1 Having dabbled in Linux since RH 5.2 and using it as my primary workstation since Kubuntu 7.04, my opinion is Linux is adequate. I regard it approximately the same utility as Windows XP, which I run on another machine here: it's the thing the applications run on. From a 'getting things done' point of view, there are times at which something will not work in Linux the way I expect (i.e., you surf to a site with Flash, or play an .asf video and it just works *without* having to apt-get or search through /usr/bin for the appropriate object [which I have to do all over again since moving to 8.04 - it evidently reset everything upon upgrading!]). Almost all the time, however, it does work fine. From a reliability standpoint, the XP box has the edge. The audio card gets occupied by something in Linux, and killing every mplayer or amarok instance doesn't clear it, so it's time to reboot. Firefox 2.x crashed daily (3b5 is a little better) and doesn't play well with the mplayer plugin. Both IE on XP and Firefox on Kubuntu seem to have some memory leak problem, so both browsers need killed after several day's use. There are some specialized work and school applications I use that cause me to hold onto the XP box (I don't want Vista). Similarly, my prized Nova episode of "Cliff Stoll: The KGB, the Computer and Me" makes me keep a working VHS machine hooked up, as it's not on DVD TTBOMK. Linux, particularly in a newbie-oriented format such as Ubuntu or Linspire, is getting able to be widely used and accepted by average users. I' be comfortable in setting up new users with a Linux machine, but I would expect to answer more questions and fix more problems than if they had an XP box.