I learned on DOS, I'm a control freak. It's was a natural fit w/ CLI.

freedom to do what i want on and with wats on my computer without being dictated by to by some fat as company. That cant handle a straight trade i give my money no strings, i expect the same in return.

I switched mostly because of my intellectual curiosity. I had used Windows for 10 years and been pretty familiar with it, so I wanted to learn a new OS. Linux was a great candidate at that time since it was available for free and its hardware support was getting better. Once I got into it, there was no turning back. Everything I learned about Linux told me how great an OS it was, and how much more sense it made to stick with it than go back to Windows.

It was after I became a solid Linux user that I learned all about Microsoft's monopolistic strategies and how it should be removed from the earth.

I can't completely turn to Linux yet, I still have hardware that will not work. I find myself more and more using MEPIS rather than Windows. I get tired of having to run software to "protect" my Windows computer from hacks-viruses-spyware-etc.., that causes more problems. I have to use Windows for work related programs, and have a win98 box there for that, XP here at home. Any time I have problems with the installs I end up having to spend hours fixing or re-installing. I have had this under Linux, but usually by my mistake, not just random crashing. I think Linux has potential to replace Windows, but it does't have to. Hopefully the world will come back to realizing freedom -to is far more important than freedom-from....

I started using Linux after playing with it (and loving it) at a friends house (Red Hat). It is much more fun to use than windows, and it's great to have control over your system. I still use Windows though (games, and all my uni textbooks come with cd's that only run on windows). The other reason for using Linux is that it is free and that is very important when you are a poor student. Although I would have nothing against paying for it if I could afford it (and if photoshop etc ran on it).

I first bought linux out of curiosity. I bought the mandrake 10.1 version, at first i was put off by a major problem it caused with my main computer which led to a full reformat. So i decided to give it a try on an old computer until i got the feel for it.
I was impressed at how easily it installed (done in only 15 mins.) and how fast it runs,once i got the updater fixed to point to mandriva i was able to update quite quickly. The main plus points i found was that You didn't have to reboot the computer after the slightest change and that you could play DVDs without extra drivers. I also like the kaffeine player. I have now reinstalled it on my main computer where it happily sits along side windows qlthough there are a couple of issues such as no driver for my printer (lexmark x5250 eventhough linux accuratly detects it), also i have a problem where my USB mouse freezes after 2 mins but that was sorted by using the ps2 adapter. On the whole very impressed with it, altthough i do still need windows for a couple of programmes, linux wins for web surfing and playing music and video files.

There were number of reasons why I made the switch. At one point my friend brought hoem this book on redhat from the library, of course it was something like redhat 4 so it was absolutly no use for his hardware and that got me interested in it. I then forgot all about it for quite a while. The I started using firefox, openoffice, thunderbird, clam av and I saw that openoffice and firefox were available for linux. So I started researching linux and all sorts of things and about 7 months ago I finally took the step. At first I had intended to use suse 9.2 and duel boot with win xp. But suse wouldnt install and I didnt have the knowledge to fdisk my hdd to get rid of thr stupid recovery partition that was causing the problem. So i got hold of the suse live cd 9.1 and tried that onyl to find it wouldnt work with ym smart link dial up modem, so I browsed around while ordering a new hard drive to fit in place of the one with win xp on it and saw mepis, so I tried that and success it worked with my smart link modem, So ir an that while I waited for my new modem to arrive to fit in place of the one with xp on it, because by that time I had fully decided to make the switch. The from there I used mepis for a couple of months and then at christmas I started drifting between distrors suse 10, mandriva, vector, pclos and have now settled on debian etch.

But the main reason i switched was not because of anti ms, nor viruses or spyware as I hadnt had any ever whle I had access to the net, it was out of curiosity. I thought ok now i love firefox and openoffice perhaps I shoudl give this linux a try and see what its all about. Turned out to be the best decission ever, since I got my hard drive, this machien is linux only, th one with windows on sits in a box on a shelf about my machine gathering dust. If this hdd dies then it will be formatted and take its place.

