I've been using Windows since it was battling for desktop supremacy with GEM in the early 90s. In the mid 90s I spent several years producing newspapers on Apple Macs. Since the late 90s I've dabbled with Linux, but there have always been compelling reasons to return to, or stick with, Windows.

With the arrival of Windows Vista , lots of people are looking for alternatives. And Linux has emerged as the best contender. As I have used Windows XP and Linux for last 5 years, and Vista since its release. I thought why not write an article for the people who may want to know/use/switch to Linux from Windows.

With Apples market share growth increasing you really dont see a lot of companies moving from Windows-based computers to Macs. Sure, you will find mixed environments, with Macs predominantly in the creative departments. But, you dont typically see a complete departure from Windows. Well, Google is making the move from Windows based computers to Macs and Linux based computers.

Results of a survey released this week, Windows Vista Adoption and Alternatives: A Survey of Technology Professional, found what many open source supporters had long suspected - Vista is driving more companies away from Microsoft than it is attracting.

There are two major platforms: Apple and Windows, and Macs generally cost more than PCs. Thus ends the latest propagandistic report. But what about Linux?

After almost a year since Microsoft released Vista to manufacturing, it's time to re-evaluate it and decide if it's finally the equal of the best of the desktop Linuxes.

Yes, that's right. A loyal Windows user of more than 15-years is throwing in the towel on Vista. You can read his story for why he finds Vista so annoying, but I'll sum it up for you: Vista sucks.

I have been using Vista for well over a year now (since Beta 1). Of course Vista is slow, its bloated (over 10x the size of XP), aero kills system performance (even though this should be done on the video card), networking is pathetically slow, etc etc. We all know Vista sucks.

But recently my blood has been set to a rolling boil by the fact that most of my games just don’t work in Vista. At all. Its so bad that out of spite I have decided to make a list of games that work better in Linux under Wine than in Vista. These are games that were originally written to run in Windows XP, are broken in Vista, but magically work in Linux.

It's taken me this long to share it, because shortly after I upgraded my Macs to Snow Leopard, all of my Macs and my HP scanner stopped talking to each other. My scanner still doesn't work with any of my Macs, but I am able to bring you this picture today thanks to the magic of Linux.