A coworker left a desktop system for me when he took an international position, so I have a spare PC. I decided to try Fedora 14 and tonight's install night.

I bought a laptop for the family earlier this year and it came loaded with Windows 7. I think I am one of the very few people on the planet that actually prefers Vista to Windows 7.

That said, I would still rather have Linux loaded than either Vista or 7.

I didn't mention MoonOS in my journal as I was researching and found it as a result. I tried it for a couple of hours, then moved on. That said, it had the most attractive desktop I have ever seen.

You'd expect that they'd be more careful if someone tells them they had been dissatisfied in the past.

Considering all of the coolness kudos they get for their products, they may have just gotten indifferent.

The only way I would buy an Apple system right now is if I needed it to create cross-platform applications for Windows, Linux and OS X. I just don't feel a desire to support the platform. And, you know, in my Linux travels I uncovered a distro called MoonOS that was an Ubuntu derivative with some of the OS X feel to it - close enough should I decide to go that route.

I hope I was just an isolated case and that you (and the rest of Apple's customer base) get better care than I did. It's possible it was just an unfortunate screw-up, but it was enough to really turn me off to their stuff regardless.

I gave up on Apple years ago. I bought an iPod with the extended warranty that was supposed to cover battery replacement. When the battery was to a point where it would no longer maintain enough charge to be useful I contacted Apple and made arrangements to have it sent in for service. It came back a few days later with a service note - "Unable to reproduce problem". They did manage to wipe the memory though.

I don't care how "great" Apple's stuff is, I will never buy another Apple product. If they cannot honor a service agreement, then they don't need my money.

I might find it favorable, but I can't really use it on my own systems until I get my test out of the way. Then, I will give it a fair try and see how it goes.

I will eventually load it on my spare system and see how it goes, but I need to get my Red Hat certification done first.

That really just shows that you really didn't know anything about Ubuntu. Not that it is something to be ashamed of, but I'd expect that you had known that by reading the numerous Ubuntu articles on this site.

I wouldn't quite say I knew *nothing*... I knew it was originally developed on the Isle of Man (and assume it still is), that root does not have a password by default and you have to use sudo to do admin stuff (there's a way around that), I knew there was a lot more configuration that's done for the user right out of the box, apt is the path to updates, there's a growing user base, there's growing application support and the GUI is superior to standard GNOME and KDE (though I did not realize how much so). Oh, and the logo is kinda ugly IMHO. The main surprises to me were the size being so small and the base being Debian. I really thought it was an independently developed distro like Debian, Red Hat, Slackware or SuSE.

Now, all of this said, I have not worked enough with it to make a judgment on what I think of it. It's pretty, sure, but it's configured different than Red Hat and I need a Red Hat system for certification. Once I get done with the cert, I will give it a fair shake.

Its popularity speaks loudly for its support and usability. Can't ignore that.

The funny part of your comment is that I used to play bridge and even have a trophy from the last tournament I played in.