Maybe it's just me, but I felt like the author just looked up "Operating Systems" on Wikipedia and picked out the ones he liked. I mean really, Windows ME? We all know it sucked, but it wasn't in the last decade, and making a "exception" for it just makes the author sound uninformed.

But, if all they are doing is checking websites and reading email, why not just switch them over to Linux or OSX? Then they won't have to worry about these problems again.

If that isn't an option, just setting them up with Firefox, a good AV, Windows Firewall, Spybot, and automated Windows Updates should take care of most of your problems. An even better option would be to just give them limited accounts, or at least move them off of XP so that every action they take doesn't have Administrator permissions.

As for your actual question, this website might be useful.

While the logic is sound, his basic premise is quite flawed. His article is based upon the idea that these "iPhone Users" are something so different and special from other phone users, that the world has never seen anything like them before (sounds like a bit of Apple propaganda to me). However, that is patently wrong. Just look at Japan. A very large percentage of the Japanese population uses their cell phones in ways that would put iPhone users to shame. That is not even mentioning that Japanese cities have much higher population densities than American cities, and you don't hear stories of how the Japanese phone network is falling apart. Between these two points, his conclusion that we will never be able to build enough network capacity to support iPhone users is clearly false.

Instead of asking the tour guides about areas that are 99.9% of the time going to be outside their areas of knowledge, stop in the IT Department after the tour and ask there. Generally, the IT staff of universities are very well versed in using *nix boxes, and would be able to provide you with a much more useful answer.

However, to more directly answer your question. Based on my experience at my school (Northwestern University), I have found Linux compatibility to be very situational. At the most basic level, I have found that I sometimes have problems connecting to my school's wireless network on Ununtu 9.04 due to some incompatibility with 802.1X authentication my school uses. At a software level, Linux compatibility tends to vary from department to department. For example, an engineer needs MatLab, which is available on OSX, Windows, and Linux; but an journalist needs InDesign, which is only available for OSX and Windows. So, unless your daughter has a clear idea of what she wants to do and knows the software she will need is available for Linux, there is no guarantee that any school will be "Linux Compatible".

Sounds like Dad, if that's even his real name, knows more about computers than he is pretending to.

He is clearly torrenting, and your best course of action would be to report his nefarious actions to the authorities.

Here are your options: Cheap, Open, Caps. Pick 2.

Actually, I think the restrictions are reasonable. One thing to note is that it doesn't say the apps must change your default browser or dialer back to Microsoft's, it says you can't change them at all. In a way, this could be viewed as a good thing. Do I really want my copy of "Epic Game" changing my default browser from Opera for example? Or changing my dialer to something they made to promote their game? I think what MS is doing is fine, sure there is the problem that you can't get alternate browsers from the Market, but this isn't the iPhone. We can get are apps elsewhere.

Let's not forget that Microsoft had to be dragged kicking and screaming into this market.

At first when I read this, I thought, "How could the EU possibly come to this conclusion? Firefox has over 20% market share and is still climbing. Are they dumb?" But then I sat down and thought about it. Who prompted this investigation? Opera. Opera has not had the success that Firefox has enjoyed. Now, most of use don't see this as a problem, but to the EU, it is a problem because Opera is a European company. The way the EU sees this, it's not a question of alternative browsers being able to take root, (Firefox already shows that is possible) it is a question of alternative EUROPEAN browsers being able to take root which has not happened. Think about the consequences of this decision. Considering that Mozilla has already stated that they would not bundle their browser with Windows, what other "major" browsers are really left? Just Chrome, Safari, and Opera, and I have trouble seeing Apple and Google forcing themselves upon MS. Really, Opera is the only browser that would really benefit from this. The way I see it, it's all politics, they want to help Opera, the poor European browser, fend off those terrible Americans who can build better products.

Keep you MySQL only accessible via localhost, put a good password on it's root account, and make separate users for each database with access restricted to each one. I know it's important. Other than that, if you close ports you don't need , keep your software up to date, and write your own PHP I really don't think you have much too worry about.

why they even released an official client if it performed better under WINE.