Also the person who originally brought linux to me hasnt really tried it since he borrored the book frokm the library, I have attmepted to get him to try it but he hasnt really other then booting it a few times.

Yhe so its down to openoffice and fiefox and a few other open source apps, some that were only available for windows.

I've never switched since I still keep a Windows partition for gaming, but Linux has been my main OS for some time now. Most of the games I play are emulated (ie, NES, MAME, SNES, etc) or card-games, mah-jong and such, so Linux works pretty well for me for the most part. Cedega is worthless in my experience (seemingly every good Windows game doesn't work with ATI graphics boards), so I still reboot to play San Andreas, Vice City, and NBA Live. However, I think once PS3 comes out I'm retiring my PC from gaming until UNIX gets enough acceptance in the desktop market for the majority of game software companies to support it.

Anyways, my reasons for using Linux, in no absolute order:

1. I hate Microsoft Windows

I've been using Linux for 5 years, but that does not make me hate MS any less despite what a lot of people are saying here. I refuse to give Microsoft a cent for Windows, when it has such ridiculous security holes and when I can't decouple MSIE from it. Windows sucks. I hate their media formats like wma and wmv that they're trying to use to kill mp3 and mpeg. I hate not having control over what services can run. I hate having Explorer taking up so much RAM. I hate having a system where everything is statically linked (so no BSD either). Plus, no horrible, bloated, unmaintainable registry full of viruses and spyware. No super-hidden files that I cannot change.

I'll admit to loving X-Box and the Age of Empires series, for which I've never had any problem giving Microsoft my money for.

2. Curiosity

I tried Slackware for no other reason than to see what GNU/Linux was. I loved GNOME, hated KDE (love it now though), hated the long boot time, and loved the power the bash shell gave me. I loved the choices linux offered me. I liked having a system I could make into what I wanted (Slackware was so flexible in this regard). Even though things like 3D, video, and so on sucked when I first tried them, I decided Slack would always have a partition on my HD.... until I found LFS, which I loved because I could have a system that reminded me of Slack without the long boots... plus, it was fun to compile my software for exactly what I wanted out of it and nothing more, nothing less.... especially the kernel.

3. CLI

bash blows away the GUI for a lot of tasks (since so much of computing is string parsing), and cmd.exe and the MS-DOS prompt are jokes. I learned sh while programming in Solaris for school, and there was no going back to to inefficient GUIs after that.

4. To peek under the hood

Programming has always been a hobby, and it's amazing to see all the work that goes into making such a complex system. Working with cute code samples from textbooks that fit onto a page or two was boring the hell out of me.

5. A lot of open-source software is better than the proprietary stuff

Firefox, amaroK, xine, and ViM are my favorite browser, audio-player, video-player, and text editor. Media Player Classic makes Windows usable too, but I love xine for the dvd handling. One of my favorite features that you don't find in stuff like PowerDVD is the ability to skip through the FBI Warnings. The dd command alone makes ViM more efficient to type in than anything else I've ever used. amaroK works so much more quickly for me than WMP ever did, it crashes less, and it's much more intuitive to use. Linux has gotten to the point where you don't need to read a man page for every executable anymore.

6. Simple Permissions setup

Setting all my mp3s to be owned by root:mp3, with permissions 440 means my roommate can't accidentally delete my songs, and makes sure any friend using my computer to write his/her paper can't just jerk around on it. Setting all my porn to be owned by root:xxx with the same permissions means no one can toss off to my computer while I'm gone.

7. Easy to setup a cool looking desktop

GNOME and KDE are pretty easy to get looking nice. It's not hard to make them look like Windows, Tiger, or Old-School Mac.

8. Paste with the middle mouse button

Simple, but so much more efficient than CTRL-V or right click -> Paste. I really, really hate not having this when I'm on a Windows box.

