Got some viruses on my Windows 7 install because I was stupid and wasn't running a virus scanner (they're annoying anyway) and didn't read the comments for a file I downloaded. Then I removed the viruses and then explorer.exe kept crashing. And for some reason hyperlinks in msn stopped working. So now I'm using Ubuntu ('linux for human beings') and using Windows 7 only for games.



The UI is nice - I have three desktops so it's easy to multitask. 'Ubuntu Software Center' is great also. You open it up and can search for software, then when you find the right program you click install and it downloads and installs it automatically within a few seconds. Runs on 450 mb of memory when I start up (and it doesn't utilize the page-file which means it's probably about as lean as Windows XP), and is very snappy. Viruses are virtually non-existent for linux both because the design is inherently more secure, but also because not many use it.

Had some annoying difficulties setting up printer drivers and video drivers though. And of course, most windows programs don't work (there are usually alternatives, like emesene for msn, open office instead of microsoft office, and GIMP instead of photoshop) and very few games work. Oh well.

And it's free. It's worth a try although it's likely you will give up and go back to windows for greater compatibility (that's what's great about windows).

This website was a huge help:

http://wiki.cchtml.com/