Switching to Shrike: Brad Choate has some good comments about making Linux your primary desktop OS:
While I find RedHat 9 to be a decent desktop OS for me, it’s certainly not for everyone. Yes, installation was a breeze, but general maintenance is not for the timid. For example: enabling anti-aliased fonts in XFree86. Or installing the latest nVidia drivers (this one required the kernel source code to install for my machine). Or adding the NTFS support so you can mount and copy files from a NTFS-formatted volume. …Software-wise, I feel pretty comfortable. OpenOffice is installed and running nicely. Mozilla Firebird runs better than ever on Linux. I can share files with my Mac thanks to the Samba support both have.
Given that Microsoft products appear to be full of security holes, more and more thought is being given to migrating to other platforms. However, this has problems of its own. Macs are expensive, and Linux isn't quite ready as a desktop platform. This leaves a lot of people in…