People were already making a fuss about Nicholas’ claim that we’re working with Microsoft on supporting dual-boot with Windows XP, and now Bruce Perens writes a lachrymal — if entirely misinformed — missive about OLPC selling out to Microsoft.

Every once in a while I come across the argument being made that OS choice is like car choice. It's usually in a forum involving Linux, where one poster will lead off that there's too much choice and the follow-up will read something like:

The winners of the fourth annual SourceForge Community Choice Awards were announced at this years OSCON. Over 47,000 open source projects were nominated for this years Community Choice Awards and 85 finalists were selected across twelve categories.

Recently, in this column, I spoke about how we can lose our free software choices if we don’t use them. Sticking with that choice is not always easy so how do we get others to make it, particularly in a world where the choice is often made for them. How can we advocate free software in a world where others don’t seem to care?

Finally, after testing, using and experimenting with dozens of GNU/Linux distributions during the last 4 years, I’ve found my ultimate distro of choice. It’s ArchLinux. I’ve never been so happy to be a GNU/Linux user as today.

After a couple of weeks of research I have finally narrowed down my choice to either Fedora 11 or Mandriva 2009.1 to use during the course of this experiment. The two distros are both very mature and feature rich which makes this choice extraordinarily difficult.

Dear Michael,

I have been a fan of yours for many years - since I was a kid in fact!... I watched you embrace GNU/Linux; I remember thinking: I wonder if people realise what this will actually mean. I am sure he does. So, here I am: I bought an Inspiron Mini 10. I have no choice but return it. And now I can't stop wondering: how could Michael Dell get it just so wrong?

What works for me may not work for you. That’s the great thing about Linux. We have choice. There are well over 300 distributions and many different possible desktops to multiply the choice several fold. As with many people, my Linux starting point is Ubuntu.

"When I wrote a passioned statement about how having a choice of distros was a good thing, I decided to list 359 other things that it was good to have choices for. I thought it was a good effort, and still do. But in the course of a week I have also come to realize that other points of view may have some validity, too."