[Matt Krass]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

I've never tried it but from what I've read Linspire seems to be a nice easy to use linux distro. However, for the desktop user, this is a Windows world. Windows has its faults, but overall it's tough to beat.

That's really not true. Right out of the proverbial box Ubuntu detected and installed drivers for everything on my laptop. Windows can't even do that, for a Windows reinstall I have to sneakernet several drivers over just to get online to get the rest. I'm much more productive in native GNOME then I ever was in Windows and since I use all free Open-Source Software the transition was seamless. Ubuntu has made great strides in making Linux a desktop competitor and I think it beats Windows nearly hands-down. Games and CAD software are the only thing left I keep XP for, and Cedega is catching up by the day on that. My Ubuntu install exists happily on a USB Hard Drive, 80GB with most of that a shared FAT32 partition for both OSes. It doesn't care....try to do with Windows...it'll freak out on you. Linux just works, and it can do nearly everything Windows can, many things it can't. Plus the notion of multiple releases (Breezy Badger, Hoary Hedgehog, Dapper Drake and Edgy Eft) is much better than releasing a whole "new" OS every 3 or 4 years. The package management system means you can install what you need easily without cluttering up the system as well. Overall it's got Windows beat already, with free CAD alternatives in the works as well. Hopefully Autodesk and Dassault Systems will look in to porting their popular CAD packages to Linux in the next few years, as the hardware and support for it in graphics cards is already there.