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I bought a retail version of Suse Linux 8 - worst mistake ever! After attempting a test install on my laptop (Compaq Armada 1750) and not being able to get sound working, and not having any relevant information on their website...I contacted the support team, only to be rudely told that audio is not part of the normal "support", and that I'd need to pay another price premium of AU $150 for assistance! Now, given that Redhat 6.2, 7, 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3 had all installed on this system, without issue, with sound working OUT OF THE BOX, Suse was a major disappoint to say the least.
So yes, you might pay a bit more for Windows, but the support is undoubtedly better in my mind. Let's just say that Suse got uninstalled real quick, Redhat went back on the laptop and the Suse disks have *never* been used since. Yeah, sure, Linux is "free", but the support is usually torrid imho. I certainly wouldn't recommend a newbie in its direction, Ubuntu be damnéd. Since I'm good with computers, it's not much of an issue for me, but for the average person, I certainly wouldn't recommend Linux under any circumstances. The majority of rabid Linux users have left a rancid taste in my mouth I'm afraid.
I might have stayed with Linux if Photoshop CS2 had ran under WINE, but alas, it didn't, and by then, after Six years of tinkering with Linux as my sole operating system on both desktop and laptop, I said enough is enough. These days, I spent less time fixing my system, and more time using it. Which reminds, me LESS is MORE. :-)
XP is a fine operating system, post SP2, but it was also an extreme hardware hog when it was first released, with a swag of issues to boot. It's amazing that those who bashed XP when it was released now love it. Those very same bashers are the ones usually bashing Vista. I wonder if history will prove me right and show that they end up liking Vista in a few years from now ;-)
Of course, Windows 7 is really Vista SP2, so Microsoft has been quite clever in offering it as a stand alone operating system, than an upgrade, at least money wise ;-)
Now of course, if you don't mind paying the AHT (Apple Hardware Tax), then OS X beats both operating systems hands down. Well, at least if it's not in a server environment. The mach kernel doesn't handle server side requests very well imho, but then I've never really been a fan of the mach kernel design, or a micro kernel for that matter (sorry Andrew T, but Linus has it right imho).
Dave
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