[BlackEleven]

I use Ubuntu as my primary OS. I find its particularly great if you have a bit of an older machine since it runs super smooth compared to Windows XP on the same box. I don't use any of that comp/viz stuff or anything else that would bog my machine down though. I care much more about performance than I do about window dressing (pardon the pun).

The repository is my favourite thing about Ubuntu. Yeah, there's a lot of apps, but it is searchable where you can narrow it down to a few. Failing that, there's always google to find out other people's opinions on what is the best app for doing a certain task.

I still keep Windows around for Photoshop. GIMP is powerful and you can do a lot with it, but until it has adjustment layers, I'm going to keep using Photoshop. What I do like though is you can install a plugin (can't remember the name just now) so all the RAW (or CR2 in my case) files show up as thumbnails in the file browser Windows. I've tried to get that working in Windows, but have failed every time.

For programming I use mostly C++ and Python, which is far easier and simpler to do on a Linux box anyway, no need to muck about with something as heavy as Visual Studio. But if you want C# or something like that, you're either going to have to keep Windows around in some way, shape or form or use something like Mono as photon suggests.

I've received a few .doc(x) and .xls(x) files by email and such and have never had a problem using OpenOffice to view them but I've never created much content in it myself. When I do I usually stick to its native format and convert to a pdf afterwards if I need to send it to anyone.

I run a few other small Windows apps (like the pokerstars client for an occasional poker game) through Wine and it works well enough for those. I wouldn't bother trying something like Photoshop in Wine though.

I've never had a problem with wireless like a lot of people seem to. I think that was something that turned some people off it in the past and it still has a bit of a bad reputation when it comes to wireless, but setting up my network on it was seamless. I use mediatomb to stream media to my PS3 over wireless.