I tried. I really did try.
I did my best to move to a free, open source operating system.
I failed.
No, well, actually Linux failed. It couldn't give me a non-problematic install. Windows could. It couldn't give me automatic detection of all my hardware. Windows could (well, ME anyway, and I did have to install those SBLive! drivers later on). Linux couldn't give me an easy way to install drivers. "Oh, your distribution doesn't support your sound card? Here, why don't you recompile the kernel..."
Excuse me? Am I a programmer? No. So don't expect me to act like one.
I am a fighter. I fight system crashes. I fight intercompatability problems. I can reformat my hard drive once a month, no problem. I can live with the occasional blue screen when I shutdown the system. I will keep my oh-so-buggy OS if that also means I don't have learn C and/or Perl just to survive in the Linux world.
I just wish people wouldn't go around claiming I have to be open source to be geek. Claiming I have to program to be geek. Claiming I need to know SOMETHING other than HTML/JavaScript just to be a nerd. I'm NOT just a stupid user because I use Win9x since it's easy.
Eventually, I do hope to make the jump to Linux (if only so I can't be busted for using a burnt copy of WinME), or at least have some kind of friendly symbiosis between the two OSes. But for now, I just don't have the know-how to truly survive in the Linux world.
I repeat:
I am not ashamed to use Windows.