My family has teased me about using Linux for years. Since I started dual-booting our main home PC with Windows and Ubuntu and they’ve used both, I find that they all prefer Ubuntu.
Ubuntu boots way faster than Windows. It’s ready to surf the Internet in about 25 seconds. Windows takes almost 3 minutes to load all the crap before it is surf-ready.
We have a HP All-In_one printer/scanner/copier/fax. The HPLIP Linux drivers just work, and were only about 2MB in size. HP’s drivers for the Windows system: 200+ MB, and they still don’t work worth a crap and are always using up CPU cycles and memory looking for updates.
Ubuntu worked just fine from the moment of installation, including the wireless network adapter.
Open Office will open and save everything that MSOffice will(sometimes better—especially if you have an older version of Office and don’t want to spend $300 on a newer version with little to show for the cash outlay), and actually has a few nice little features that MSOffice doesn’t (like the handy “Export to PDF” button).
I once had a good laugh while on the internet when a “Windows Security Alert” popped up to tell me that Windows was infected with a virus and that I had to buy this software to fix it. I was on Ubuntu at the time. Yes, there is a Linux virus scan on Ubuntu, just in case. But I don’t really worry about viruses and such.
The only thing that Windows can do that Ubuntu can’t is run most video games. I think that’s the only reason I keep it on my computer. Now that I think about it, I believe I’ll migrate all of the data, pictures, and music on my Windows partition to Ubuntu, purge it of everything but games, and resize it accordingly. Windows has become the red-headed step child of my family’s PC.
Open Office? Well, yes, uh... Ahahahahah-Ohohohoho-Oohoohoo...sniff, sorry, please stop...
LOL, happened to me too -- I was (still am) using Xubuntu.