Switched to Linux from Windows
One thing I forgot to mention is that about 6 months ago I made the leap to Linux from Windows XP… in particular Ubuntu Hardy Heron. It’s been an interesting few months, and while I’ve made an effort to try and find suitable replacements for all my windows apps, I still have a few that I can’t seem to ween myself off of just yet. However, I have my machine configured to dualboot, and Thunderbird is great as I share the same storage directory between windows and linux, meaning I’m always up to date with my emails regardless of which OS I’m using! Now for those periods when I don’t have to do something for an extended period in windows I’ve setup an XP virtual machine in Virtualbox OSE. It does the job rather well, and I can just save the machine state and restart it in about 15sec whenever I need it.
On the upside(or is it downside?) I can’t play most of my games without rebooting into Windows… which for the most part means I don’t play them at all. Some do work under Linux using Wine. I’m really thinking about doing a clean start next month when the new Ubuntu hits the streets… I definitely have a better idea of what apps and things I will use, and what ones not to bother with… Perhaps the clean install will also go along with a hardware upgrade… something I’ve been sitting on the fence for about the last 6 months as well…
I do recommend you try it out, grab yourself a copy of the live cd, and test it right off the CD… or if you’d prefer to customize it a bit, install it inside windows just like you would any other application… I can say I’m a point and click junkie thanks to Microsoft… but Linux has come a long way, and while there are times when you have to do something in a terminal window, there’s a ton of useful advice out there from people who have had the same issues or needs…