I've tried Linux at least three times. The first time, probably a decade ago, a friend who works in IT installed OpenSUSE for me when I wound up with a computer without a good Windows install or a way to restore what was there to it's original state. I remember it took him, an expert, all night literally until 6am the next morning to try to get the Ethernet port working, as I had dial-up Internet at the time and thus needed a phone wire in, and I don't think that even did it, I think it was a subsequent attempt.
The next time was a few years later when I decided to dual boot Ubuntu with a Windows install. By that time, I had broadband wifi, but the wifi driver that Ubuntu thought was right for my computer's wifi card was not. Took me several hours to get it up and running, and it broke on every major update. One day I spent seven hours trying to fix it without success after another update that messed it up, and then erased the Ubuntu partition.
Because I'm a slow learner, I tried again within the last year or so. That time Ubuntu worked fine (And is now purple instead of brown), but it's boot loader took over the machine and wouldn't boot Windows properly. Eventually, trying to fix that, I wound up with no boot loader and a computer that booted to a black screen. I eventually restored Windows and ditched Ubuntu again.
My feeling is that Linux is mostly for folks who enjoy tinkering with their computers a lot. I don't, so it's not for me. But if you do, and you can afford to suddenly be stuck fixing something that randomly broke when you're just trying to check the weather online or something...
I don't know, it's a nice concept. I like the idea of open source stuff that's highly user configurable where if you don't like what a distro (Type of Linux operating system) is doing, there is likely another distro that is doing what you want, or could be if enough talented computer people want the same thing you do. I've even seen where people don't like the changes to the Gnome Windows manager and have gone back to a prior version and gone forward in a different direction more in keeping with the way Gnome used to work, and available for all sorts of distros. There's a lot of stuff like that.
But, to be honest, at least right now if one wants to get things done with a minimum of hassles, Windows seems the most stable get-things-done type OS there is. It's good that Linux is out there so we aren't left with no choices if Windows takes a turn we don't like, but right now I think Windows is the best choice for me.
