Oh boy, okay I post-poned this reply cause I was looking for a chart that I thought I had seen floating around on the 'net (it turned out I was thinking of another image entirely)

All the "hate" for Windows here is simply the closed nature of it compared to OSes such as Linux. Now as far as this thread is concerned OS choice is simply personal opinion.

The issue is a user that has only ever used Windows their whole life and then takes the plunge into Linux needs to know a few things.

A lot of the things they "take for granted" of how an OS works, looks, etc. is thrown out the window because there are no hard-coded defaults (technically).

For instance in Windows you have Windows Explorer, yeah there are some third-party file explorers but very few people use them and they tend to only be useful for specialized functions such as batch file processing and not day-to-day use (or more importantly don't incorporate all the features of explorer.exe), on Linux you have Nautilus (gnome), Konquerer (KDE), Thundar, Midnight Commander, etc.

Next window managers. Ok so there is Redmond classic (or w/e from the Win 95/98 era). XP's luna. And Vista's Aero. All of which are basically the same except for graphical improvements down the line. Of course there is a great third-party suite call Stardock that offers all kinds of theming and uses a lot of system resources to get around that "unsigned" theme thing. But really these aren't different window managers at all, they are just different themes - and there are themes a plenty for Linux, only about 20-30 for Maemo though. In Linux popular wm include Gnome+gtk+metacity (or emerald for compiz support), KDE+qt, IceWM. For Windows XP you can use an alternative shell like Litestep (there are several others including X WM ports), "However the level of customization which is even possible in Windows XP compared to X is severely limited due to the tight integration of the various components" (Wikipedia).

I could go on and on but I think one more, command line intereface. In Linux you can boot into a computer and utilize the CLI without starting X (interfaces with monitor to allow graphical User Interface) and then when desired run a command such as $ startx. You can also access a virtual console with CTRL+ALT+ (1 through 8 depending on distro). Now there is DOS on the Microsoft side but that's very obsolete. Of course there is MS-DOS a virtual implementation within Windows and for Linux xterm, gnome-terminal, ROXterm, konsole, etc. similar but more user friendly and more powerful. You can even ssh which is like using a terminal on a computer remotely (among other things); yes there is telnet but that's not exactly know for it's security.

Now obviously most of the above applies best to desktop Linux and obviously desktop Windows which is different from the mobile Linux versions available for the Nokia Internet Tablets.

The point of this post is that you logon to a Windows install and you know what to expect, Windows explorer, the Luna theme in XP and Aero in Vista, etc. While Linux, BSD, and others are all about choice in every respect.

Speaking of choice rather than flame wars, just multi-boot (desktop/laptop; true multi-boot isn't there yet for the tablet )

And on the EQ note, I personally never use EQs cause my hearing isn't that sensitive/picky. However, it's a reasonable feature, though please don't expect those features on the included/default media player because that's a half-assed POS. I'm currently about to download the maemo port of VLC which should have an EQ.

So uh, jalladin, let us know when you receive your tablet