After trying several of the most popular releases, I finally settled on Ubuntu which is based on Debian Linux. Like any version of Linux, it’s not quite a turnkey solution to all your computing woes, but it has developed into a competetive solution. Oh, did I mention Ubuntu is 100% free and has a repository containing tens of thousands of free applications? More here

Growing weary of Windows has been some time in the coming now.Why? While the high cost of Windows has been somewhat negated by the development of quality open source software (see also sourceforge.net), unfortunately the list of security issues gets longer every day because Windows is designed to be exploited. Many companies feel it’s somehow their right to collect information from users machines since they’re the ones that wrote it. They seem to forget who owns the machine and the fundamental right to privacy, and that didn’t matter to the Gestapo either, but I digress.The same mechanisms that allow corporations to harvest your info allow even more unscrupulous persons to gather it to steal your identity or just screw up your machine.