I first experimented with Linux around 2001-2003 (kernel 2.4.x). I tried many of the popular distributions at the time (RedHat, Mandrake, Slackware, Debian, SuS

I first experimented with Linux around 2001-2003 (kernel 2.4.x). I tried many of the popular distributions at the time (RedHat, Mandrake, Slackware, Debian, SuSE), but concluded that while it was useful as a server if you set it up carefully, it really wasn't ready for the Desktop. In particular, I had issues with hardware support (graphics and USB), unreliable filesystems (ext2 after a crash), browser compatibility, video playback, office suite compatibility, and anti-aliased text. I made the switch from Windows XP to Mac OS X around the same time, and for several years it filled the role of a "usable desktop unix" OS quite well. A few years later (2005?) I put Ubuntu on some spare hardware I had lying around and ended up keeping it as a personal server for the next five years or so. My last Mac laptop (MBP, 2 GHz core duo, Leopard) died around 2010. I had originally planned to get a new Mac at the end of that summer, but in the meantime I put the latest Ubuntu on an old Thinkpad my dad had lying around (T60, 1.83 GHz core duo). It ran circles around my old Mac despite the slightly slower CPU, and many of the issues I had with Linux the first time around had been solved. I was impressed enough to skip the Mac upgrade and continued using the T60 for the next two years. I was happy enough with Linux by then that I knew I wasn't going back to OS X, but some personal issues with the Ubuntu upgrade cycle and where Canonical was headed eventually led me to switch to a rolling release of Debian unstable. I've since upgraded to a T520, and see myself staying with Linux for the foreseeable future. It might be useful to mention that I'm primarily a C/C++/embedded developer. I spend most of my time with a terminal, a text editor, and a browser. I really like having proper "out of the box" support for the standard open source developer tools without having to hack them onto my system with third party OS X package managers. I don't have to worry about Mac specific quirks, or old/forked versions when some library doesn't get ported properly or in a timely manner. ---- As a side note, for anyone considering a rolling release, I'd probably recommend Debian testing over unstable. I've used both continuously over the past year, and while I haven't had any serious showstoppers with unstable, testing has had a perfect track record as far as distribution stability is concerned, while unstable has had a few minor kinks (usually just dependency issues immediately after updates are made available, but there have been occasional crashes).