On a comical note, I bought a new laptop with Vista Premium pre-installed and last night. Within 1 hour I got the "BSD" and it re-booted and told the error was a BlueScreen. (yeah I noticed, thanks M$) Then 1.5 hours later it locked up while surfing the net. The laptop runs fast, even with Aero enabled, but it is unstable just like every other pre-SP1 M$ OS. Wish I could have gotten a discount to have no OS pre-installed. (it was on sale in a store, not ordered, so no option regarding the OS).

to Windows on the desktop? No. And this has nothing to do with which is better, no matter how you judge "better". Servers are another story. So too are call centers and other single-use environments where Linux makes a lot of sense.

but without those stupid service pack2 addons.

First of all I want to congratulate on your excellent magazine. I still use Windows because I´am a civil engineer and I need certain programs that the open source world can´t offer yet, for example: robust structural software, FEM software and some sort of AutoCAD-like software.
Although all I mentioned in the previous lines, I have tried Mandriva 2006 power pack that a friend of mine handed me over. It was very smooth and easy to install.
Maybe in the near future I will be able to switch completely to Linux.
Keep up the great job.

I use ms-windows 98se because I don't like XP

use Linux

Wow, never thought, that windows would get about 41% percent.

I am using normaly at home Debian Unix. At the work we have Windows ... :)

Linux is getting more and more interesting. No virus, no or less license cost and most important userfriendly. Openoffice accelerate the process.

yes i agree with you but... you'll have another winshit if it aint be so complicated...

I think Linux is still too complicated for normal users.

Not the best, but it´s a peg to hang a nagging on.

Im surprised that there are so many windows votes...

windows

unix to complicated

Fedora rulez !

It's still Win on my desktop - there is to much hassle with all the multimedia stuff I use, and the hardware. But on the servers it's linux of course.

I never did use windoze....or a Mac. (Same diff.)

I've been 100% Linux since '96. NEVER had a need or desire to use Windows. I don't just do the 'email, web and word processing' either.
I do all of my photography editing as well (using GIMP and UFRAW to pull raw, unprocessed image data off of the camera.
Anybody that says you can't live without Windows because you can't do 'this' or 'that' is ignorant.

I'm here 'cause I'm in the process of switching to Linux. I like the development model of Linux and the open software movement very much, almost as much as I detest the M$ model.

My first computer came with the optional 4K memory, and it wasn't until '78 and the Kansas City Standard that we could exchange software on cassette tapes. I've had and used DOS from versions 2.1 to 6.2, Windows from 3.11 to XP Pro, OS/2 from 3.0 to eCS1.2 and now I'm trying out SUSE 9.2

For several years I had high hopes for OS/2, which, frankly, I liked better than Windows, but for which I couldn't get all the drivers I needed. After Serenity took over OS/2 development under the eCS banner, I hoped we'd soon be able to get what I needed. Alas, I'm still waiting, and still haven't got the last release working properly.

My home system has four networked machines, my desktop, my wife's desktop, my laptop and an old Pentium II running a phone call centre program under XP Pro.

At the moment they're all running XP Pro on the network, although I have eCS (OS/2) dual booted on the desktop, and Linux Suse 9.2 dual booted on my laptop. I'm figuring as I have time, I'll get everything running first on the laptop, and when I'm happy there, I'll switch over.

Yes, there is a learning curve, and I'm trying out all sorts of different programs, almost all of which came with my Suse distribution. What I notice most, however, is that to do almost anything I have to call it by a different name. That's not bad, just time consuming.

What I'd really like to see in Tux is articles written on how to do things in Linux that are written from the point of view of someone used to various forms of Microsloth. I think a dependency is like a driver, but I'm not sure, for example.

So far Kmail looks like a fine replacement for Eudora, and I even have PGP working. I can make do with Open Office, I think, although I'd like a clone of MS Access to run some software that isn't going to get ported, for example.

If I can make this work properly, next I'll have a go at converting our IT department to avoid M$ fees, but that's another post.

