I an interested in Linux, and believe it has has much potential, and try new live versions of different top distros yearly (I like PCLinuxOS and Fedora the best, and think Puppy is neat), and have installed some, but it does not do what Winodws does so relatively easy. An examination of their help forums helps reveal the challenges that stand in the way of Linux being more of a real alternative to Windows. Here are 3 things which are a priority for me.

1. If you can tell me an easy way to gain read and write privileges to my 4 internal NTFS drives, in their entirety, like i can with Windows, without experimenting running sudo or chown this and that, suggested combos of which i have tried, I would appreciate it. Right clicking and trying to change permissions will not do it. Vista does force some unrequested security on me also, but TakeOwnership.zip makes that easy.

2. When it is legal in the US and most other countries to install proprietary codecs in Linux, in order to play things like WMV and MPEG2, and then to use as good as Windows DVD authoring software.

3. Provide easy access to every Device manager type function and such (which is why i like KDE better), with GUI's that eliminate needing to run Terminal.

I do understand some writing of scripts and such is necessary, but it should be kept to a minimum. I have lots to do without having to learn the equivalent of DOS in order to get Linux as usable as Windows is.

Thanks