Being a UNIX sysadmin, I’ve long since wanted to ditch running Windows XP on my work laptop. Not due to a dislike of Windows XP – I think it’s the best desktop OS Microsoft has – but more of the g33k status. “I run LINUX. Neener. Neener.”
The issue at hand is Linux is still growing up. 4 years ago there wasn’t anything for running Linux day to day. Today, there’s many flavors of Linux, many of which go nicely with Windows XP and maybe a trip to the liquor store (to ease the sting). I started with OpenSuSE, ever got past the install and then used Ubuntu.  Upon reading the review of 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon), I took the leap.
I had 30g free on my hard drive, plenty for a Linux install when all my data was already in Windows NTFS. Ubuntu loaded nicely, and even found and MOUNTED my Windows partition. I browsed over to it, opened Excel and Powerpoint files in OpenOffice – no problem. Browsing thru Firefox and Opera were fine. The kicker was wireless.
While the system connected to me wireless OK, I found frequent hangs and interruptions in my wireless that didn’t happen in XP. Yesterday, after sitting for several hours, the system just forgot how to use the wireless card. That was the last straw for me. I’m back in XP for a while.
The next step? maybe gOS. I’ve heard that desktop makers are starting to use that.