Bob

Having been a computer user since the days when Commodor 64's roammed the Earth, I have seen many computer brands, computer manufacturers, operating systems, (ad nauseum) come and go. I have witnessed the birth, growth, and bloat of Microsoft. And like many others out there I went from 3.1 to 3.11, then onto 95, 98, ME, then eventually to XP. My hard drives had to grow from about five hundred Megs to multiple Gigabites.

I have been tracking the development of the project called "Longhorn" and I have to sigh. Rumors of a possibillity of S.P. 3, or whatever the name will be for the next round of patches needed to fix faulty patches from S.P.2, and to fix the bugs and previously missed security holes created by Microsoft's rush to get XP released. The version I purchased came with S.P.1 and took up about half of a five gig partition I set aside for the O.S. Then I had to move the Program Files to another much larger partition to make room for the ever growing O.S. As I was attempting to move my Windows install to a larger ten gig partition, one of my children found my installation disc and destroyed it. My untested backup copy turned out to be usless as well, cest le vie, I guess. To my benefit, I had by this time begun to dabble in several flavors of Linux so I had something to fall back on.

I am currently using XandrOS, and have mixed feelings, it does a lot of what I want, but I don't have any way to access the hundreds of mp3's I've got setting on my hard drive because I can't get a driver for my sound card, and many hundreds of $ of games I cant play because I have yet to find out how to get them to work.

As I ponder going dual boot I have to ask myself if I want to go back to the headaches of XP, or wait for "Longhorn" and hope Mr. Gates doesn't once again bite off more than he can chew and release yet another untested "beta" O.S. requiring a half dozen S.P.'s et.cetera.

I was reared on Macintosh and when PCs won the battle and became the dominant desktop machine I was dissappointed. I eventually succumbed and have since spent a large percentage of my time doing clean installs, etc. The registry quickly got gunked up and my last experience was running a registry fix it tool only to find my major software no longer ran. I remember once slacking off running my lava soft adaware se for a couple of weeks. When I ran it I had 450+ pieces of spyware. It took 20 minutes to check the boxes to have them all deleted. Some were persistant and if I killed them using the task manager, they would pop back again in less than a second. When I figured out how to solve one problem, a new one reared it's head. At one point I used three hard drives each with it's own OS. The top was for trying new software and web surfing. It got a clean install every 2 to 3 weeks. The next HD was for software that passed the first drive test and more conservative browsing. If things went well for a long time applications made it to the holy of holies, the last HD which never went anywhere on the web except the microsoft update page.
I onced tried Red Hat but found no supporting drivers for my monitor and sound card. After a while I came back and tried SuSE. I had a little struggle figuring out how to get my internet connections set up (at this point I wasn't even interested in spending $ for a book) but I got the info I needed from a forum. Now I'm stoked. I have my "macintosh" back... stable, rock solid at the cheaper price of PC hardware and with free software. Now I can focus on what I use my PC for instaed of on my PC.

A lot of you mentioned the security issues with Windows (viruses, worms, trojans, etc.), which should be a major concern for anyone that goes online. I will dare to add that 50% of the security issues with Windows are a direct result of Internet Explorer--mainly, that it can be programmed (customized). Browser Helper Objects (BHOs) are a common example (those custom toolbars that everyone wants to add to your browser to "help you out") of spyware and adware and key loggers are pushed onto PCs running Windows. Next, there's VBscript, another major source of security problems with Windows. So, Windows users, start using Mozilla, Firefox, Netscape, or Opera and you'll be surfing safer right away!

One major difference between Windows and Linux is the Registry. If that gets corrupted, your Windows install is broken. Linux has no such registry to get broken!

MS has been into UNIX since before the company ever went public back in the 80s. As you learn more about UNIX and its many flavors (BSD, Linux, etc.), you quickly realize that MS has been nothing more than a poor copycat with a fancy body style and paint job (using a car for a comparison analogy). MS has mimicked a lot of UNIX's commands and functionality, but the most powerful features are missing. (Written any shell scripts for Windows lately? MS-DOS was a very weak copycat of a UNIX shell. Windows Hosting Script language is another weak attempt to mimick UNIX. Innovation, they say? Being a copycat isn't innovative, neither is having your code be closed and proprietary.

