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Well here's my experience:
I originally tried Redhat 7.2 back in the day. It was mostly just a curiosity thing, and after installing an playing around with GIMP a little, I eventually gave up on it because I was still big into games and things like OpenOffice weren't yet up to the level they are now for school use, etc.
Fast forward to college, and I decided to try out the new Fedora Core releases. I was doing alot of Computer Engineering stuff by connecting remotely to the Unix systems at school, and using linux allowed me to have the graphical tools forwarded straight to my linux box through ssh rather than using crappy windows emulators. During that time I was exlusively using Linux, and had no need to go back to windows. Here's some of the more notable things I accomplished during that 3-4 month period:
-Installed Fedora Core 1, later upgraded to Core 2.
-Learned how to modify the then-broken RedHat Network Update utility
-Succesfully installed Firefox, and scrounged around online for a script to allow new browser windows to open in tabs.
-Installed ATI drivers successfully after several days of searching manpages, google, and ATI's own pages.
-Recompiled ATI drivers from Kernel source, and followed instructions found online to make the old ATI XFree drivers compatible with a newer version of XOrg, despite no availability of native XOrg drivers at the time.
-Wrote bash scripts to keep my www.dnsalias.com dynamic hostname IP address updated.
-Wrote bash scripts to allow simple menu-driven selections for starting/stopping VNC servers to allow me to access my Linux box from school.
-Got plugins for all types of video formats to work with Firefox, as well as Java plugin.
-Got mp3/DVDs to work in linux.
-Setup a partition to allow swapping of data between windows and linux partitions.
-Setup samba filesharing with my sister's computer, as well as cups for printing to her printer over the network.
95% Of the stuff I learned was either through experimentation or by searching online and taking things from here and there and putting 2 and 2 together to solve problems. Linux doesn't teach itself, but with a little patience, you can learn alot and feel really good about it.
Unfotunately, playing Q3A and Unreal Tournament 2K3 demos got old after a while, and I eventually went back to the XP partition to get my Counter-Strike fix and never looked back.
More recently I scrapped the Fedora partition and installed SuSe 9.0 for reasons explained below, and I was able to accidentally install the ATI drivers without so much as a hint of difficulty. After enough repetition, nothing is IMPOSSIBLE to do.
Now, onto my 3 Linux annoyances:
1) This is more of a hardware issue, I guess, but I can't find a distro that doesn't crap its pants when trying to read the Silicon Image RAID controller on my Asus A7N8X Deluxe. I've seen hundreds of posts from people with the same exact board, with the same problems which make installation of any 2.6.x kernels impossible without recompiling the kernel. Not sure who to blame, Asus, Silicon Image, or the linux community. At the moment, I was able to get SuSe 9.0 running with a little effort, but I'm itching to try out the newest Fedora release. Guess i'll have to wait for a new mobo before I can do that.
2) Lack of DirectX support on all major games. I know this is mostly Microsoft's fault, but this is one of the few things that keeps me dual-booting XP with Linux. Otherwise, I can easily say I'd have no problem running Linux exclusively.
3) Bad support of newer hardware and mutli-button mice(?) (mouses?
)
Other than that, I love the challange, and I may be among the few people who find the dependance on using the command line/terminal a welcome comfort reminding me of the old DOS 5 / Windows 3.1 days.
If you expect linux to be something you can just pick up over the weekend, you're not really asking for too much. The newer graphical distros like Mandrake and SuSe are pretty much idiot-proof. But if you're looking to do everything you do in Windows right off the bat, you're sadly mistaken. It takes a little more effort to get everything working, but ultimately you feel like you have way more control over the system than you ever would with Windows. However, for non-power users who are looking for just a little web browsing and email/chatting and maybe a few online games here and there, Linux works just fine. Something like Lindows/Linspire is made well enough for the general public to use with little effort.
I'm looking forward to a break from school this summer so I can attempt a Gentoo install from the bottom up.
