Nice reply, UnderScore.

Two points to address knoppixtryer's gripes:
1. Go read the "Installing Multimedia Apps with DVD support" section of this Debian installation guide and it'll tell you how to install and configure multimedia support, including support for watching DVDs, with very little effort.
2. If you start K3b (KDE's CD/DVD-burning utility), and click on Settings > K3b Setup, and read the explanation in the left-hand pane, you'll see how to let K3b set permissions correctly for you.

If you're going to use Linux, you'd better get used to reading all the documentation you can find, going to applications' web sites, asking questions on forums, and using Google to find answers.

Quote Originally Posted by UnderScore
Everyone uses windows because Micrsoft used anticompetitive tactics for over 15 years in order to get to be #1 & to stay #1. In a free market system anticompetitive tactics are simply wrong and in most cases illegal. That didn't stop them. Nor did them being tried & found guilty of being a an illegal monopoly.
It's not just that Microsoft's a monopoly. It's not just that that they use bullying marketing tactics to gain and keep market share, like spreading FUD, and blowing smoke up peoples' asses about "innovation" when said "innovation" really is meant to lock people into using Windows. Or... (add your criticism here...)

It's that our entire economy, supported by the government and our laws, is set up to follow and encourage a "create a product; patent/trademark it so no one else can legally copy it without paying you; sell it to the world; and profit" paradigm.

(No, I'm not saying there's anything inherently wrong with that; it's worked quite well, albeit with many excesses. No, I'm not a proponent of communism. But there is no such thing as a "free market system", here or anywhere else in the world. [Not that a pure "free market system" would be better than what we have now, but that's another story.])

And so you see US government agents going to other countries and, as a matter of national policy, encouraging them to use Microsoft software over open-source software, even though it might be to other countries' economic benefit to use open-source software.

Point is, Microsoft's success is not just due to the fact that Microsoft is a monopoly, it's that the entire system is set up to push and reward the Microsofts.

What's different here is that computer software isn't like durable goods, such as cars, although Microsoft and its backers keep trying to sell it like it is. Unfortunately for Microsoft, the combination of brilliant programmers willing to band together to create open-source software, license it under the GNU GPL, and give it away for free, is an example of a disruptive technology which scares the hell out of Microsoft.

For a much better-articulated take on this, see Neal Stephenson's somewhat dated, but still excellent 1999 essay, In the Beginning was the Command Line.

My personal frustration with Linux is that, as it is largely a non-profit, volunteer effort, its documentation is often somewhat lacking, especially in comparison to Windows. (There's the flip side of the coin.) There is less incentive for people to write documentation when there's no money in it, especially when what they'd rather be writing code. And the documentation that does exist is often outdated, since Linux is a fast-moving target.

Fortunately, as Linux becomes more popular, there's a bigger body of books written about it. Red Hat/Fedora Core, especially. So, if you want to learn how to use Linux, perhaps the best way to start would be by buying a Fedora Core book/CD combo, or a book on SuSE, or Mandriva, using it for a while, and then switching to something more complicated/less well-documented like a Debian-based distro.