Back in 1999, I was teaching Interior Design and owned a relatively large commercial interiors group. My colleague, an architect, was promoting Linux. My clients were not using Linux. We agreed to disagree as to what should be taught.

In mid-2008 I bought a new Acer Extensa 5620-6419 computer for my wife. It came with Windows Vista.

At the time we had three printers, two of them relatively new.

The Vista OS would not work with any of them.

I had heard that Windows Vista was a 'mess' but I did not believe it until we tried it.

Having read about Ubuntu Linux, I had ordered a free disc (8.04 Hardy Heron) a month or two previously and had tried it on one of our older computers.

But I didn't understand it, I couldn't get it to work properly, so I just gave up.

With this new computer being so incompatible with our accessories, I suggested that I order a Windows-XP disc for this computer and my wife agreed.

So on a Friday, I ordered that disc from Amazon.

In the mean time, I suggested that, since we were going to 'wipe' Vista anyway, she try the Ubuntu Linux OS and she agreed to do this.

I installed it to her new Acer computer on Saturday,

The following Wednesday, the XP disc arrived and I asked her if she wanted me to install it right away.

She replied, "Not on your life! I'm keeping this Linux OS. It's just great!"

As I had not opened the package, I was able to return the XP disc to Amazon for a full refund.

The month after we bought the first one, I bought an identical Acer model and, after 'wiping' Vista, I installed Ubuntu on it.

We've never looked back!

We have newer computers today (though those Acers are still functioning perfectly) and on our new ones (purchased from ZaReason) we are using Xubuntu and Ubuntu Studio.

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My son introduced me to linux. We began using Red Hat back in 1998. Now I work with the Ubuntu family. no problems so far

Patrick: I remember those days. Happy to have them gone. BTW where is QC?

About 20 years ago i found linux format magazine in a shop. It talked of open source software, even when it came to the kernel. Working my way through the manpages was a steep learling curve, but i enjoyed every second.
Haven't used M$ in 2 years. No regrets.

Sometime back early in the 2000's if memory serves me right, I was looking for a replacement and was looking on the net and came across Linux, at the time I was running my own business and was busy with little time and did not follow up with the changeover, since than things went downhill. A yr ago or so my tired system with XP was of a great need, And the time was available so I order Disc and installed 17.2 Mint Mate Edition. 32bit, and this spring rebuilt PC and changed over to 64b, and I have no need to look back. Full steam ahead. Thanks Linux Team.

In a previous life, like 30 years ago, I was a UNIX System Administrator. Then the PC became popular and I was always curious. Some of what I knew would cross-over just fine to DOS, but I have always been curious. When it came out, I started messing with it, but it's not my goto OS.

In 1993 I had SCO unix on a 486 PC. I saw a CD advertised with lots of BSD source code so I bought this American CD for 'only' £20 (later to discover that it was priced at $16 in the US). It had some interesting stuff on it - including loads of diskette images for Soft Landing Systems Linux. I backed up my SCO to tape and created install diskettes - for a minimal command line - together with a boot diskette.

Installed and booted into Linux - blown away (I had been using unix for nearly 8 years). It was like discovering unix all over again. I mounted the CD on my SCSI CD drive and installed everything else from there. Been a Linux fan ever since.

I upgraded from SLS to yggdrassil, later tried an early Red Hat then switched to SuSE for years from 6.4 onwards. Now I have been happily using Arch for a few years and my family and friends use (Arch-based) Manjaro.

Incidentally, for all those who believe that Linux is GNU/Linux, the yggdrassil CD included - as a small part of the disk - the entire GNU source archive. Since the rise in popularity of Linux there has been a massive expansion of GNU software - fuelled largely by Linux users deciding to contribute.

Perhaps, rather than calling Linux GNU/Linux we should call the GNU stuff Linux/GNU?

Interesting!

I bought a sound card for my Linux system in early 1994. Worked like a dream. No video problems with my Matrox Vesa graphics card - in fact, no problems with anything!

My son was given a second hand QIC drive for his 386 in 1994. (Not SCSI like my one.) It worked flawlessly in Linux, but even with the - supposedly - official drivers it could never be persuaded to work in either DOS or Windows (which he needed for college).

My first intro was Mint, in the early 2000. My roomie had it running a P2P off his antique 386 box. I was amazed how fast it was serving over a 56K modem at the time. I tried almost every flavor, and just did the upgrade to Ubuntu 16.04. So far, no problems.

Me too! Windows in NOT allowed in my home. I have to use it at work, but we use a real OS at home.

...years ago. Heard about Linux, but was using Microsoft for work, personal, and school. Eventually, got tired of Microsoft's b.s., so for my personal stuff, I use Linux Mint. Love it!!!

My IT technician programmer showed be an installation of Ubuntu on a laptop some 13-14 years ago. I was knocked out by it's looks and speed. I started to experiment with many distros and had very patchy success until Mint 9 which was wonderful! I've used Ubuntu and Mint ever since.

My son-in-law suggested Ubuntu to me a couple of years ago. I like everything about it except trying to load printer drivers.

I think I first heard about it in the news somewhere. I asked the IT guy at work about it, and he lent me a Ubuntu 13.10 disc. I tried that, then Mint and Zorin; went back and upgraded the Ubuntu to 14.04, and now have that plus Elementary and Deepin. I only use Windows 7 for my music software (Reaper), but they are working on a Linux build. When that is ready, I'll only be dealing with Windows to keep it updated, while I slowly try to wean my wife off it by 2000, W7's EOL. Of course, W8, 8.1 and especially 10 are out of the question, so she will need to migrate then. Unless React finally produces a usable product. But me, I'm a lifetime convert. Greatest thing since sliced bread.

I began experimenting with Linux around the time of Windows 95. I had just gotten comfortable with DOS. I completely skipped W3.1 and was looking for alternatives. Unfortunately I had a real hard time with the command line so I bought and tried various releases of Linux (Red Hat, Lindows, and others) that were supposedly easy. I kept using W because there was so much support for it for relatively little money, and W95 finally let me load a word processor and a spreadsheet at the same time. (FYI I was writing my dissertation at the time on a notebook with two 720 kb floppies and had to keep shutting down and rebooting because the computer could not have both Word Perfect and Lotus in memory at the same time; even thought the memory was there DOS would only use 640k at a time. That was when I bought W95.)

I'm finally here. I found and began using Ubuntu 14.04 a few months ago. Now my computers all either dual boot Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 16.04, Mint 17.3, Mint 18.0, or W7 (just in case). I'm finding fewer and fewer reasons to revert to W7. In fact this computer dual boots either Mint 18 or Ubuntu 16 only.

My newest computer is over 5 years old by the way. I believe Linux is keeping them alive :-)

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