But that's where the strawman is.. IMO anyway. The goal for Linux is not to replace Windows, because to do that it would have to be just like Windows only much better. The reason I and lots of other Linux followers (not to mention developers) moved to Linux was because we don't _want_ to use Windows, we don't like it, for different reasons - or some may like it, but still feel limited by it.

For example, MS Windows is a lot about uniformity: There's just about one single way of using the graphical interface, you're supposed to accept and like the 'click to focus' paradigm, the 'the window you enter text in will be on top' paradigm, and so on. And it's understandable, from MS' point of view - you avoid a lot of coding that way, because there are way less cases to handle.

When I first came in touch with a Unix/X-Windows (X11) system (which was a Sun system back then), I spent the first few days trying out all possible window managers, shells and configurations, until I found one I liked (virtual desktops, focus-follows-mouse, etc. etc.) Later I started to look for Unix-like systems for PCs, and then Linux came around and I moved over.

Developers move to Linux because they want to be able to do what they want to do, basically. And if enough other people want to do something similar you have a collaboration that keeps the thing alive (e.g. the gtk+ developers, people writing window managers, lots of other applications).

There are also of course some people who think that Linux should replace Windows, I think they are mistaken because it won't ever work - as I said, it would have to basically _be_ Windows then, and the effort would be better spent in lobbying groups pestering Mr. Gates & co. to fix whatever problems you see in Windows.

That doesn't mean that there isn't room for Linux, because there are lots of people out there who either want something different, or something free, or any other reason really.

Finally, as for problems with Flash and other proprietary software, there's really not much the Linux developers and distros can do - they don't have access to the code so they can't fix it. Adobe must fix, nobody else can fix Flash. The users would do better lobbying directly at Adobe instead of Unbuntu (or other distros).