15 yr old + linux DO mix
 

Ok, here is my life long OS story, it's a little short though, I'm only 15 :P

Here is my order that I've used:
Windows 3.11 (umm.. sure... ok)
Windows 95 (big improvment, but God it still sucks!)
Windows 98 (nice, I get tons of new themes, in exchange it only crashes twice as often!)
Windows XP (fisher price come to mind? I mean come on, this thing sucks, what's up with contstant crashing?)
Now the fun, Linux experimentation :D
Mandrake 8.1 (I'm still depending on Windows, and it messed with it, so I had to say bye)
Mandrake 8.2 (ok, still not ready for me I suppose)
Mandrake 9.1 (alright, we're getting there!)
Mandrake 9.2 (come on, just one more release and I think they'll have it!)
A few months later...
Red Hat 9 (alright, nice, stable, but no media support? I'll pass, but I'll keep it in my collection)
SuSE 9.1 Personal (hey, pro might just be worth trying)
SuSE 9.1 Pro (she's a keeper, let's ditch that Windows harddrive!)
Ok, so I'm still experimenting, give me my time ;) :P
Xandros (you've GOT to be kidding, right?)
Mandrake 10 (they got it right! I said goodbye to my few weeks of SuSE, and put this on my computer)
Fedora Core 2 (it's very nice, but mandrake is working, so ill just keep this in my collection)
Linspire 4.5 (this IS a joke, right? *cd hits trash can*)
Lycoris DesktopLX (i tried this one today, its still on my spare hdd, but itll get formatted soon, i cant stand this one)

Never realized I tried all those out XD I'm staying with Mandrake now, I'm finally 100% Microsoft and Windoze free, and I couldn't be happier! I'm runnign a powerful OS, powerful programs, and it's all FREE! Even though I liek the idea of it being free, once I'm old enough you can bet I'll be in the Mandrake Club ;) Mandrake 10 did just about everything on it's own, with me guiding it some of the way. DVD support, support for my music collection, the best HTML editor, and god Kopete kicks a**! Even though the apps are on all linux systems (well, some), the point is Mandrake was so easy to setup. My SBLive 5.1 was a b*** to setup, and still isn't '5.1', but it sounds better than it did in Windows, and I'm perfectly fine with it how it is now XD It's easy to customize my system now. All the apps I could possibly want are freely at my disposal.

My dad is 100% anti-everythingbutMS, and 100% pro-everythingMS, so when our router needs to be reset (our router isn't exactly new), my linux system takes the blame (how iggnorant is that?). Oh well, he'll get over it ;)

I now have no visruses, no spyware, adware, no this, no that, only what I WANT. :D

That's my story, and I'm sticking to Mandrake, couldn't be happier *thumbs up*

nice story. a really good member success story would be getting your dad to switch. i've tried with my dad but the farthest i ever got was having him dualboot xp and redhat 9, but now hes back on xp alone.

I'm trying, it's not working, but I'm trying :(

no get him to try out a live cd of linux (eg mandake...)

I got him knoppix, suse live, amndrake move, and even installed various different linuxes on a testr machine in his shop (next to his pc), he cant stand to use any of them, he wont even consider trying one to surf the internet :(

Windows XP crashes???? Heh, news to me. I've never had a crash with XP once. Guess I'm just lucky.
Good Story, don't give up on dad, he'll see the light eventually. :D :)

Yeah....I don't think I coudl get my mom none the less my dad to use linux.

Anyways, congrats on getting linux to be working fully for you. I'm a semi newbie (i have been playing with it for quite a while...but now I am realy diving into it and almost fully abandoning windows). I have a lot of windows programs that I depened on (espeicaly Photoshop)...so until I get those emlated correctly I will still be using windows...

Oh yeah...and I need to buy a new Graphics card with good drivers for linux so I can acutaly play one of my favorite games (Eternal Lands) in Linux without having 0 FPS! LOL (I only get 20 FPS in windows...).

One last thing...Windows XP crashing? I'm surprised...you must realy be pushing XP...because I push XP all the time and that is the only reason it crashes for me...and it sitll dosne't happen much (I once crashed Adobe Photoshop, Outlook Express, IE (I only use Firefox now...Mozilla on linux until i work out some bugs in Firefox in Linux...), and some other programs all at the same time. Plus I have gotten the allmighty blue screen of death on XP about 15 to 20 times. yes...I am proud of my "accomplishments" ;)

My XP was crashing alot, then i changed my power supply from a 250 watt to a 400 watt and haven't had crashes since then, just too many devices on the one machine for a such a small power supply.

My kid sister is 14 and she has little problems with my Slackware setup. All I need to completely switch her to Linux is webcam and mic support for msn (I prefer Kopete). My dad has no problems at all. As long as I setup Thunderbird and Firefox for him (and put links on his desktop :D)

I don't think you should put down the other distro's of Linux so easy. Just because they didn't suit you doesn't mean that they are not good at all.

Example I've tried most Linux Distro's (Fedora,RH, Mandrake, SUSE, Slackware, yellow dog, knoppix & Debian and maybe a few other less popular distor's to) I've stuck with SUSE, it does what I need it to do and I like it's features :p I found mandrake to be slow loading for myself and didn't like a few features. Though I still recommend it to people if it suits there needs.

Also I don't know why some many people complain about Xp crashing. I've never had a problem with it crashing. As said by fotoguy about the power supply, it helps. Also don't load so much software on XP. When using Windows be careful of viruses and trojans etc. Most are written for Windows that is why Windows has more problems. If Linux was used as much it would be the same :( But it's true.

About your Dad, don't bother, I've tried on mine and it's not worth the time and effort for me. I find it easy to sit him where he wants on a Windows box. I still have a 2 Linux boxes and my firewall (linux) and a Xp machine. Just leave them be and they don't bother you until something goes wrong. Then you are the one to blame :(

By far the most unstable part of Windows (XP/2000) is the Explorer. Sometimes it just hangs for no good reason. Since the Explorer is used for everything in Windows, I concider Windows unstable. Using many third party apps helps, but having my taskbar disappear or hang every half hour is just not very productive. And if you say the Windows Explorer runs stable on your computer (never hangs), then you're a lying sob.

It diden't hang every week...more like every week and a half....:p (i have swithed to Firefox a logn time ago thou.).

You know thou...I have a hard time beleivng SUSE is faster than Slackware....Slackware rocks and it will always be the best for Servers and Personal Computers :D

Before I installed SP2 I never had problems with Explorer Hanging. With SP2, I Have problems maybe 1 or 2 times a month.

Hell I must be doing something right then. IE doesn't hang for me, well sometimes it may but not very often it will do it and only when I've going like 15 of them open and also got stuff running in the background :-(

I don't use IE much lately I running Mozilla to lazy update from that :)

Explorer != Internet Explorer ;) :)

And I don't use IE for anything anymore.