Finally, I installed Linux August 4, 2005
Only on my laptop though. I don't much like the distro that I installed, for 2 reasons. It's Mandrake Linux 9.1. First reason, they made it too much like Windows. Second reason, here's the website. I don't think it's supported anymore! Woops. It was the only copy of it I had that was already burnt to CDs. I have Shrike (Red Hat 9.0) but in ISO form on one of my computers. However, I don't want to get into that for its big company and proprietary additions to Linux. RPMs are a Red Hat addition, which are mainly used for installing applications. When I use Linux, I don't double click applications. I use this server, and everything involves running gzip -d on it first, then tar -cvf, since they're just binaries with no install. You set them up manually, drop the script into /etc/init.d/ (which on my current installation happens to just be a symbolic link, like a windows shortcut) and you're done. It's beautiful. However, since I can't use Mandrake, I'm going to install Gentoo Linux. Their website is still up, they are still developing and supporting the latest kernels, and have added some neat things using standard linux techniques (unlike Red Hat's RPM). You can still use Red Hat without ever once using an RPM, so, really, I'm just not using it because I want to try something different :) Red Hat's still darn good.
Here's the funny thing. I actually bought Gentoo Linux. Well, I paid to have CDs with the software delivered to my house. To do this with Windows, you're looking at $179 (cheapest that I ever got it on ebay) PER COPY (per computer!). The beautiful thing with Linux (if you know how to use it), you buy a CD for ranging prices (I've seen $1.50 plus S/H), and you can install it on a bazillion computers. I paid $9.99 for the install CDs and $9.99 for the packages CDs. Plus I bought a mug :) I always contribute to Open Source software that I like. I paid $20 for a free FTP client, FileZilla. It's nice though, but sadly, I won't be using it anymore, as it's only available on Windows.
I've had Linux running as a desktop before, but ever since I got this server, I've been learning more and more about it, so I now will feel more comfortable using it all the time, and I'll probably learn more on the desktop, and I'll be able to do cooler things on the server. That's a cool prospect.
Anyway, geek me up in the comments again.