Why?!?

I'm just proving a point and playing devil's advocate. I prefer *nix myself.. I had FreeBSD til I needed XP for class. I spent 5 years running RH and then Mandrake.. I ran slack for a couple years prior to that as well...... I full agree with using *nix over M$ products when you can. I'm just sick of people seeing a problem and instead of offering a useful solution, they say upgrade to Linux.

er0k: as for configuring a bootloader, that's right selecting which bootloader you want to use from a list and pressing enter is rather taxing... as is creating a few partitions (no different than using fdisk) and as for selecting packages.. you just get to pick which software you get.. you can manage your accessories and installed protocols on M$ installs as well.

I'm by no means saying go M$ if you have the choice... I'm just sick of people pushing *nix as the "supreme" operating system.

Open Source = choice :)

I would never tell someone to "upgrade" to Linux, that would be elite-ist, that suggests Linux is better than Windows, although I will admit for somethings it is, and for others it isn't. (I really don't like this whole Win v Mac v Linux v the rest ... thing).

I run both Mandrake 9.0 and Win2K at home and find both great for what I need them to do. OS stability is not an issue these days as I find both as stable as each other.

I think er0k is eluding to the fact that some distro's require a bit of know-how to install, and I agree some are designed to ease Windows users to the world of Linux. The great thing about Linux is that while these easy to install distro's will get you up and running fairly quickly - you do not have to accept the default configurations and are free to tinker and change them to your hearts content and develop a computer to suit your needs - and you are given the tools and options to do so. Here is the sharp learning curve er0k speaks of.

I enjoy the challenge of tweaking, breaking things and then finding the fix - this is part of the learning curve of the OS. I am a tinkerer by nature.

Linux has taught me more about computer security than Windows ever would/could as I consider myself an average user, Windows allows me to simply download someones firewall and install it and while it might make me relatively safe but I don't see why or how it truly interacts with the system, if this is what you need thats great, but for those that are a little more inquisitive - Linux generally gives you the source code and lets you get into the "core" of this code and see exatly why and what it does and of course modify it if you so chose.

All boils down to "horses for courses" - as Dahvid has already said if you are happy with what you have - stick with it.