>its still debatable whether such a thing would be viable given the R&D costs in producing a modern desktop OS, mobile OS, programming languages and runtimes, M

>its still debatable whether such a thing would be viable given the R&D costs in producing a modern desktop OS, mobile OS, programming languages and runtimes, Metro, etc. Bullshit. The estimated cost to redevelop the Linux kernel in a proprietary environment exceeds 600 million USD, and has probably even reached the billion USD mark by now.[1]. It's perfectly possible. The only reason Windows is still so entrenched on the market are shady monopolist tactics, intentional lock-in practices and closed, shitty formats such as the Office pseudo-standard. In other words, the very things RMS warned about and which the free software community is fighting against. >Linux, on the desktop, has barely caught up to the last decade's state of the art, and in many places (such as graphics drivers), it relies on closed-source software. Your ramblings are so dishonest it's cringe-worthy. GNU/Linux is perfectly viable on the desktop. The greatest hurdle it faces is exactly the kind of FUD that you are spreading. As for the drivers: yes, and this is a problem. The evil of proprietary hardware and closed specs is something that needs to go the way of the dodo, too, and it needs to do so fast. We could have drivers vastly exceeding anything proprietary if the specs for nVidia or ATI/AMD cards would be accessible. For the record, the best graphic drivers available for GNU/Linux are for the Intel Graphic chips, and they are perfectly free. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel#Estimated_cost_to_redevelop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel#Estimated_cost_to...