Only reason I use Windows is for Glest and...?

I use wine for my gaming. If the game doesn't run under wine or linux itself, I just won't play the game and will look up something that is written more properly.

Several years ago I made myself entirely win-free, so I don't have to pay hefty fees for running a system I don't want. Recently, out of curiosity to see if I actually have a loss of fps in games by running them in wine I found out that the dual boot is actually no longer working (win insta-reboots) so I put in the installer cd I had lying about... appears I have no harddisks in my system according to Bill. I was just as glad that my Slack doesn't seem to need any harddisk ;-) (still wondering what those brick-like things are that have cables connected and have words like "xx GB" on them. Probably placebos.

What's left to do yet is to remove the actual partitions and use them for something more useful, as I'll never access windows again.

I use XP to get the full features of my Hauppauge tv card.
I do not go on the internet with windows and would never access my stock account, or receive email with it.
Going on the online with windows is like going to sea in a fish basket.

I use windows when I'm at the library for a quick email check. Since I switched back to a 32 bit system, everything I need to do on a machine works. I'm running Ubuntu. Everything just works. Windows Vista crashed a few months ago so I said "I need the harddrive space. Bye-bye NTFS, Reiserfs here we come."

I use Windows (TinyXP) in VirtualBox to test my websites in IE6, IE7 and IE8.

My home media server, laptop and Eee PC have Slackware on it :-)

I use Slackware for my all daily activities: coding Java, listening music, ripping DVD, watching movies, including some gaming using WINE.

For other games which run poorly in WINE, I have Vista64 Ultimate SP1 installed (bundle from DELL). I use Windows for gaming purpose only. There's no other application installed in my Vista except games and a free defrag software (IOBit).

The only thing I dislike about Vista is the installation size, the Windows itself took almost 15 GB of space with no other application installed, and trimming it using vLite only brings it down to 8 GB.

For comparison, my Slackware root partition (15 GB) with fully packed application installed including the huge Qt4, OpenOffice, KDE and JDK 6 still has free space of 9 GB!

I don't use windows, my jobs laptop came with VISTA but it broke in about month and i never tried to fix it...
Different thing is my job. they use Microsoft Dynamics here...
at least i've got them using firefox and thunderbird
the mailserver is now also running slackware.
but it doesn't seem to be getting better with the Dynamics part. so for now i'll have to use windows at job

Reading through the various answers on this thread, I see that there are two main reasons / excuses for (still) using Windows:
- games
- work

The issue of using games under Linux is a purely commercial one. Companies will only start releasing Linux versions if / when there is a large enough customer base. A technical problem might be support, as there is no unique package format for all Linux distributions, no standard for file-hierarchy (well, actually, there is, but not all distributions follow it), the need to have certain privileges to install software (vs. total lack of security in Windows).
I think Linux won't be a gaming platform for the foreseeable future. Of course many things can run with Wine, but there will always be newer games that don't.
But I am not a gamer, so this part does not worry me too much.

What upsets me more, is the lack of support for some business applications.
Some vendors have wonderful support for Linux clients, other totally ignore us.

I have seen several web-based applications (like HR packages) that simply wouldn't work with anything else than Internet Explorer. In my opinion, this is simply lousy programming. I have worked with web-development before and nothing was released before testing it for web-standards and testing with several browsers, including lynx (many visually impaired users use text-based browsers). If I have any say in the purchase process, I vote for not buying things that do not work on all platforms. But sometimes decisions are made without consulting anyone with a technical background...

This is an ongoing battle but I think things are getting better. In my opinion there is no real excuse to use Windows at work. I have seen companies that are 100% Linux and any vendor trying to sell a program that needs Windows was simply shown the door.

A few games at home but even that has cutback since my Netbook that I loaded linux up on, and mostly work and there crappy VB scripted software we are forced to use and comply with. How about going to linux, saving some money and cutting back on customers bills, make everyone happy. :-)

I use windows because of the foolowin to peices of test preporation software.

Preplogic A Plus Depot Technichian Pracitce Test
Preplogic Network Plus Pracitce exam

Yes i have tried both of these software packages in both wine and crossover office to no avail.

Games, a few music apps and I cannot afford a Mac yet keep from my dream of being windows free in 2003.

Seems like I'm the only one without a valid excuse for using Windows. I only boot into it for an hour or so now and then, just to see if it's been eaten by worms.

I use Window$ for games and because the english is ....

"next" ,"next" ...and "done" or "finish" ...

ps:my en is bad .:-)

I TOLD you that I do not use Windows----why does this thread keep showing up on my screen???

My confession...

At home I have 8 machines (yes that's right) in a house with just two people

2 x HP DL360 servers - running CentOS 5.1
1 x HP DL380 server - also running CentOS
1 x Macbook G4 - running OSX
1 x IBM T42 - Running Ubuntu (Hardy)
1 x ASUS EeePC - Standard Install (had Ubuntu-eee for a while)
1 x HP Mini-Note 2210 - Running Ubuntu (Intrepid)
1 x DELL Inspiron - Running Windows Vista Ultimate

I use the Vista machine for Photoshop; Roxio DVD Creator; watching Films; and Microsoft Office Communicator.

I also have VMWare Server installed with the following guest machines:
Ubuntu (Hardy)
Centos 4.5
Open Solaris 10
Linpus Lite
Slackware 10

At work, the back end Oracle servers are running Linux, HP-UX, and AIX.
But a lot of the Third Party "applications" are written with MS Access! or have dependancy on MS Office (Excel Addins/VBA).

We use Citrix Thin Clients to reduce the local machine related issues where possible, and most of the Infrastructure is virtualised.

VMware ESX Servers with SAN integration