The gov really is making a smart switch (but slow) to Linux. There’s a lot of workstations that still works with Windows, but it is about to end.

The problem here isn’t the governmental and/or commercial Linux piece of market, but the regular desktop user.

Brazil has a lot of projects to bring computers to everyone’s house. Like “Computador para todos” (Computer for everyone). That’s really good… more and more people are buying computers. But… … they don’t know how to use it!!!

Few people know the power of a computer, here. So they use it just for two simple things: MSN (Windows Live Messenger) and Orkut (google’s social network).

Most os them don’t know how to do more than that… seriously!

Computers have been treated here like a TV. “Install it and use”… is it so simple? What are bits? And folders? What is a file? Home Movies?! How that works?

After some time this user will need to do something like burn a CD with few pictures. How will he do that? He doesn’t know a computer works! So he will ask for help with someone else who is a “computer rock star”.

He will learn that to burn a CD is necessary to use NERO and click there and there, so it’s done…

It probably will happen with any other needed task.

It is a serious problem because the user will never be flexible… without Nero he’ll never burn a CD. No MS Word, no text. No Media Player, no music. No codecs packs, no videos. No executable files, no program.

Brazil for sure is doing amazing job with Linux! Really amazing… but it is really necessary to make people understand the essence of a computer and not the magic recipe for anything. Thus it will be much more easier to switch to Ubuntu, Moblin, Google OS or any other system.

Sorry for my horrible english XD