Just to put my penny in the pot here, I bought a new computer in August 2008 after a MoBo failure on my previous machine. I took out the HDD and lobbed it into an external case to connect it to my new, dual core Vista machine.
I had very very bad experiences simply firing up the new machine, and after what amounted to about 6 hours of fiddling about trying to get drivers for a Samsung Laser Printer (none available), a Medion FB Scanner (ditto), a serial A5 tablet (ditto) as well as multiple updates and lots of reboots, I was on the verge of taking the thing back to the shop.
I persevered. In the end, I managed to get a desktop stable enough for me to try to copy over my old files off my old HDD. Suffice to say that even as an administrator, the new OS wouldn't play ball and allow me access to the files without an awfully long-winded process. I searched online to find an answer to automate the process, and during the time it was re-assigning the file permissions, the OS crashed and on rebooting i couldn't get access to the files at all, let alone reassign the permissions. So I was well and truly stuck.
Enter Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04 LTS). Booted off the CD. Worked live. Rescued the files. Detected and drove the hardware rendered obsolete by Vista. And so began an interest in this new OS which eventually took me to the point of installing it (dual boot) and then finding out that in November, I never booted into Windows once, because I liked the way that the new OS worked and I felt like I was finally in control of my computer - I was running it not having it running me.
Recently, I've found the newer Versions of Ubuntu more and more unreliable (new computer now as well!) and that's how I got onto Mint 13. Would I go back to Windows? No. I can't stand the nagging, the antimalware updates, the reboots, the fact that you have to pay for upgrades to software you've bought, the fact that you don't know if a download is riddled with viruses or not and the fact that you have to pay for it, too. Using my wife's Windows 7 netbook occasionally brings it all back, I'm afraid.
GNU/Linux isn't perfect by any means. However, it does the job I want in the way I want it. And I'm probably one of these awful types that uses the GUI too much, who doesn't write, script and compile and all the rest.
I like Mint 13 Cinnamon and it's much preferable to me from the current offerings from Microsoft.
