You know what you got one convert this year. 
I am literally trying to switch 100 percent to linux this year. I don't want to waste time with windows anymore. I have old computers which can't run modern windows but they can run slitaz or archlinux without much issues, virtualbox can solve some win dependent apps requirement. I guess anything nooh from apple and windows is starting to look useless to me. I played with w8 demo, apple and it's just not impressing me against linux.
-mahesh2k
I'll agree with you on that. If I were doing purely personal computing, or running a non-computer business, I'd be 100% on NIX by now.
A few things currently keep me from doing so:
1. My clients use Windows. So, in the spirit of "drinking what you serve," I also have to be a Windows user, both to stay on top of it, and have direct hands-on. Otherwise I wouldn't bother. ALL my personal stuff gets done on Linux. And all my personal servers are either BSD or Linux.
2. I
don't pay the full tariff. I'm in the MS partner program. So I get access to something called an Action Pack. Which is a super inexpensive way to get access to most of what Redmond offers at an incredibly good annual license fee. If I had to actually buy this stuff at market price I'd be out of business since it would be too expensive for me to stay up on these products. Especially since (to repeat myself because it's important) hands-on counts for everything when you do field support.
Note: If you really are "in the business" of supporting Windows (i.e. you're a registered business with a taxpayer ID number) you'd do well to qualify for the program. It doesn't take much other than passing an easy test and agreeing to some very reasonable terms to get in. If you're in the business - get in on this. It's one of the few true bargains out there.
3. I sometimes need to be compliant with someone's proprietary model for a given sort of project.
If you have a music project where every other musician is using Sonar, you'd best be using Sonar too if you're floating sequenced files back and forth. You
could do export/imports. And they might even work and be glitch-free. (Don't hold your breath however.) But time is money. And technical headaches get in the way of creativity. So insisting on an arguably (or more like 'possibly') better FOSS solution is still counter-productive. And it just gets everybody pissed at you anyway. Same goes for movie editors, or scriptwriting software, or spreadsheets. If you're working with accountants, the government, or big business - you use Excel. Each venue has it's preferred software tools. You'll find industry inertia or momentum drive tool choices more often than not. Very often it's not a good idea to try and buck the flow. Sometimes it's not even possible.
There are even conventions (mostly inertia-based) in local markets that need to be observed for pragmatic reasons. Example: network diagrams in consulting proposals get done in Visio around where I work. Always Visio. Just Visio. Nothing but Visio.
Ever. To do otherwise is to brand yourself as an amateur with the clueless. But those same clueless people are also the terrific people who write out your checks. So you use Visio.
Period. (And when all's said and done, Visio is a very nice diagramming tool. That much I will give them. Even if the current publisher wasn't the company who originally wrote it.)
*
So in this less than perfect world, I still really can't completely walk away from Windows or Apple unless I find something else to do full-time -and for money.
Not yet anyway.
But I'm working on it...
