The release of Vista will drive some people to Linux

I'm afraid, I'm not there yet. Switching to Linux is my long-term goal for quite some time now but the pressure is growing with the release of Vista.

Until my company recently bought me a Windows XP laptop, there wasn't a single computer in my home that was something other than Linux. However, I'll actually be excited to get my hands on Vista, since Microsoft seems to be stepping things in the right direction... Of course... I'll wait until Service Pack 1 before even trying.

Desktop Linux has a long way to go before it attracts the average Joe or Jane.

What's the reasoning here? Is it that Vista is so bad or that since consumers will be switching anyway, some will switch in Linux rather than the newest MS product?

See my other claim about DRM: http://jyte.com/cl/drm-is-a-good-reason-not-to-upgrade-to-vista
I think that a lot of people will rather go the hard way of learning linux instead of getting enslaved by DRM...
One of my friends has already switched and I'm working on convincing more... But thats a hard job. They already believe me that DRM and Vista are evil but as long as their current system (XP) "just works" there is no pressing reason to switch.

I first voted "no". Then I realized that it's driven *me* away from windows. I'm running XP at home, but when that's no longer sufficient (somehow), my next step will be a linux, probably.

I don't think it'll drive many people to Linux. But some people? I definitely agree with that. I'd be switching myself if I hadn't already done so years ago.

It depends on what you do with your machine.

If Vista is slow on the uptake, it will be more like XP users will just stick with it for a while yet.

No need to change OSes just because MS released a new one...

i switched to mac osx

I'm gradually migrating to Ubuntu Linux as it improves.

I get each version and when the time comes to upgrade to Vista for support or switch to Linux then I'll probably switch.

I might get Vista to run as a secondary OS to try it out as I like to know it for helping people with problems.

I switched to FreeBSD with KDE and Fluxbox, but I guess it's in a similar boat.

Because Vista is harder to steal than XP was. It will drive more people to OS X.

http://nghtshd.myopenid.com/ Is OS X easier to steal than Vista? As I've heard it's really hard to even get it to run on non-Apple hardware.
But back to the Claim: It's more than a year old and it became true for me :)
A few month after I bought a laptop with Vista pre-installed I switched to Ubuntu full time. I only boot Vista to do my C# homework for school and to watch movies on an external monitor. Proprietary drivers still suck on linux :(