benefits of open source software has seen many schools and education institutions implement various flavours of Linux across their desktops and server back-ends.

Technically, Vista is pure misery. It eats system resources like an elephant does peanuts, Windows applications break and its so-called improved security is a joke. I know it. You know it. Even Microsoft's most devoted yes-men know it--although they won't admit it--and perhaps Microsoft knows it as well.

It’s been about 3 months since I wrote my first impressions of Windows Vista (over here). I did not take the easy way out and just bail out back to Linux. For the last 3 months I’ve continued to try to live in Vista… And I’m sure Jack, who shares an office with me, is getting quite tired of my complaints.