I'm pretty new to linux, but I'd definatly say it's the only operating system for me. I've managed to, within the first week of having it installed on my computer, get everything up and running as well if not better than under windows. Yesterday, I finally got my iPod to update with amaroK, and immediatly uninstalled windows which I'd been using for iTunes only. I'll admit I'm not likely to be playing world of warcraft on my computer anytime soon, but I do have gameboy advance and snes emulation up and running, for anything newer than that I have my playstation.

well...not now, i still need the Warcraft III frozen throne. maybe later after i could configure my linux completely and the games could be played like on windows...

well, i still need windows, the world seems emptier if windows doesn't exist. linux would not became so great and devastating like this if windows not exist..LOL!

how could virus programmer earn their money if windows doesn't exist anymore??

I am almost free of windows....
I still use it sometimes because the native broadcom wireless driver works better in Windows than ndiswrapper in linux...not much i can do about that....however when I dont need to connect to a weak signal, i dont boot into windows

I'm just about to completely switch over my stuff because I resolved my touchpad issue (Linux was tough w/o it)... I'm hoping I can emulate iTunes, because I have some purchased stuff that I dont want to lose
--drew

My general feeling is that computers today are cheap enough that you can probably afford to have several. They are literally being thrown away: I picked up a fileserver literally on the sidewalk, because I got there before the trash-man did. (It worked fine, and I studiously erased the proprietary-looking files that were still on the drive without looking at them. )

You figure out what applications you want to run, and you buy the operating system(s) that run them best.

>> "They are literally being thrown away: I picked up a fileserver literally on the sidewalk, because I got there before the trash-man did."

i like this one ... ^_^

i use to have a trishaw with an large open metal-casing at the back ... during some of those mid-nights during friday or saturday , my son will sit at the back and i start peddling around the neigbour-hood(quite a large part of it) try picking up usefull used stuffs and tiny toys(for our own personal usages only) ... seems that the time havent really comes when we can pick up a good p4 class machines ...


//to think about it , am i unintentionally depriving a livelihood of others ??


.

Tough one I love Linux been using it since RH 5.2.However any Linux distro has serious shortcomings in comparison to Windows.Gaming is the big one,when the question of gaming in Linux comes up peeps always say hey Cedega!Well uh .. thats not GPL software so that leaves that out next!Wine can work but not nearly as easy to setup as Cedega and still has issues when it does and that's about it unfrotunately.


Another big one is encoding of media files.I don't know what peeps are using in Linux but I've tried Mencoder and few others and none can touch TMPGenc with a ten foot pole in XP or 2003(I even use my QUad Xeon with TMPGenc to do smp (all four cpus at same time) encoding!

Now don't get me wrong I'm no XPite flamer.I'm typing this on my Quad Xeon running Centos 4.4 and Firefox.I love Centos it's awesome it's stabler than 2003 Server and multi tasks just as well.I've always loved KDE and think Gaim is swell.


But my real gripe with Linux(And if anybody can answer this one I'll never run Windows on any PC I own again!)my mouse never works right playing Quake Arena Demo under any version of Linux since RH 9.1.The Problem?When I press both mice buttons(Left and right not middle btn at the same time I get a mouse-look ....nooooooooo why why why.This never happens under Windows from 98,Me,2k,2003,XP pro or home wtf?


Now if someone can come up with a real gaming and media distro that rocks and has that Q3 mouse fix I'll post flyers from here to Timbuktu that praise Linux as the savior of mankind from the evils of paned OSs.


Linux in any flavor really is a swell OS and does so much on free software much more than Windows can do for free that is a given.But
I should have pointed the real flaw in Linux,the reason gaming is an issue and media encoding as well.Nobody has come up with a GPL alternative to DirectX and that's all there is to it.So come on coders give us our GPL Dx9 or GnuX 10.

Ah mylothshipper
I gave up on TMPGenc a long time ago. I had some files that it wouldn't touch. When It did it would consently crash half way though. It was was one of the thing that drove me to Linux. I now use Avidemux & it does those file that TMPGenc dosn't reconise. I now do all my Video capture/encoding & burning to DVD under Linux. Ya it might be a little tougher gettting it going on some distros but it hasn't failed me since I got it going. One the the biggest pains was start an encoding wait over 8hr's and it would say all finished and when I clicked Ok it would crash & their went over 8 hours of my time. Very frustrating and some people thinks that s normal. (It is for most window users)

Just cause you mentioned Avidemux I'm going to give it another try on Centos and see.

I will say however that I've encoded hundreds of Avis on TMPGenc on Windows over the last four years.And TMPGenc has hardly proven unstable to me and has not had much issue with different codecs.Maybe your Windows(Not much of a stretch.) install was the issue.I've run TMPGenc on 2003 Server mainly and for Windows it's a pretty stable OS much stabler than XP.

If I though had to live with XP on a daily basis or Linux any distro I'd go with Linux.I work on and load XP machines daily and XP is hideous OS(Very unstable) as far as I can see,if there was no Linux or 2000-2003 I'd be running 98(Actually I do for Q3 lol!)

The answer is a big yes. Reason?
Linux is slower than Windows.
Linux programs are harder to update and install.
Linux is not as user-friendly as Windows in a myriad of different ways.
Dual-booting will generally lead to problems, in time. I just deleted all partitions for Linux and it will be a long time before I ever use it again. I was using FC3, one of the most "user-friendly" of all Linux, supposedly, but it just never did a thing for me. I'll stay with Windows.

Yes. Easly. I am living without MS Windows.
Ask yourself one question, could you live without Linux? discus.

P.s. I see MS has brought out You Tube.

crating DVDs with linux is so much easier using qdvdauthor and I never get lip synch problems like I used to in windows

Not for me. Quite the reverse actually.
Personally, I find this much easier to do under Linux.
Well I can point out many ways in which Linux is much more "user friendly" than Windows. Eg:
- You can't move, delete or rename an open file under Windows,
- Disk defragmentation/AV/Spyware apps are not necessary under Linux,
- Virtual desktops don't exist under Windows,
- Linux doesn't have "The Registry,"
- Windows only has 1 (one) desktop environment,
- Windows doesn't provide a software manager connected to massive software-libraries on the internet, so that you can install and update all of your applications/utilities.
Really? I've never had any problems dual/triple/quadruple booting. Please explain the problems you've experienced.

1)Linux is faster than windows (except boot time), its more responsive, and keeps working fast even more software is open and installed

2)With ubuntu's update manager, it takes few or no clicks to update

3)No probs with dual/triple booting

4)FC3 is NOT the most user-friendly distro.

I have to disagree with the booting part. I run Gentoo with a good bit of server stuff and my Linux can boot faster than windoze even though I have more stuff running. I even run KDE.

I also like being able to update/install software without rebooting. The only time you need to reboot is for a new kernel.

What all you got running to make it boot slower anyway? This is part of mine:

What you got running under your hood?

I thought gentoo is using something like initNG ?
Anyway, windows with all installed drivers and additional software will boot slower than any linux distro. But freshly, its enough fast.. (Don't make me polish windoze! I hate it! )