What platforms do you own?

[Andru]

May I ask what were your reasons for moving from Windows to Linux OS?

Because it fully customizable and with much better font rendering. Many other aspects just a details, which always bring people to holy wars

What edition do you use?

ArchLinux with GNOME 3 in fall-back mode(classic mode in other words).

How is the stability and driver support?

Everything just works for me(except ATI drivers, which are crappy as in Windows, but fortunately in Linux I have open source realization), in many cases without a need to search drivers over all internet, as it was today at work for my LG Optimus One(Windows 7 wasn't able to connect it for developing).

[code_glitch]

@Andru:

which always bring people to holy wars

Wise words, I'm afraid I may just start one, I don't mean to so I'll try and keep the specifics out of it...

@Lifepower:
I use x64 linux mint 11 (katya as its called), themed like a mac although you could do anything you wanted. I still sport GNOME 2 for my desktop as many people do. If its your first linux install I would recommend mint - no console faff. Just boot, hook up to the net (optional) click next a few times, tell it where to place the install on the HDD, answer 3 questions about username and password, click your country and wait 15 minutes. Done, all in a nice GUI (keeping in livecd tradition)

Why: Development is crazy, you get mono and wine - so a lot of windows stuff works, performance is inconceivable when coming from windows in many cases. Just try getting it to exceed 1.6GiB of RAM through normal usae with an XP VM, a LOT of firefox tabs, banshee, skype, compiz, LibreOffice writer, Geany and thunderbird Plus no antiviurs as Linux has no viruses targeting it

Stability: I have crashed windows a total of around 16 times over time, windows 7 thrice in 8 months... Linux crashes: 2 - due to absolute idiocy on my behalf - if you have a few braincells this never happens. Like mucking with the file system on a root level (DUH). Linux IS the most stable platform (same as mac - common ancestry through BSD)

Drivers: I am cursed by an ATI card that royally muck up windows (hybrid GPU ). I use the fglrx drivers, crappy but I've only had 1 issue with docky, so I set up a keyboard shortcut to restart it once a week And yes, I call it unstable as a linux user - it messes up once a week. For the record I reboot once a fortnight.

Nicenesses: lets say I want to install some programs that are quite common, like freepascal compiler, geany IDE and chromium (google chrome for linux) I just need to type in:

sudo apt-get install fpc geany chromium-browser

Or on arch I believe it'd be something like

sudo pacman -S fpc geany chromium-browser

No downloading stupid exes from random places.... Nice.

And wait a minute or two for the packages to be downloaded and installed - no intervention unless you are installing some proprietary 3rd party stuff that needs you to hit space to say you accept a license once in a blue moon

Hope you get to take a distro for a spin sometime...

[LP]

Andru and code_glitch, thanks for your answers!

Many other aspects just a details, which always bring people to holy wars

This was not my intention. I know that some of these discussions can get heated up. I've asked this because lately on Eee PC forums there is an increased number of users installing Linux replacing existing Windows 7 Starter installations. It starts to look like a trend.

In my own case I've haven't used Linux for many years (I think since 2003). Even though Windows Vista and 7 never crashed on me, I'd still like to try some edition of Linux, just haven't decided yet which one to choose.

[code_glitch]

The truth behind it is that every distro was designed for a purpose - yes arch does many things very well, its just the easiest/best looking setup the world has seen, yes ubuntu is a fine all rounder, if you don't mind ugly unity and all that other bulk the developers have added without asking anybody (kind of defeats the point of linux), yes mint is more compatible with debian and does a lot of things well (I personally think it does everything the best but I'm trying to avoid a holy war) but its still bulky, has its glitches with some ubuntu stuff and I hate the default branding. Its not bad, its just good at a specific area.

Window 7 Start is a joke - you pay for windows but can only have 3 windows open, up to 2gib of RAM and basically nothing you would want... All in a lot of Gibs of installation files - something at a premium on eee PCs. God above, even the default DSL livecd is better (and more featured) than 7 starter plus it fits in 48megs!