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Just curious, does anyone here run Linux on their desktop PC?
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Yes, on both my laptops and office workstation. Debian and Ubuntu on the laptops and Ubuntu AMD64 at work. Ubuntu is very nice, Deb is fine too, except that RAM restrictions on that laptop means I have to use a pared down window manager. Does the job.
Both laptops have wireless, which wasn't a problem to set up - the key is to do your research and pick a card that works with Linux - a lot do, but some have extreme problems due to the chip manufacturer not co-operating. One laptop has an elderly Lucent Orinoco, which has kernel support (comes up as eth1 on bootup), the other uses an Atheros chipset based D-Link 802.11g card which is autodetected under Ubuntu as ath0. I was staggered how easy that was (to get the Orinoco working I had to recompile the kernel). I've had far more problems getting wireless working under Windows than under Ubuntu.
Going from Debian/Windowmaker to Windows is an improvement.
Going from Windows to Ubuntu is an improvement.
So a lot depends on the distro you pick - the rate of improvement in the last two years has been phenomenal, but you still have a learning curve (mainly because people don't realise how automatic actions are in Windows, which you have to unlearn in order to use Linux).