Originally Posted by
tiggermoth
I'm just wondering if any of you have given Linux a whirl at all?
Yes, I've got a Linux box on my desk at work.
I use it to run various servers that are written for Linux. It doesn't have a keyboard, mouse or screen - when I want to talk to it directly (rather than through the various proprietory protocols to the servers in question) I open up a telnet window on my Windows box, when I want to edit files on the Linux box I use a Windows editor (to be sure, it helps to pick one that knows about Unix line endings).
Actually I do sometimes connect a screen to it, to see why it won't boot, which it doesn't about three times out of four (but the opinion of the IT guys is that that's down to a hardware issue rather than Linux). As it's starting up thousands of lines of incomprehensible gobbledegook scroll up the screen, mostly containing the words "fatal error" ... but once it's started doing that I know it's booting OK so unplug the monitor again.
It works reasonably well (execpt for the booting problem which is probably hardware). Every few weeks something breaks in the networking software, and I have to get the IT guys to fix it (something to do with domain trusts, it needs a network admin password so I can't do it myself), but no big deal.