Korrode's Kollateral

Many years ago a friend (who is now my housemate) introduced me to Linux, since then i've attempted to move to Linux as my desktop OS quite a few times. I tried many different distributions, with the longest lasting stint, until recently, being on Fedora Core 5.

It's been speculated that someone like myself, who has extensive knowledge of both using and troubleshooting Windows, is going to have more issues than most people making the switch to Linux.
I was used to being extremely capable on my computer, to suddenly be a 'newb' again was not easy, and had me returning to Windows time and time again.

Follow up:

I think the key wall i came up against was that i always found there were a few pieces of software i needed for my day-to-day computer use that were not in the given distros package management, and were not compiling with relative ease.
I specifically say "relative ease" because i'm a PC hardware and networks tech, not a programmer. I suspect a programmer who'd only previously been using Windows might have found this particular issue easier to deal with (then again, i dont really know if that's the case, cause i aint a programmer ).

Quite a few months ago i once again attempted to switch from Windows to Linux as my main OS on my primary workstation.
I figured i had to try the one everyone was raving about; Ubuntu.

At the time of installing, i was not a complete Linux newb. I'd done some research into desktop managers and tried a few in the past when i'd had other distros installed. With system performance and responsiveness being much higher on my priority list than prettiness, XFCE seemed like a good choice, and i generally liked the interface.
During past Linux attempts, i'd also gained skills and knowledge in regard to configuring X via xorg.conf, some basics for getting around on BASH and had some insight into how the filing system worked.

The combination of this basic knowledge, the array of easy and intuitive GUI system configuration tools and the vast selection of software in the Ubuntu package repositories has made Xubuntu 7.04 an OS i've been able to use for my daily computing for many months. The fact i have a housemate who's a capable Linux admin has certainly been an advantage, but also, as i've been working as a PC tech for many years, i'm no stranger to doing my own research and troubleshooting, which certainly helps.

This is by far the longest i've stuck with using Linux as my primary OS, it just might be permanent. Seems Ubuntu (well, Xubuntu) has managed to keep me on Linux!

A couple of days ago i upgraded from v7.04 to v8.04, and due to further discussion and research into the pros and cons of different desktop environments, switched from Xubuntu (XFCE) to Ubuntu (Gnome).

Tomorrow i'll go into details on the upgrade and why i changed to Gnome.