I own a mac, and it's great for everything I want to do and I'm glad that I switched from windows. I do web design, photo editing, video editing and am going to start doing some animation and I find that it handles everything that I want to do very well. I have found, in my experiences, that it has better quality of programs and is more intuitive to use than windows. It also has the benefit of greater security ( I know some people doubt this and say that it can still be vulnerable to a trojan horse, but these are still rare) which I find to be great as I don't have an anti-virus taking up my computers resources. It's a lot of little things that you find when you use a mac that will make you happy. Although due to Vista copying a lot of features from Tiger, a lot of these may not be so new if you've already used vista.

I started to work with Linux many years ago, when the most important distro out there was RedHat 4.2. I really never liked it, but it made me feel curious about the existence of alternatives. Slackware was an old distro then, and I did not find it very attractive. But then I accidentally discovered Debian. And it was truly wonderful.

Debian was not an easy distro to install or to maintain. But it had two things I was looking for: power and flexibility.

Eventually Debian became the biggest distro out there, and it has been taken as a base for building many other distros. Ubuntu among them.

I still think Debian is at the top of the hill of the Linux distros. But I cannot ignore many of its derivatives as terrific choices for those who are starting to migrate from other platforms. Ubuntu is a wonderful example of development. It is easy to install, to update, to upgrade and to maintain. It has free and good quality support. It hides most of the complexity of the Linux world to the beginner, but it does not restrict the full power of this OS to the initiated.

Reading the posts in this thread I realize that for many people it is still very difficult to think in Linux as a serious production environment. Maybe because their favorite applications have not been ported to Linux. Maybe because their hardware is not well supported. Or perhaps just because they have been tied to other OSs for too long. That is normal, because migration is a process that takes some time.

Although Linux is not for everybody, I think there are many people out there that could use it for their regular computer needs. It's only matter of trying. Live distros are good for this.

And here comes Ubuntu again, that has reciently released a new version (8.04 LTS).

Best regards,

-L.

I decided to switch from Windows to Linux when my computer kept getting too many viruses and spyware. I had to keep re-installing windows to get rid of them all, and the process starts over. At one point my computer just switched off 5 seconds after booting up, so I get so tired of windows I decided to switch to Linux. I had no issues with it, apart from the fact it couldnt run the everyday programs I needed it to. I use my trap17 account to run a forum about a particular software, which was not available on Linux. I tried to get it working but it proved impossible to get it working, so I had to switch back to windows. Someone suggested to me I have two computers: One for internet use only and using Linux, the other for offline use only using Windows.

Installing software from source is not the nicest experience, but there are lots of benefits as well. Sometimes it isn't the most reliable, but it can be more reliable than others.

I guess we are lucky its free, it works and it works well ( if you set it up correctly ) I haven't had to go back to windows once. But WINE could be a little better, it would be nice to be able to use every program I had in windows but I not complaining cause Ubuntu was free. I think having a software repository like linux does is a lot safer than going out and downloading from a public server. The Ubuntu Programmers maintain all of that software ( if you only use the official updates) and I don't think they're out to get us all with viruses...

I use Ubuntu exclusively on my laptop since December 2007 and I am very pleased. My wireless chip (atheros) was supported out-of-the-box and for the drivers I only had to tick a box, but the most pleasant thing was that when I rebooted the system after installing the drivers, the compiz effects were fascinating!
Since then guys, I learned python and I am extensively learning new languages and going up in my computer savvyness.
I removed Windows XP after 1.5 years of usage and for the last 4-5 months I was sooooo pissed off because I had to reboot after almost every installed program and because I really loved eye-candy the computer was really slow.
So then I searched for Ubuntu on the web (a friend using Fedora recommended it to me) and I downloaded the ISO and installed it on a CD. My first intentions were to release 10 Gigs space for Ubuntu and continue to use XP more often until I get used to the new enviroment and then hopefully erase all traces of windows on my computer.
But when I overused my 1.5 year old laptop it sometimes shut down itself immediately and that was because it became overheated and that happened in the process of installing Ubuntu (hopefully I backed up all valuable pics and vids). The hard disk was a mess and although I had a backup to reinstall Windows I said: "Cut this MS *BLEEP*" and thrown away the CD. I installed Ubuntu and , yes, I firstly used Ubuntu only for surfing the web, checking mail, and writing my essays in OO.org writer (I already knew of it) - that was what I mostly did in Windows + playing games when the wireless connection would fall down (Its my primary internet connection and I use it because its cheap, good and really fast). I was amazed how Linux handled the wireless 10 times better than windows It only happened 3-4 times this last month and if I was on Windows it would have happened 30-40 times!
Because I was a fast learner I soon became one of the translators of Ubuntu to my native language and a big promotor of F/LOSS in my school.
If it weren't for GNU/Linux I would have been the same old newb playing Sims 2 when his internet connection drops (which he uses for pirating software mostly ).
There is also one another good upside of the installing of Ubuntu, in Macedonia when this school year begins in September we will have computers in front of every kid in the whole high school and all of the high-schools throught the country. The thin-clients will run Edubuntu 8.04 the education version of Ubuntu Linux for desktop PCs.
Isn't that cool, right?

Cheers

Well I have installed ubuntu the other day and after a few rough runs I got it set up for the most part. I can access my internet with WIFI, I can access my windows hard drive, which I like, installed a few packages, updated ubuntu 8.04 that had 209 updates which is like WOW!! I give it a 7/10 for a good operating system just because I haven't poke around enough with it and stuff and of course this post is in windows so nah nah . However, I do recommend this operating just because of how easy it is to install and get going in a matter of an hour and some change.