Just wait until Firefox has more then 10% of the market. Then you will see spyware and everything coming out for firefox and thunderbird. When your as popular and as widley used as windows, ie and outlook then everybody is going to attack it. Why waste time going after something that maybe 100000 people use in the world? Not worth it. There was even a story on slashdot saying this was the case.

Suprnova.org is down and yes it is easier to get something off of a torrent site but what if nobody has that torrent or there aren't any seeders or there but he is only uploading at 5 kb/sec.

IE and Outlook might be missed by a few ppl but not everybody so speak for yourself and not everybody.

Unfortunately, I have a Visioneer 6100b scanner that isn't supported by Linux (AFAIK). That's the only thing that I haven't found a way to work around in Linux. Most of what I do is web development, and I've found that Quanta is, if anything, superior to HomeSite. I still need to run MS Access on rare occasions, but I use CrossOver Office for that...

I still use windows. I am on linux like maybe 6 hours a week. There is just too many problems I run into to make it my primary OS. I play games and games run like crap for me on linux. I am not going to pay for winex to be able to play a game I already paid for. Just way too many problems.

Plus I just like windows. It does everything I need it to and sure I have to spend some extra time making it safe but that doesn't worry me.

IMO

windows > all

get crossover office and run itunes in there.

the problem is that all the other music stores are owned by MS, except for Real, try that.

allofmp3.com lets you download music cheap, but im not sure if its actually legal. its in russia and its legal there, not sure about hte legalese when it comes to you getting it from the US.

Limewire exists for Linux. There are quite a few you can run with wine. If not that, then win4lin.

mhmm, and what about those p2p programs where NOONE shares, and I get 2 kb every half hour for the ONE song I REALLY want ??

lets say magically Firefox became 99 % of the market overnight, you're forgetting microsoft didn't program it. Also, unlike IE, it's not also your file browser. It's not designed to move, delete, or have access to files nearly as much as explorer is.
Even if hundreds or thousands of pieces of malicious ware are released upon Firefox, it will never be as horrible as ie.

The only XP setups I haven't had to re-install after a month are the ones that NEVER connect with ie. With no variables of hours of use or sites browsed.

cereal83, Internet Explorer and Outlook can easily be run in Linux if you buy Crossover. Also native Linux versions are available for ET and I believe there may be a version for CS.

The reason why IE is so security prone isn't just because it has loads of bugs (yes it does have some that MS knows about and has yet to fix) but because of ActiveX having very basic security by default. Could I ask whether you have tried Firefox (recently)? Basically all sites work with it and the tabs are just fantastic. I highly doubt FF will get loads of security holes when it gets popular, although it is open source usually bugs get fixed a lot quicker in OSS. I don't know how you can really compare Thunderbird worse the OE - it doesn't quite have as much stuff as Outlook but it surely beats OE...?

Lastly your dependencies problem can easily be fixed, by using another distro. Gentoo has Portage which downloads and installs all dependencies by default, I believe the package managers in Debian, Ubuntu and a few other distros also do this to the same level of easyness.

I agree Windows is good for some things, I still use it on my laptop for MS Office. As all I do on my laptop is this and browse the net there is very little point to make the effort to change over. I suppose this isn't really inline with the opensource community's views but at the moment I haven't really got anytime to do anything else.

The only thing that linux doesn't support:

Games

Of course, I could use winex but I've limited success with it and the games run better natively anyway in windows.

P.S. In order to avoid some flaming here I should say that its not linux's fault that games don't play, its the manufacturers of the games.

Hmm, go to openoffice.org. Do yourself a favor, try Open Office . If there is a (good technical) reason why you choose M$'s office over Open Office, I'd like to hear it (since I'm a kid in high school who's usually busy and don't use either office suites too much).

ok my two cemts worth hehehehe:

1) I no longer dual boot I have completley gone linux only in both my home and my work enviroment...YAY

2) TheHushedCaskeT : Yep I agree to your earlier statements about the average user and MS with only one difference...the average user cant help it and MS should know better

3) Crashed_Again: your statement of "The only thing that linux doesn't support: Games"....is wrong my friend, I am happy to say that ALL the games I like to play are running very happy on linux....some native I.E - Wolfenstien ET and UT 2004 and the like, as well as Colin mcrae rally 2 - 04 and Far cry all on cedega....in fact Far cry runs better on my machine now than it ever did on doze....the only game I have come across that doesnt play or indeed even install (yet) is funnily enough Freelancer hehehehehe I wonder why? mind you dungeon siege works great

Anyway thanks for letting me add my two cents worth, just trying to help someone else realise there is a better alternative to "the normal" way

Sentinelt

I am back to dual-booting after running mainly Linux. The reason? XP came with my new computer for next to nothing. Don't you just hate the way they sell Windows with these non-transferable stickers. Why, I can't even sell the CD, according to Bill! I hate Microsoft, but I have a practical side as well as a idealistic side.

What I need Windows for is to research family history. Where can you get a genealogy program for Linux? There are a few out there but they do not offer many features, such as adding multimedia, relationship calculators, merging records, numberless output options etc. If it weren't for this I'd be 100% Linux..

Photoshop
Paint Shop Pro
Microsoft Excel (when I have to work on any moderate-to-large spreadsheets, because OOo has serious performance issues)
Microsoft Visio
Visual Studio
ATI TV

With that said, so far I've been able to do >99% of my work in Linux and have booted to Windows only once so far this year.

I would like to inform you that artists see very little money from the music of theirs published on the iTunes music store.
I love Apple (most of the time), but iTunes is. . . WRONG. (There is a website about this.)
If you are urged to use iTunes again, I think Codeweaver's Crossover supports iTunes.
Happy to hear you are using Linux .

Half Life 2 (I know it's availible in Linux), I need explorer for my online classes (Firefox is my default browser however), I also need Visio (I haven't found a Linux solution to this one yet), I also do all my sound editing and recording in Windows.

It does support iTunes, reviews have been so so though. It doesn't bother me though, I can not stand Macs or Steve Jobs; I refuse to use anything thats even remotely associated with that company.

It appears that it is the access at work that forces me to boot into windows during the day. As soon as I leave work it is only Linux. I have heard of success with wine and access. Hopefully I will get a chance to get that set up soon.