9. UNIX has a lot of little black boxes instead of one enormous one

sed, grep, and find give a user so much power to do things quickly, using pipes. What an amazing design. It's nice using an OS with almost 40 years of successful experience behind it.

i switched because i could complete the tasks with least no of key strokes when compared to windows. linux did not have those irritating prompts. windows had them at every step.

also windows is built on the rational that the user does know anything whereas linux assumes the user knows best. linux is totally totally customizable. with windows i had to use what microsoft thought best with the layouts etc. that used to drive me up the wall.

and ofcourse the important reason of all is stability, minimal virus threat and its free.

who said the best things in life are not free. take a look at linux.

just want to add to my previous post. iam not anti microsoft its just that i have found better alternatives like most here.

About 6 or so years ago a friend of mine from school handed me a CD and a small manual and said "Try this". After some interesting problems, I've pretty much have had Linux installed on at least one of my machines since.

a few years ago I got fed up taking my pc to the shop to fix windows problems, then got fed up of the shop screwing up my computer with shoddy work! So I started repairing my own computer and ended up building my first pc with win'98. When I started getting more knowledgeable regarding windows and pc's in general I realised how bad Microsoft was and how unsecure the o/s was. I started browsing the web and came across http://www.linux.org/ I downloaded my first linux cd's from there using an obscure linux-ASP linux (from Russia!) It worked fine had all the dvdcss installed and was easy to use. I used it as a dual boot for a while and then switched to suse 9.0.After building yet another comp and trying many versions of linux ( I prefer a debian based system) I decided to dual boot with xp (for games) and Mepis as my main o/s. I know I have made the right descision because whenever I boot into windows to run a game (getting less frequent!) I have to wait for windows to update-Norton to update and worry about all the security updates.I've been running Mepis for 1 1/2 years now and I have never looked back!

Firstly, while still using windows, i was what you might call a poweruser. I knew (and still know) a whole ton about windows. I was constantly browsing the internet to find better (freeware) programs, and learn about new things concerning technology.

Curiosity was the main reason I switched. At the time, I had a fascination with hacking (yes, the breaking into computers part ) its not like i was serious about it, but I researched it a lot. All the hacker's sites that I came across allways ranted on about how they use Linux/BSD as windows is so insecure and Linux lets them controll their system.

So I found www.linux.org and had a look around. I found out what a liveCD was, and also found out that Knoppix is the most well known and well respected live cd today. So that was what I downloaded. I experimented with Knoppix for a while. I remember things like wondering why .exe files would not run on linux . Something that I really hated at first about linux was the file system layout.

My first install was Fedora Core 4. I knew by then that Red Hat was a big name in linux, and that FC4 was the bleeding edge free version of their main OS. However, i quickly tired of this os. I have no idea why as i know almost nothing about the inner workings of linux, but I did.

Finally, I can now say confidently that i know my way around linux quite well. I can easily configure a system to play all kinds of media/DVD's and can fix most display problems. However, over time, my usage of linux has changed. First I used it just to tinker. Now that I use it for my main OS, it is important that when I need to knuckle down and work, I need my system to "Just Work".

This Is why I now use Ubuntu. It offers the power and configurability to keep be busy for hours, but stays out of my way and gets the job done when I need it to.

Cool, I just spent 10 mins of my life typing a novel that no one will ever take the time to read

My software is free, and will remain free. I don't pay a fortune for a copy of every new version of my operating system. I download it, install it, and it's there, it's mine to do with as I please. Updates are frequent and free. The command line is the front line, it's so much more powerful than DOS, DOS is not even worty of being mentioned in the same breath as bash. It's open source, if something explodes, even if I don't know how to fix the problem, someone somewhere on the internet can tell me, "You just need to edit config.cfg and add these lines" and fix my problem, I don't have to stare at a piece of non-functional software while I wait for the developers to release a patch. If the gui crashes, the entire OS doesn't crash. If a video driver gets corrupted somehow and X refuses to start, I can use the command line to either remove it and use a generic driver, or re-install the current one. Shall I go on?

M$ is the reason I started using Linux. To me, the $ represents the failure of the legal system to enforce anti-trust law. Free markets require fair competition. Subsidies and price caps are the wrong way to fix things.