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I never once regretted making the switch.

I'm a little more curious as to why you made the switch. By that I mean why did you stop using Windows, not why did you start using Linux. My Linux box is pretty useful for development purposes, and of course I have a number of servers that I run on it, so I certainly can't and won't argue with the utility of a Linux box. I really like being able to throw up a quick perl/cgi hack to do stuff like converting pdf to ps, etc that I can connect to remotely from my laptop, etc.

But I can't really do without a lot of applications on windows, and I still prefer MS Office to anything on Linux, and I have a lot of tools for embedded development I can't get on Linux. I'm sure most people have programs that can't run on Linux that they miss, ones without open source alternatives, or where the open source alternatives just aren't quite as good.

With active kvm switches being so cheap now days, and the price of a decent homemade Linux box being a couple hundred bucks, why not use both? There is always dual booting if you can't bother with the hassle of two machines. Why only Linux? If Linux was really able to (at this point in time) completely replace windows I don't think people would be bothering with wine or vmware, but the beautiful thing is that there is no reason you have to give up Windows to use Linux.

I guess it is because I'm an engineer, but I view an operating system as simply a tool, and Windows and Linux are better suited to different tasks not just by their innate qualities but by the applications available for them. Administered correctly either one should be stable and secure. There are applications on both that I don't want to live without, so I use both.

Because of that I don't try to convince people to come to my side of the fence and use on o/s or the other. But there are people who spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get something working on Linux when it works fine under windows and I often wonder why they bother. This goes both ways, I have a friend who wasted way more time than he should have trying to get apache and postgresql working on an XP machine, which is equally dumb.

-paridel

Actually, I *DO* dual boot. Mr. Melbell's computer dual boots also, and then we have 2 linux only boxes that we use as servers just on our local network.

I didn't mean that I completely switched from Windows to Linux. Well, for a while I did, but then I got into some games that are only ported for Windows, so I got Mr. Melbell to set up Grub so I could easily boot to either OS. Now I only use Windows for games. I have winex, but it's better for running smaller softwares, not so hot at Games (from what I have found).

As for MS Office, I use Open Office on Linux. I like it but it's a little more difficult to get used to than MS Office is. But I cannot spare the hard drive space on my Windows drive because it's only 13 gigs and a couple games will completely eat that up.

But that's the ONLY thing we do in Windows. Everything else, we boot to Linux. I would very much like to have a second box all to myself, to have Linux on one and Windows on the other, and then just use a switch to change monitor, keyboard, and mouse back and forth. But the switch for monitor that we have (to switch between our two servers) makes the picture look bad...like purple or something. If you have a good one you can recommend please let me know! As I do have an extra computer on the floor in the computer room that isn't being used and could easily be set up to run my Linux! :)