Comment by bigger_cheese

In "In the Beginning was the Command Line" Neal Stephenson used a car analogy to describe consumer operating systems, I always thought his analogy was pretty apt:

To paraphrase him a little bit:

Microsoft sells Family Station Wagons. Spare parts are cheap and plentiful and if they breakdown there is a huge network of dealerships with mechanics on staff.

Apple sells Luxury Sedans - nicer to drive than the station wagons but spare parts are uncommon and the oil changes are expensive.

Linux is represented by a group of volunteer hackers organized by consensus giving away tanks for free made from sophisticated space aged materials.

The observation he makes is 90% of people go straight to the biggest dealership and buy a station wagon without ever looking at any of the other options. They will make a bunch of excuses like "I Don't know how to maintain a tank" and get angry when told "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either", in the end their argument boils down to "can't you see everyone else is buying a station wagon"...