Two friends changing their operating system

Two friend of mine changed the operating system on their laptop this week.

One changed from the top of the Windows Vista with all trimmings to Windows XP. He was not willing to pay for new applications. Vista is incompatible with previous Windows software I was told. This is very much a non event, it is just interesting

The other changed from XP to Gentoo Linux. To me this is a pain. He is not able to get skype to work. To me this is a major pain. What makes it worse is that as I consequence I cannot conveniently call him any more. His reaction is that I should not use proprietary software and use SIP compliant software myself. I already have two clients; Skype and Google talk and I am sad that both of these do not support Skype.

I got into a bit of a fight about the subject. To me, there is no such thing as a Linux. There are hundreds of distributions and all of these have there own requirements. I hope that that the LSB
will provide the necessary integration so that applications will work never mind the distribution. At this moment Linux is still very much an operating system for developers. Where it is a damnation when I utter this word, it is high praise for my friend..

Really, to me a computer is first there to be used. It has to be easy..

At this moment I would like to have a SIP client under Windows.. The thing I would like best is for Google Talk to finally support SIP..

Thanks,
GerardM