I have been using an estimated number of thousands of operating systems during my long way: the Commodore 64's BASIC and Kernal-ROM :-), GEOS, DOS 2.11++, Windows 3.0++, *BSD, UNIX System V, Linux 0.99++, BeOS, ReactOS, OS/400, EPOC, Symbian, ... I really can't remember all of them. I only know: I never used a Mac. Never. And I never will. What I've seen so far and what I've read and heard from Apple's philosophy - regarding OSes and business! - is enought for me to skip it. All of their products. (Of course I've been in contact with Apple rigs one or another time and we have a Mac at work for some stuff the designers pretend they can't do with their Windows PCs, but that's not what I call "using it".)

A new challenge

Since 2006 I've been using Linux as my primary operating system. Two things led me to that decision:

• Windows Vista was coming up.
  
• I completed LPI Level 1.

Windows Vista - compared to a rock-solid, resource-saving OS like Windows XP - was SUCH a big disappointment: I mean, they kept developing that crap for over five years and THAT was all what was resulting out of this incredible waste of man-power? None of the important improvements made it in the final version beside that idiotic side-bar and a new, resource-consuming user-interface useful like a second nose in your face, next to nothing worth to remember.

Therefore I made a strong decision: Windows XP would be my last Windows in usage, I'd never let Windows Vista spank my computers at all. I kept that promise until 2011 when I had to install Windows 7 on one of my machines - I'm an IT technician, you know, and I can't afford to let progress pass by me completely ;-) ... but Windows Vista never made it to my desktops, beside some tests that I certainly had to do to be sure it's crappy and not worth using it. But these tests sum up to nothing more that maybe 10 hours of usage in total.

Furtheron I wanted to keep up or even improve my freshly acquired knowledge on Linux, which is certainly done best by using it. I started with openSuSE and used it for about three years, but I was getting more and more unsatisfied with it because SuSE is doing everything in a very special, own way and I was unsatisfied with the software in their repositories and how to install them. So I got more and more tired of openSuSE. The time my main machine blew out it's lights I decided to switch to Ubuntu which I was already testing quite a while on another machine. In 2009 I started with Kubuntu 9.04 on my newly bought computer. My primary machine not only was my main workstation running Linux and KDE but also the server and NT4 domain controller for all of my other machines in my huge network :-) . SAMBA is really great for that!

I switched from Kubuntu to Lubuntu as my preferred Linux distribution about a year ago, mainly because Lubuntu is perfectly suitable also - but not only - for older Laptops and computers. As Windows XP is ceasing support in 2014 and will be unsafe to use further on I had to search for a suitable replacement OS for my netbook and my old notebook. Lubuntu is simple, fast and ergonomic, like my website :-) , with no stunning effects etc. that disturb you when working. Since I'm (untypically for an IT guy) no gamer and don't use my PCs to play - beside an arcade emulator I transplanted into an old arcade housing which is residing in the basement, but that's another story to come up - I don't need 3D effects and mind blowing graphic power.

History repeats itself

Microsoft is presenting another "big deal" in Windows history: Windows 8. If they were to prove they could produce something even crappier, dumber, more useless than Windows Vista they truly could shout out loudly: "Mission accomplished!". Compared to the Windows 8 design Windows 2.1 looks fresh and shiny like a diamond (have a look at YouTube, some freak has the whole Windows history mixed together in one video - amazing!).