I originally tried Redhat 7.2 back in the day. It was mostly just a curiosity thing, and after installing an playing around with GIMP a little, I eventually gave up on it because I was still big into games and things like OpenOffice weren't yet up to the level they are now for school use, etc.
Fast forward to college, and I decided to try out the new Fedora Core releases. I was doing alot of Computer Engineering stuff by connecting remotely to the Unix systems at school, and using linux allowed me to have the graphical tools forwarded straight to my linux box through ssh rather than using crappy windows emulators. During that time I was exlusively using Linux, and had no need to go back to windows. Here's some of the more notable things I accomplished during that 3-4 month period:
-Installed Fedora Core 1, later upgraded to Core 2.
-Learned how to modify the then-broken RedHat Network Update utility
-Succesfully installed Firefox, and scrounged around online for a script to allow new browser windows to open in tabs.
-Installed ATI drivers successfully after several days of searching manpages, google, and ATI's own pages.
-Recompiled ATI drivers from Kernel source, and followed instructions found online to make the old ATI XFree drivers compatible with a newer version of XOrg, despite no availability of native XOrg drivers at the time.
-Wrote bash scripts to keep my www.dnsalias.com dynamic hostname IP address updated.
-Wrote bash scripts to allow simple menu-driven selections for starting/stopping VNC servers to allow me to access my Linux box from school.
-Got plugins for all types of video formats to work with Firefox, as well as Java plugin.
-Got mp3/DVDs to work in linux.
-Setup a partition to allow swapping of data between windows and linux partitions.
-Setup samba filesharing with my sister's computer, as well as cups for printing to her printer over the network.
95% Of the stuff I learned was either through experimentation or by searching online and taking things from here and there and putting 2 and 2 together to solve problems. Linux doesn't teach itself, but with a little patience, you can learn alot and feel really good about it.
Unfotunately, playing Q3A and Unreal Tournament 2K3 demos got old after a while, and I eventually went back to the XP partition to get my Counter-Strike fix and never looked back.
More recently I scrapped the Fedora partition and installed SuSe 9.0 for reasons explained below, and I was able to accidentally install the ATI drivers without so much as a hint of difficulty. After enough repetition, nothing is IMPOSSIBLE to do.
Now, onto my 3 Linux annoyances:
1) This is more of a hardware issue, I guess, but I can't find a distro that doesn't crap its pants when trying to read the Silicon Image RAID controller on my Asus A7N8X Deluxe. I've seen hundreds of posts from people with the same exact board, with the same problems which make installation of any 2.6.x kernels impossible without recompiling the kernel. Not sure who to blame, Asus, Silicon Image, or the linux community. At the moment, I was able to get SuSe 9.0 running with a little effort, but I'm itching to try out the newest Fedora release. Guess i'll have to wait for a new mobo before I can do that.
2) Lack of DirectX support on all major games. I know this is mostly Microsoft's fault, but this is one of the few things that keeps me dual-booting XP with Linux. Otherwise, I can easily say I'd have no problem running Linux exclusively.
3) Bad support of newer hardware and mutli-button mice(?) (mouses?
)Other than that, I love the challange, and I may be among the few people who find the dependance on using the command line/terminal a welcome comfort reminding me of the old DOS 5 / Windows 3.1 days.
If you expect linux to be something you can just pick up over the weekend, you're not really asking for too much. The newer graphical distros like Mandrake and SuSe are pretty much idiot-proof. But if you're looking to do everything you do in Windows right off the bat, you're sadly mistaken. It takes a little more effort to get everything working, but ultimately you feel like you have way more control over the system than you ever would with Windows. However, for non-power users who are looking for just a little web browsing and email/chatting and maybe a few online games here and there, Linux works just fine. Something like Lindows/Linspire is made well enough for the general public to use with little effort.
I'm looking forward to a break from school this summer so I can attempt a Gentoo install from the bottom up.