Yeah, linux is my main OS.

No, you don't have to be enthusiastic about the command line. But it's not going anywhere if you change your mind.

A great text that may help to explain things is "In the Beginning was the Command Line." The author does go off on a diatribe or two, but does a really good job explaining what you lose and what you gain when you start using a GUI.

http://artlung.com/smorgasborg/C_R_Y..._I_C_O_N.shtml

Linux here, too. I need some Windows software (Mathcad), so I'm running XP/Cygwin here at the office. So UNIX everywhere, Linux at home (and of course, on the N800).

You'll pick up the stuff you need to get done what you do. If you do have enthusiasm, of course you'll learn more. And with an open system, there's a lot more to gain by that than with Windows. But in both cases, just using it will teach you to the level you use it.

Great link, Dick, I didn't know that was on-line... have the print edition.

I jumped on the Linux bandwagon about 7 years ago (and haven't looked back). Started with RedHat, then Fedora and now I'm a happy Kubuntu user (after much resistance). I bought my mom a new laptop and tried to install Ubuntu on it, that didn't work because I couldn't fix screen resolution issues. Next thing I tried was PCLinuxOS and everything worked flawlessly. You will find issues here and there, but those are hard to avoid.

My Linux box is where I do most of my things, except for work emails that reside on an exchange server (the company gave me a Windows laptop). Like someone else mentioned, mainly thanks to Ubuntu and Google we don't have to deal with the frustrations of the past. I remember the dependency problems in RedHat that used to drive me nuts.

I recommend you visit www.distrowatch.com every now and then. For the last several months PCLinuxOS has been the king (Whattup Ubuntu?). I bought the N800 mainly because it runs Linux and Nokia deserves my support.

Long Live the Mighty Penguin!!

gimp works very well for me and does everything I need to do as far as photo editing is concerned.

I have been a Linux user for 13+ years. I started with Slackware Linux. All of the tools I use are Linux native tools except quicken which I run under windows on vmware.

another "transition" link: Linux is NOT Windows

rob.

I've been using Ubuntu on my main desktop for over a year now. A few months ago my girlfriend noticed the lack of error messages on my screen compared to hers (XP) so she asked if I'd install it for her. I handed her the CD and a beer and 30 mins later she was sitting in Ubuntu.

After an hour the screen went black. Reboot. Black screen. Kept doing this and after some fact finding it looked like it was choking on her crappy ATI video card. We went out and abought a $30 card with an Nvidia chipset and it's been running great ever since.

Moral of the story. While Ubuntu has very robust hardware support, your system might have something that it doesn't like. I got lucky. She was semi-lucky as it only cost $30 to get up and running. But it's been great ever since. I threw Ubuntu on my eeePC and it's been running great. Between the eeePC, her PC, my PC, and my 770, it's a linux house.

Weird that stuff just works now. (Not to say you'll never have any Linux horror stories, but overall a way better experience.)

Ever try Evolution with the exchange plugin? Works pretty good for me.

Been running Linux for about a year now. Had a serious XP choke and decided to try Debian as that was what we were using at work. Unfortunately I only had one blank disk left and it was some sort of minimal server install disk. Either way I spent about a day and a half learning the tough way about what a package manager, x server and desktop manager was, as I was too lazy to go out and buy another spindle of blanks. If I hadn't done it that way, I probably wouldn't have caught on as fast.

About two weeks later I went on a rampage around the house and purged my life of microsoft for good. Even had Ubuntu running on my xbox for awhile. No regrets, but the only thing I long for is a cad program.

Messed around with Debian, Ubuntu, OpenSuse, Fedora 8. I've found each has their strong points and still don't have a favorite. Either way I love linux for making computing fun for me again. Back to the days when I was like 7 punching away in Dos on some old 286. The thing I really like about it, is if you're determined and maybe slightly obsessive compulsive, anything you think a computer should be able to do is possible.

The girlfriend is wondering when i'm going to be able to ssh into the toaster.

I run XandrOS on my desktop, and it's very user-friendly.

Linux has been my main OS since 1992. Kernel 0.97, i think. I've been a Unix guru since 1982.

There were no Unix manuals to speak of in 1982. Just source code. That has changed, and we still have source. In Winders, you struggle figure things out, and then it changes, or you keep running into bugs. In Linux, once you figure it out, it works forever.

My 1987 Mac II died in 1997 (only 20 years). I transplanted the brain (that's the hard disk, not the CPU as you might expect) into a newer 68000 box last year. I'll do that again soon, as this one has died too. I may have to run a Mac emulator soon.

You could learn everything eventually, if it weren't for all the new stuff coming out, uhm, every day. And it's not like, hey i've got this filter that converts Mac newlines to Unix. It's more like, hey, i've got this new app that lets you create and edit animation over 3D models, and the next day it's, hey i've got this new app that lets you edit musical score, and the next day it's, hey i've got this new app that converts text to speech. With all this new stuff coming out, who has time to build new stuff?

It's been a wild ride.

Linux has been my secondary OS, only because I need XP I currently am running Ubuntu 7.10 on my box with a dual boot of XP. I also have KDE4 installed on it I also like using the command line to install new apps, just because of the robust "sudo apt-get install ****" .