The most powerful computers in America (and the world, for that matter) are running UNIX or better. I haven't heard of a single supercomputer that is running MS Windows or MS-DOS, have you?!

For example, find out how Linux was (and still is) deployed at the Argonne National Laboratory, the 1st national laboratory in the U.S.

http://www.anl.gov/Science_and_Technology/Virtual_Tour/mcs.htm

NOTE: mcs stands for Mathematics and Computer Science division.

"Argonne's most powerful supercomputer is "Jazz," named for its ease in handling a diverse and dynamic mix of applications ranging from systems biology to nuclear physics. The supercomputer consists of 350 central processing units, all running on the Linux operating system. Jazz is intended for use throughout the laboratory to help advance computational science and engineering.

In its initial tests, Jazz achieved more than a teraflop of computing power, making it the laboratory's first terascale computing system and one of the 50 fastest computers in the world at that time."

Let's see Windows do that!! I rest my case. ;)

of computing anyway. I read this thread with interest. I currently run win xp and have an eye toward one day running linux. Linux excells M$ in several areas already---cost, stability, not targeted by viruses / hackers / mal-ware etc.

I don't think linux excells in easy transition away from M$ or excells in installing new programs. Ouch....that implies moving away from our programing core and into making it easy for newbies...ewww...pftewww.

Yep, newbies are nasty things, but if you want to cultivate a following, you gotta cater to 'em.

I see a transtional strategy (modeled after firefox). Make it similar to M$ so as to ease the transition...then make it better. That way those people who did make the switch will convert others...."see, it's better."

Human nature has a resistance to change. So there has to be a lot of incentive to change and a long...steep...frustrating learning curve (or even the fear of one) is not an incentive. In behavioral psychology, we'd say easy "high incentive", "easy adaptation similar to existing behavioral paradigm", and "high reward."

You do that and you won't be able to keep people away from linux

I'v bee using Suse for about 2 months... Before that, my primary OS was Win*... I had dual boot for a long, long time and just recently decided to switch to Linux permanently... But still had to leave win* for some specific uses, app developing and testing...

Exactly ONE application prevents me from using Linux for everything.

I need a Linux analog of Callwaves Internet Answering Machine. Callwave promises they will someday support Linux, but until then, I must surf using Windows so that I can use IAM and have my dialup line still get messages through. Can't afford to install and maintain anything in the broadband.realms... Yes, I own a v.92 modem, but 'Modem on Hold' doesn't work for me, using SuSe 9.1 Pro.

Until the day arrives when Linux can properly support either 'Modem on Hold' or IAM, then I surf using swiss cheese.

I'm still looking.
And still at the same stage as untold numbers of wannabe newbies, I would guess.
The search is always about wanting everything windows instantly provides, usually hardware wise. The problem, for those use to windows, is finding the one distro that provides that.
I so far have tried:
Mandrake 10.0
Mandrake 10.1
Fedora Core 2
Fedora C 3
Ubuntu 4.10
Slackware 10.0
Debian 3.0 r4
Yoper 2.1.0-4
FreeBSD 5.3
Mephis
Linspire 4.5
Knoppix 3.7
None of these, by themselves, can support all my hardware correctly. Linspire comes the closest. I'm composing this on Linspire.
I'm still looking however.
Gotta get away from MS.
The primary problem (my primary problem) is running SATA and IDE HDs together in order to dual boot. If I can do that though, something else will be missing.
I'm sure there are numerous ways to achieve my desires by fiddeling with any number of configurations, but to a windows user that's still pretty much a foreign language.
What little I have experienced, is great. So I have no intention of giving up. I do believe that learning is half the fun.

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside the dog it's too dark to read."
G. Marx