What can I do in windows that I can't do in linux? I'm a guy who does as bit of word procesing, surfs the net, play's some games. And I find linux great for that.
Infact, there is some great software for linux that is'nt there for windows unless you pay a handsome amount of money. Try creating a pdf document in windows for example. In linux, that trivial.
Then there is the hardware thing. As was correctly noted earlyer, that's because hardware vendors are often not willing to supply linux drivers or give the hardware specifications. This makes setting up hardware under linux harder then under windows, but it is by no means impossilble.
And I must also note that there are increasing number of games avalible under linux. Quake work, unreal works and there will be a linux version of doom 3.
Linux is on the rise, I see that all around me. Popular computer magazins for example, pay an increasing amount of attention for linux and other "alternative" software.

I do live without windows - the partition selfdestructed.I even managed to live without a PC for 35 years and look forward to live without one again.

A very interesting thread, with contributions from some of our more eminent and knowledgable members.

Personally, I couldn't do without my dual boot, but only because it is taking me such a horrendous amount of time to learn the in's and out's of linux, and that my partner needs to have access to windows/office brought on by technophobia and what is available to her at work.

I would also point out that while a lot of you on this thread have obviously got either a considerable level of professional IT knowledge or serious comment to computing, I have only been drawn to linux as a micro$oft refusnik. I only use my pc in a desk top capacity (and I'm not really a gamer - only the excellent jellyfish backgammon), so I can only say that anything that enables me to use the computer without recourse to m$ product's has got to be a good thing!

Oh, and luckily Santa put a nice little epson 1260 scanner in my "stocking", so that SHOULD be compatible with either OS.

Seasons greetings and best wishes

regards

John (the truck driving nugget!)

I don't know the first thing about anything IT - all I know is that the Windows that was installed on my box didn't do %&$#%^ for me and I had to choose between going to winXP or Linux.Linux looked like the much nicer alternative - obviously there are about 3 billion people that don't think so but that's their problem.

I could live without Linux, but for what?

I went to Linux when Windows could give me no more challenges, and I also began to hate Microsoft for his arrogance.

Soon I found that I spent my whole spare time with Linux.
I would rather be glad to get rid of windows once and for all, but my little son likes gaming and I cannot offer him anything on linux (not the number counts: he spends most of his time with two or three favourites - strangely enough these are old DOS games).
I also have to use windows to develop small windows (office) applications for my workplace. (I cherish plans to port all of them to unix, but it would be hard now).

At the moment, my computing needs at home are these:
Word Processing
Spreadsheets
(Simple) Programming
Playing MP3's
Playing DVD's
Playing mpeg videos
Email
Web Browsing

I have an IBM Thinkpad T23. I'm not much of a gamer (I suck at them anyway). For a while, I couldn't play dvd's or mpeg video's, so I went to a dual-boot setup (Windows 2000 and RH 8.0). Since I'm a busy guy (who isn't?), everything was left alone.

Then came Christmas break. (I'm a HS teacher, which means a 2 week break. Woot!)

I fiddled with my laptop again, and finally, I was able to play mpeg videos and DVD's, using xine. It's not perfect (I dare not play either in full screen, and xine only works for me if I use the command line), but it works. I know there are alternatives out there (like Ogle and mplayer), but I wanted to see if I could get xine to work for me on my setup.

So I wiped my hard drive clean and put RH 8.0 only on it. This setup allows me to do everything I need in the list above. Feels good.

BP

000D

I use both Windows and Linux. Is this so bad? I have no love lost for MS but the fact of the matter is I code things for Windows, Linux, and (recently) OS X. My company has clients who use any number of platforms and I need to be able to support those clients on thier platform of choice.

For personal use I am MS free though.

I would like to not use Windows at all. But I do have that gammer inside me...so I use linux on my webserver (of course) and for programming and pretty much everything except video editing and games...

a month ago I thought linux was just a toy..
but now when I'm actually using a computer for work,
Linux Rocks!

among other amazing prog's:
OpenOffice
Kdevelop
complete latex,ps,pdf envr.
easy shell scripting to do whatever you want

but linux still dosen't have:

decent DVD
decent 3d games
decent 3d video drivers

so basically use windows for games and linux for work..

Linux is great, but can you live without Windows?


Yes.
Yes I can and yes I do.

I currentlu dual boot into Mdk9 and WinME - Win is because my digital camera does all that I need it to but isn't Linux friendly, my girlfriend uses MS Money (one day I may be able to get her onto GNUCash or similar) and, erm, that's about it........oh yeah, maybe a little troubleshooting.

I have found that WinME is pants at playing games - the one game I would like to play crashes constantly in Win and won't work in Linux, I may have to investigate WineX a bit closer.

The fact is that I am using Linux to browse/surf/read email, type documents, kill time, play music, dvds. I occasionally install a prog to see what it can do. For this I use Mozilla, Ximian Evolution, OpenOffice.org, RealPlayer 8 and Ogle. All in Linux. If it wasn't for the fact that we are totally Windows at work I can't see a reason for me ever to go back.

I'm trying to get off Windows myself; the games are my setback...such an addiction.

Well, I'm an MCSE supporting a MS network and have just discovered Red Hat 8 in October and just love it. There is so much free software out there I'm talking to my boss about moving all our developement to it. I've been using RH8 exclusivley for 3 months now with no problems at all, if anything it has more utilities to monitor and control my network than windows. Don't get me wrong, I still like windows, but I LOVE linux, it is much more fun for a tech geek like me. I think for end-users RH8 is ideal, once setup by an admin the desktop has all the software to fill the needs of any user.

The first time I installed Linux I was using a version of Slackware that could boot off / from my windows drive. I remember having to call a friend because I couldn't do anything. All in all, I think I booted into Linux twice, then quit and went back to windows. A couple of years later I tried Mandrake and liked the ease of the install....but I still didn't know how to do anything. Once again I ran back to windows. About 4 months ago I realized all the work I was doing (php/mysql/c++/apache/perl) would probably be easier / more fun on linux, so I installed Red Hat 7.3. This was the first time I went completely Linux and I made sure not to have a Windows partition so I couldn't go running back :). I'll admit that on my windows systems I had a lot of pirated software, now that I'm using Linux I can happily say that everything is legitimate :D

Now I do everything in Linux:
Programming: vi, gcc, kate, php, mysql
No problems here :)

Gaming: Unreal Tournament 2003 (native linux), Half-Life (winex), Baldur's Gate 2 (winex), Warcraft 3 (winex). If you want to do your gaming in Linux I would definitely look into getting a WineX subscription, it's only 5 dollars a month (support cool stuff!).

Email: Evolution (easier to use than outlook, amazed me)

Internet: Phoenix renders even faster than IE, and is as easy to use

There is one exception though, I still have a Windows XP system for Photoshop 7.0. As much as everyone tells me that Gimp is at least as good, I don't like the interface at all. Plus I'm used to Photoshop's interface, and as much as I don't like needing to use it over Gimp, I still use it.

I went out of my way to by all the peices and build a second machine so that I could have a machine with nothing but Linux on it. (She's a virgin and shall never be soiled by wi wi wi... I'm sorry. I can't even say it.)