I was an enthusiastic Linux user. I spent several years learning all the niceties of filenames starting with . and modprobes and the rest. I'd got my Linux machine able to boot ten different distros, on four hard drives. GRUB was my friend. I was coming to the conclusion that when Win XP died, I'd switch to either Fedora or Slackware. I'd also set up a couple of friends with Linux, and they were learning the refinements of Ubuntu, which somehow (we never did suss it) transmogrified to Kubuntu.
Then my video card died and was replaced with a later model from the same manufacturer. Only one of the ten Linuxes would work - the rest reported incomprehensible errors. Clearly, a new video driver was needed, but after several hours of fruitless searching to find the right one and how to install it, I started the device in Win XP from an old partition. That worked, told me which video driver it wanted for proper GUI operation, and off we went.
I loaded the RC version of Win 7, and that worked "out of the box". It was a lot faster than XP - and nearly as fast as Linux. My dalliance with Linux ended there.
I've been told that I should have persevered harder, and that anyone worth his salt could easily fix a Linux video driver mismatch. When I asked on a couple of fora how to do that, I was told I'm too stupid to be allowed out, which I think meant they didn't know either.
It's a very clever system; there's lots of brilliant software, all free; it's capable of almost anything - if you have the patience. I don't have that much life left to me.
Enjoy the Linux thread; I will look in from time to time but probably not participate.