Your comment about not having much time stirred something in the "tech" inside of me... It seems that a good proportion of would-be linuxers are put off by "not having enough time" to play with Linux in order to get to a point where they are comfortable using it.
I think the cause of this is the microsoft world. People are often scared to take that leap away from windows, and may need to fall back on windows apps for productivity/compatibility reasons.
This in turn hinders the spread of linux, and in effect, adds to the problem...
I think your right. for Linux to really catch on in the mainstream there is a need for a office compatable GUI interface. I think that star office 5.0 is on the right track as it is fully cross compatable with M$ office and has versions in windoze, mac, .... ad infinitum, and of course Linux. With interfaces like KDE you can have a user interface that seems "normal" to an average user, as a result they can use it, then drop down to the "guts of the OS" to play with it later. Personally my approach at present is twofold, I am trying to get a stable reduced kernal size desktop enviroment, that will boot to a graphical desktop with my apps ......netscape, dial up PPP, Mail, Star Office .... etc and not carry too much "fat" ( so it loads quicker with out requiring huge memory) on it for a single desktop machine (the most common win95/98) system. While this seems crazy, it is a start point that gets a person using linux in some form. Later they can add the server/ network features if thy need them or want to play with them. ........... Oh no another dist .... AARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH ( Not really) Interesting that Caldera have moved a similar direction with col 2.2 ... Which I am planning to get installed this weekend to see how they have done ..... Sadly I think it will still be fairly bloated (Gut feel from reading the 151 problems I get from the caldera-users list) My other arrow is that I have been trying to push for a regular "Linux" ... not PC, or Mac, or ..... gathering where people can play with/learn about/obtain Linux in a form that is not too much like a meeting for software engineers. Sadly interest from the list has been very poor. Maybe once we are up an running I will be able to get some of you who know what you are doing to come and sort out our mess :-) Main problems to be solved . - Hardware support !!! The list on the Net are just too old, We need to know what new hardware works with linux, and what doesn't ... before we start installing this. Perhaps someone should start a local NZ database . ( Why are you all now looking at me that way ???????) Ok that is at least a start with my 2 cents worth .... I guess that shows how bad inflation really is . But I am a technician and a manager, not really a software person, so please consider that as you shoot me down in flames, ok ?