Been using linux on my all but my main computer for almost two years. I run Ableton Live and a ton of steam games on there. Otherwise I would switch it to my preferred distro, Korora.
I've been taking the Intro to Linux course on edX (which I can't recommend more), and I'm about 50% through it because I'm going quite slowly. Now I am also taking Harvard's CS50 Intro to Computer Science on edX and in it you use a web-bound containerized linux distro (based on Ubuntu if I understand correctly). This course as well I couldn't recommend more. It's free, well organized, and dare I say, fun.
What I'm getting at here, is that Linux has been sort of a loose hobby for me, but the things I've learned from playing with distros, reading wikis, and now from taking these two free courses, has already made me a better computer user, and on my way to a valuable career skillset.
I got the laptop working now. I went with Fedora 23 Workstation w/ Gnome 3.18, it's going great atm. Will try my desktop and maybe my archiver when my HDD's come in.
I'm also on gnome. Im a long time KDE fan but decided to give gnome a good try. now its on 3.18.. its actually not bad. I still don't like some things (the enormous icons) but what has been done so far with it is pretty good.
I've been using it occasionally on an old laptop I have but I want to try it out on my main PC where I can actually compare the performance to what I'm used to on Windows. Good luck!
My laptop has a dedicated linux mint - kde distro.
However, my desktop has Windows, and it's going to stay that way, because I game and have to occasionally use a particular vpn service (for work) that doesn't work on linux.
So I've been running Xubuntu as my main OS since roughly April 2015, but I had windows dual booted as well just in case I ever needed it.
Cue last night where I got a little less than sober and decided I wanted to try installing epsxe but in an attempt to try to get it the dependencies it needed I ran sudo apt-get autoremove libgtk2.0.0 or some shit that's uber vital with the intention of reinstalling it. Once I saw all the other programs get removed one by one I knew I had fucked up so I prepared a USB bootdisk while shit was still on and semifunctional and backed up any shit data I cared about that wasn't already backed up. Once I was sure that I had everything I needed I rebooted just to see what the damage was. Wouldn't even bring me to the login screen. Windows still worked though so I made sure I got everything I needed from that and unregistered my license so I can reinstall it later some time if I want.
Now I've decided to say fuck it, reinstall everything and try installing the windows partition in a virtual machine. Even if that set up is less than optimal I'm now at the point where I just use linux for everything so whatever.
I guess I'm technically like 8 months through the challenge, but now I'm goin' full linux so yeah.
I bought another 120GB SSD for Win7 and GTAV back in May. And then installed Win10 when it came out, I was shocked by the privacy nightmare it has become. I swear I will NOT install another Windows 10, ever. Have been using it for playing Fallout 4 (finished it) and more recently Rimworld+mods. Other than that I keep using Linux as my main OS.
Since March I've switched from MATE to plain Ubuntu with Unity and Numix theme&cursors. (Screen) The switch was mainly because I wanted to further test Unity. It's been a couple of months since the switch and it has been great, I have adapted to the lateral menu no problem. With Numix it looks very slick and clean. I like it.
For the future: I have 2 more computers at home, one for my sister and the other one for my father. Both with Win7. I've warned them that it will come a day that I will change the OS and remove Windows. I know they can handle it, my father only does web or looks at photos from the NAS. My sister does some Office stuff, but nothing LibreOffice can't handle, way back she depended more on Windows due to the software of older mobile phones (Nokia and so) but nowadays that's gone. Also we'll buy a new printer, no decision yet on the model, but I'm confident that there will be no problem. At work (IT) I've had the pleasure of installing some network printers under Linux without issues.
So, it will come a day that there will be only Linux OS at my home. That is good I think.
Oh, also I want to buy and build a good FreeNAS machine too, but that requires saving some cash first. (good mobo, ECC ram, another hard drive, UPS, etc.)
Only Issue I have with linux is Silverlight obviously doesn't work so HBO and comcast websites don't load correctly, and exclusions on games. I do run Linux on my laptop and my girls desktop (she is physics grad student so she pretty much has to). I would say the only issues that need to be resolved should go away when HTML5 rules the land and games come out on it without the need to run wine.
OS I currently run: Win 10 Pro (Custom) Win 7 Ult (Custom w/ Ceton) Ubuntu 14.04 (Custom) FreeNAS Latest non-daily (Custom) Ubuntu Mate Latest non-daily (XPS13 Dev edition) OSX (Macbook Air)
How up to date is Gentoo. I have fond memories of setting it up in the 90s and using it to host LAN parties and connect to the internet via dial up :) We more drunk most of the time so the internet worked for 30+ people.
