I often find especially with MAC users a sense of superiority, when it comes to OSs, some of this was true, however the reality is that whatever your need is today there is an OS out there for you.

I am generally a windows user, partly because any thing I can do on a Mac I can now do in windows, plus I am a big Stardock Junkie, and am always happy to get my friends hooked as well, probably I am a control freak and like my machines to look and work the way I like.

This said I also have a business which I own, and with this comes the costs of running a business, a big part being IT costs.

As a result of the increasing costs of this side of my business, I for one have had to explore other ways to do the same with lower costs, the obvious choice some time back was to move to LINUX for my business needs, there was also the need for a system which was more secure and stable than Windows, again I found this in Linux. While I do admit that it was not at the same level of sophistication as windows or mac, it was secure and runs very well on networks and broadband, both of which are issues for me, as well as cost.

When I started this project I was very happy that I had the opportunity to try many different distros, at no or minimal cost, and as my expertise in linux grew, I found that so did my ability to get what I wanted. What really impressed me was the amount of support and software, drivers etc available, as well as the speed of improvement and development.

i do have to admit that at the begining I was not impressed with the look and usability of these distros, however in a very short time and many upgrades later I found that many of these distros where fast approaching the quality of Windows and MAC. Which leads me to my question of whether it is as bad as many would say it is.

If you want to use products such as OFFICE and games then Windows is still king, however if you want an alternative product which runs good office productivity apps, work on the web and design for the web, have email functionality, then Linux is a good alternative for both Laptop, desktop up to enterprise levels.

As a matter of fact some distros for desktop are incredibly good, and offer some very inovative ideas not found on windows. A good example being Lindows Click n run, which for a novice who wants to download and install software, this is a great tool, not forgeting linux windows emulations software, which in the main will run most of what you need. So is linux still the difficult, clunky cheap looking OS it used to be, depending on the distro in the main no. Will it be the OS of the Future, I doubt it, however I do think that Linux is here to stay, and will eventually be a equal to windows and mac in both quality and sales.