text: who hates windows xp and has  installed linux or sun solaris and how are you doing with it?   if you can stand the complications shipped with linux, go for it. it is 100 times more stable and it is simple enough to be used by a 5 year old. but if you think about adding a network card or a wireless controller to your desktop/laptop, you will need a lot of computer knowledge and linux programming abilities to keep going. i downloaded a free distribution and installed it, but just to get wireless working, i had to suffer. and even after it worked, i cannot search for networks in range (have to live with one network chosen by the system).  if you can live with its trouble...do it i prefer something pre-configuered from a good compane (it comes well-working with linux).