I started out with Win 95 about 5 or 6 years ago. I was perfectly happy with it, having seen nothing particularly special about Win 98; Win ME seemed rediculous coming right after Win 98, and with Win 2000 on the way. I figured it was just a play on all that new millenium hype. So the old system was getting a bit long in the tooth, and I figured it was about time for an upgrade. I figured I'd just go ahead and get a new system with Win XP. Up till then, I'd heard about Linux, and never gave it a thought.
Last summer, while awaiting the arrival of XP, I started hearing about this new thing: WPA. The more I learned about it, the less I liked it. How could this be? They expect me to pay them for the priveledge of being treated like a criminal? If I trust M$ to give me value for my money, shouldn't they trust me to abide by their EULA? I decided that if my word, when I click on that "I Accept" button, isn't good enough for Bill Gates, then my money isn't good enough for him. The more I learned about WPA, M$, and Win XP, the less I started liking it.
Finally, I got disgusted enough over the whole thing, that I decided that Win XP wouldn't be on any new system of mine. So I took a real good look at Linux, and decided this was the way to go. So last November, I sent off for the Mandrake CDs; got me some good books on Linux from Amazon.com. As they say, the rest is history.
The more I hear about Win XP, the more convinced I become that I made the correct choice. I still keep Win 95 around on its own little partition since visiting children can play games on it, and it does run Quick Time, necessary for viewing the videos that sometimes come with audio CDs. I also want to try out the cross-platform compilation that Linux programming aids, such as FOX or Qt promise. Other than that, I don't have much use for it at all.
So far, I've installed Mandrake as the main system, Red Hat as it's the "GNOME" Linux (I've got KDE on 'Drake - I actually prefer it over GNOME, although GNOME has some great apps), and QNX.
I've since found that Linux isn't *nearly* as hard as they make it out to be. It runs great, the documentation beats the living hell out of Winders documentation (I had to figure out about 90% of what I know about running Win 95 by trial and error) comes loaded with apps, and I don't have to keep forking $$$ over to Symantec for subscriptions to WinVirus updates.
Cutting the ties to Redmond really isn't all that big a deal, not with these new Linux distros anyway.