[laumars]

Probably about 15 years in my case. :)

I've been running Arch Linux for about 8 years, Slackware for several years before that. But I think it was Mandrake that I originally ran as my desktop - way back at the turn of the century (albeit not as my primary desktop)

My Linux experience hasn't been without it's problems. But I really hated the direction Microsoft took with XP and, back then, I couldn't afford a Mac. So Linux was more a case of "the lesser of 3 evils" - particularly since my previous favourite OS, BeOS, was pretty much dead by that point. But over the years I've come to appreciate and depend on the POSIX / Linux paradigm so much that I feel completely handicapped when presented with a Windows desktop.

Which brings me to the crux of the issues with any Windows desktop vs Linux desktop debates: the two paradigms are vastly different yet many of the "Linux isn't ready for the desktop" conclusions are derived from authors approaching Linux like a Windows clone and then wondering why things don't behave like they'd expect.