as someone who has been fed on windows (and is now choking) linux is something that is a novelty. naturally, the desire to just try it out. in my case, it is more because i have just bought a laptop one month back and in this 30 days' time, would u believe it, the comp has slowed down!!! the first time windows xp loaded soon after the fourth time the blue bar crossed (that thing u see when windows is loading). now it takes 12!!! my old 466 Mhz desktop, which i recently formatted takes 7!! so yeah windows does slow down with time... and that despite the fact that i have ccleaner installed and regularly clean the registry.

i have still not used linux (i'm tired to telling why. read 'sad ubuntu story' post) but having used xp for so long, it doesn't feel as if i've got something new when i use my new laptop. it's that same old thing. the same old interface.

but yes, i do get a lot of associated software which i can get over then net. but then again, all these softwares are linux based -- firefox for windoes, open office for windows, vlc player for windows etc. the only thing that is microsoft if the OS.. rest all applications being used in linux. not by compulsion or any bias towards linux alternatives, but because i have tried them out and found them to be much, much better than microsoft versions.

... and yet when i do install linux, it will be be a second cousin to windows. what i'm worried about is the stability of linux operating systems. but then everyone says they are far more stable than windows. the second thing is compatibility. can i use gmail on linux? yes, i can through pidgin. would the document i wrote on open office on a linux OS be saved in word format so that someone still stuck with MS Word can see it and modify it? possibly yes. but then isn't linux made up of bits and parts drawn from hundreds of softwares made by different people using different techniques? but then windows is made the same way, or is it? would that create a conflict within the OS? can't say. if i don't like linux, can i remove it and get the partition back? well?

but then i guess skepticism about linux would come from not knowing enough about it. most of the things (do this, do that) about linux seem complex to me. but perhaps for a linux user to hear someone say a "do this and do that" about XP would sound bewildering because he has no clue what the fella is talking about.

ignorance is what creates this skepticism; add to that the notion that something free cannot be good (Hah!). as an XP user who is trying to test linux as a preferred OS, the road is fraught with doubts and skepticisms. it will take some time to get used to a new OS environment. i don't think patience would be a virtue most users will have. so linux will have to "Wow!" the user from day 1. can it do that?