But here are a few of my favorite experiences with Linux.

Programming:
Somewhere, I think in the fortune files, there's a quote: "I'll crawl over Visual this and Integrated that to get to a Bash prompt, gcc, and emacs." I couldn't agree more! I was trying for years to learn programming on a Windows box, and when I switched to Linux, I found programming nirvana. I actually stayed out of X and worked from the bare, black-screened console for weeks at a time, Alt-F[1-5] ing between virtual terminals, editing in one window, compiling in a second, testing in a third, and with a tutorial or man page or two open besides. You literally get to move as fast as you can think. Lisp was especially good brain-candy, which I actually learned not with any serious intention of using it, but simply because learning it was *that* much fun!

Live CDs and floppies:
Until I met Linux, I had no idea that there was such a thing that you could just spin in a CD tray, run an alternative operating system seamlessly, as if it were on the computer itself, and when you're done, return the computer to it's previous state with the host operating system having no clue what just happened. I was doubly impressed when I found *floppy* distros. To this day, I show this off every time I can pin somebody down who hasn't seen it yet.

Dual booting with the heh...heh...heh *other* operating system:
There is still one member of our household who hasn't learned Linux well enough yet to part with the old OS yet, so I added Linux to that machine anyway...on a second hard drive, to avoid Lilo hassles. I discovered that mounting the other system's disk partition from Linux is the best way to maintain the other system! No virus can hide from 'locate' and 'grep', emacs in hexl-mode is great for verifying virus ID (tip: if you see a strange binary on your machine which says it was done in Visual Basic when you look at it in hex edit mode, it's 99% certainly a virus!). You can edit all you want of the other system's batch files and .ini's, and even 'diff' them for changes! To my joy, I even found a way to automate cookie-sweeps and spy/adware patrols with Bash shell scripts, so that the other disk "cleans itself" whenever I run Linux! It's been months, now, since that other system has given me a lick of trouble, and nobody complains that it's down anymore!

Not only is it cheaper (free), you get ten times as much operating system!:
To this day, I still explore hithterto uncharted folders of my hard drive, and I still keep finding more cool Linux stuff - especially the programming support, I think I have every programming language worth knowing, with extensive docs and tons of example code for each.

One of the things I have done is to use one of my old computers as a movie player.

192 Megs Ram
Athlon 750
Ati aiw 128 pro (has TV out)
Dvd/Cdrom Player
small hard drive
network card

I installed a minimal install of debian, installed ssh, screen (Besides being a
great console session manager, I use screen in this case so I can log off of
ssh and have my programs continue working) and mplayer (with the needed
codecs), configured everything and unplugged the keyboard.

Now, I just log in through ssh, insert disc, fire up mplayer and set the video
output to vesa and I'm watching movies on my TV.

I used to have cplay (which is a curses front end for audio players) hooked
to a stereo and SAMBA and NFS for playing movies and music over network
drives. I've got several computers on my home network and I've got stuff
scattered all over the place so it was nice to be able to access different
locations on my network.

running a debian email/www/ssh/smb server on a 233 imac with 32 megs of ram and a dead monitor

current uptime: 42 days. never crashed on its own, always me doing stuff to it. the monitor has been dead for a year, and everything i have done to it has been via ssh

Glad someone has found a good use for an Imac...

KC

The koolest thing i did woz to find out how to compile a C program, and then writing overnight a prog to assemble matrices into a big matrix.
just managed to submit my assignment on time.

felt gr8 to use linux to get a very important work done on time, especially when other guys were using sucking MS Excel for the same.

-iceman

heh, I used slackware to build an LFS system, then I used that LFS to build another LFS box........I then put all my music on the 2nd LFS partition and made a nice sounding jukebox..........Linux can be anything you want it to be.....
.....unlike whinedows, which can only be what bill gates wants it to be......

I used a slackware system to transfer and convert data from several different systems into an IBM mainframe (when consolidating 7 different companies my company owned). Everything from Novell, WinNT, HPUX, MAP/3000, SCO, AIX, and more! I was in the IT department and as my boss watched and shook his head I used dialup to download individual floppy images. After burning disk sets A,AP,N, I'd install those three, fire up might commander and download the remainder.

Best part of it was I was using a 486 machine with 8MB ram using Slack 3.5 because that truly was the best distro.... Oh wait, it was just about the only distro!

You ask, what is the coolest thing I have done in Linux?

Just tinkering with it I presume.

Create a small runable penguin which fit into ~640K.

the coolest thing:
apt-get dist-upgrade
while looking into my friends' stunned faces.
bemused is good for some "aah"s and "ooh"s too.

Got frustrated by not having any driver for my PCTEL HSP Modem and formated and removed the Linux Partition and stayed away for at least 4 months and then reinstalled it with a new modem (of course I brought it )

I have to say that thats my coolest thing too, showing off the crazy things linux can do and convincing them to switch is priceless

not strictly linux... but setting up tcp/ip networking for an 80286 runnint msdos6.22 then using it as a telnet terminal for the rest of my computers, also ftp client to eliminate the need for floppies next will be lynx web browser

1. Using dosbox to ressurect King's Quest 6, which Windows had long since refused to play

2. Using mencoder to rip stuff out of movies - any time frame, specific chapter, audio, etc

3. learning to love the command line

4. writing my first two bash scripts, including different scripts to load up different programs depending on whether I'm connected to the net or not

5. Running my own net/ftp/mysql/php server (and hope to run mail when I upgrade it soon)

6. Sharing my OS with others without being a pirate or doing illegal stuff

7. Using GPG to sign my emails and encrypt files

8. This isn't something I've done, but it's cool that MS wants to put the shell back into Windows....what's the matter? People like the shell? They like to be able to script? qP

Make a file that is an image of the system ram.

dd if=/dev/mem of=/home/sam/memoryimage.bin bs=1024

View in any hex editor