Well in November last year I had a memory failure and by the time I got the remaining 1Gb to work, my XP install was beyond repair. Even a re-install with CD’s I had insisted on blue screening. I had real work to do (an important criterion for an OS to fulfill), so out came the Mint (Helena) CD and we’re off. Well after a few days of googling I had several replacements for all my windows apps – video convertors, graphics, media players and of course Mozila’s suite that knocks the socks of Outlook.

The main problem being the variety and choice – it takes so long to try everything and choose. Well I think I ended up installing too many goodies, because next thing I had a package dependancy loop and NO SOUND ): I couldn’t go forward and I couldn’t go back. After reading 100′s of blogs for the last 4 days on pulseaudio, jack, alsa, etc and removing and adding more packages, I was ready to give up. I stumbled across this site and love it. I just found my solution at http://www.ubuntugeek.com – what a relief. Of course I had do a lot of research into kernel versions, debian, ubuntu and mint versions (and what’s built on what). Believe me, if you pick de/installation problems with MS windows, it’s easier to re-install unless you feel like diving into the registery.

No looking back. I’m using Linix to work (and play) from now on.

The same goes for windows too; it has a terminal also.

Linux and windows both have many graphical front ends so you don’t have to use a terminal. If you see me using a terminal, it’s because i prefer too. But, like your argument for linux, is shared with windows, users will eventually need to use a terminal to do something. Bollocks, average users aren’t the kind of people who will be using a terminal for anything. Average users won’t be typing in “apt-get install” in linux, they’ll use software manager. Average users won’t be typing in “ipconfig” in windows, they’ll right click the network icon.

There’s more and more graphical front ends for more of everything in linux than there was years ago. So, i disagree greatly. The terminal is there to use if you want to use it, and the few times for the need.

After spending >100 hours trying several flavors of Linux, I landed on Linux Mint 10, now my main OS; abandoning Mint 11 due to buggy-ness, with high hopes for Mint 12. Anyone who says it’s easy just likes spending countless hours at the screen.

These will remain marginalized, hobbist OS’s until a whole lot more crow can be eaten by developers. More pay for them would be good too. My sister is a PhD, but she will ~never~ use the linux terminal, and there is ~no~ way to escape the need for the terminal for years to come in any flavor of linux.
banjoboye