I don't do any gaming so I live fine without widows. At work I use windows since I have a sysadmin job there but for my use I can't recall the last time I used windows.
and I'm not just a surf the web user either, I organize 20,000 pictures and add a couple thousand a year from our 4 cameras and all the places we go. Organize and review my gps logs, geoencode the pictures. Do all my bills online and track those and our finances, budget, kids college funds. Track our schedules with my wife's part time evening job, kids school, schedule, my oncall and work scheduls. I maintain a home inventory system for all our toys/tools, track projects things I build and modify. Track maintenance schedules for our vehicles, etc. Find and organize maps and info about places we visit, record the pictures, gps logs of rides/hikes. Keep a somewhat daily journal of everything we do, digitizing anything paper so it can be backed up and take up less space.

Well, I suppose you could say I'm cheating. Have an XP machine that has some programs installed on it that I need for work, and I don't have the install disk for.

Can I live without Windows? Well this netbook came with XP pre-installed, but after three months I've yet to boot into Windows.

Would like to try some BigFishGames for Windows, using Wine, but it keeps throwing an error that I'm not the Administrator, regardless of user I use. Even tried it as root and went so far as to create an adminstrator user ID with the ability to install software. No joy. Think it is a wine thing.

Wine runs Snood poppers just great, except after I bought it I discovered a few levels later that the game got really, um, I guess challenging is the word.

I kind of cheated and stole the .ttf files from the windows partition so Open Office would have all the fonts that Windows people use.

Gimp and Open Office have undergone a lot of development since the 6.06 version of Ubuntu I downloaded a couple of years ago.

Programming - I want to get up to speed on Python. Code written for that will run on all three platforms. Also plan on installing OpenLaszlo. Have SWFTOOLS already installed but haven't started using it yet.

Browsing - Flash 10 works fine on Ubuntu 9.04. Refuse to install Moonlight. Firefox is my prefered browser. Some Javascript. Skype works just fine, including camera. Acrobat Reader likewise. (Yes, I know they are proprietary, but the point is that some vendors know that there is more to life than windows.)

wow. this thread is SEVEN YEARS OLD!

I AM living without Windows! Of course, I don't pirate copyrighted DVDs and I only play old games. But guess what? These older games now have come back to life with new textures and models! Hexen, Heretic, Doom, Duke Nukem3d, and even Wolfenstein 3d (the OLD one).

I can do everything on the Internet that I need to do. I am also spreading the word.

I told my friends that I am no longer going to repair their Windows problems. If they want my help, they can have Linux. A lawyer friend of mine is very happy with his setup (he uses WordPerfect 5.1 Plus for DOS and can now keep it - dosemu).

I've HAD it with Vista and Microshaft. Time to go Slackware.

I'm running Linux only!

Windows free as of 1996

Widows are OK as long as you find out how their previous husbands died. Avoid them if there's anything suspicious.

I use Linux for everything. There are NO Windows or Mac machines on my network.

That includes gaming. I have played probably at least a hundred games written or adapted for Linux. I am not a hardcore gamer personally, but there are at least a dozen which I have played extensively. Off the the top of my head, some of these would include Battle for Wesnoth, Singularity, UFO AI, SuperTuxKart, Extreme-TuxRacer, Flight of the Amazon Queen, Steel Skies, Warzone 2100, Eboard Chess, Nexuiz, and Tremulous.

Hi,

Ok, I hope this thread is still "fresh"...

I've made the complete move to Linux about (???) three years ago, never looked back. I am software developer, the move to dotnet (then in windos) broke my carreer. Never programmed for windows since, and never got a proper project again. Now, since I moved to Linux, life's been great! Here is an OS that is clever enough to do what it has to do, but allows you to "knead" it into what YOU need.

Linux is liberation for me.

Thanks Linus!!!!

Thor

Absolutely...

I do not use widoze for eight years now...

Wait , I'm "lying" here... sometimes I am "forced " to use windows everytime I go to a Library, or a Cybercafe and must use the mobos they have there...

But other than that... in my work we have two workstations, one with Slackware, the other one with freeBSD.

I have two laptops, one with Slackware and the other one used to have FreeBSD, installed OpenSolaris yesterday just to see how it is...

My mom's desktop PC has Mint... my sister's lappy has 'buntu, my Desktop PC had debian, I switched to Slackware 1 month ago...


Who needs windows...?

All my work applications ( either Open source or proprietary run in Slack... )

Fluent
Ansys
ProEngineer
Matlab
Abaqus...

BRGDS

Alex

Hi,

You'll like OpenSolaris, ran it too. You'll need to realize that ... this is NOT Linux, but Solaris. I, for one, did like it.

I used it to run VirtualBox and WOW was that cool!

Thor

Hi linusr@flanders

What is OpenSolaris more alike...? linux or FreeBSD...?

Is it easy to compile stuff as it is with Linux...?

As a Slackware user I am used to build my own packages, using the set of Compilers that I want, with the optimizations I feel necessary,,, Absoft, gcc/gfortran, Intel...

Most of my OSS Engineering applications have been built from source into Slackware packages, and run flawlessly.

Can I do this in OpenSolaris....?

I have found out a repo for OpenSolaris called Blastwave...

Can one build a "package" for Open Solaris...?

Is it "faster" than Linux ? Does it have 64bit driver support for Nvidia Graphic cards...?

... all my knowledge about Linux is pointless when using OpenSolaris, i guess....

BRGDS

Alex

I'm almost there, the only thing I have windows for on my laptop (apart from work requiring it!!) is that I can't for the life of me get my epson r285 to print to cds from linux! I have tried god knows how many things in gimp and they either come out all screwed up or not reliable. Epson printcd doesn't work from wine either. I do some custom cd's now and again so I need this functionality. I also use windows for newsleecher as I am yet to find a linux alternative which is as good. If I could get around those two problems then I'd be a happy bunny!

I only use Linux. I have no need for Microsoft as I have found an open-source alternative for every proprietary program I used to use. Except for Pokerstars.

And WINE does just fine for Pokerstars.

Windows-free since 2004 or so. Can't imagine which application I miss which is available in Windows.

I have to run our Windows-only accounting program in a VM. And Internet Explorer for banking. No, I can't switch the accounting program or my bank.

jlinkels

A simple solution " use playonlinux " it supports many 3D games that you play on windows. It works using "wine".

You don't need to have windows in your system. playonlinux it self creates registry just as windows.

Official Playonlinux Site