Did you ever leave Linux, then return?

[oz]

It's a well known fact that most computer users that have been introduced to Linux and then end up leaving it for one reason or another wind up returning to it at some point in the future, some much sooner than others.

If you've left Linux in the past but then returned, how long did it take you to come home?

[Segfault]

Not very long, I started with Red Hat 5. Having hard time understanding it, and it came with KDE beta version (0.97?) which was incredibly buggy, I dropped it after two months or so. Half a year later I picked up Debian and never looked back.

[rokytnji]

When I powered up my first box (wife bought it for me) I had a hate relationship with computers. Did not like the fact that law-enforcement could now run my drivers license through a swiper and find out everything he needs to know about me besides other agencies as well.

I never learned Windows so my mindset was like these kids below.

The Blog of Helios: Uncluttered Minds Do Not Care...

So I never contemplated having anything to go back to. I do boot Windows 2000 pro though to tune motorcycles (on one laptop and one Desktop COSTS). Linux has turned me into a hardware computer junkie now. So I guess my mind is not so uncluttered now. I have a Linux mindset. I spent days looking for a open source way to get wireless support working in a 2.6.32 mepis smp kernel that had rtl8187se.ko removed from kernel. took me 3 days to try ndiswrapper (never used it before) before I got my persistent AntiX 8.5 4 gig flash SD card to have rtl8187se module load and stick on bootup. But because of my Linux state of mind. Using a Windows Driver never entered my mind first. Instead I thought of this last.

[Farmer Mike]

About 7 years. I had played with Red Hat 7.2 back around 1999-2000. I broke it and left off for a while. I looked at picking up where I left off with Red Hat 9 but was too busy to do so. Finally in June 2006 I had the hard drive on my Win98 box fail. I replaced the hard drive but couldn't see the point of putting Windows 98 back on it. I tried Red Hat 9 as a proof of concept, and when it worked went to Fedora Core.

[MikeTbob]

I had managed to install Redhat-5.2 Deluxe Edition many moons ago.....Somehow I toasted my CPU on that machine, I mean it was actually smoking! I had no other machine to use so I had to leave Linux alone for about 6 months. It was a bad six months...and here I am now!

[peteh]

No. Apart from dual booting for a while, I never have left.

[techieMoe]

I've left and come back dozens of times over the years. I used Linux almost exclusively through my last 2 years at the university, and immediately after I went to Windows XP to play all the games I didn't have time or money to get to while in college. That lasted a few years and was my most prolific period for trying out distributions (even though I didn't tend to keep using them once the rants were done).

I've used Windows 7 at home almost exclusively since it came out, and as of this last week had to scrap it for practical reasons (I was working on a project online and it kept dumping me to a Blue Screen in the middle of a thought. Quite distracting.)

I'm sure I'll find some pressing need for work or otherwise at some point that will have me flip-flopping back again. I use what I need at that time.

[Bemk]

I tried Linux about 3 years ago on my birthday, the first time and I installed it. My dad didn't really like it, even though it was in fact my own laptop (which I purchased of my own money). When Windows gave me 5 blue screens in a day, I re-installed Linux again which was half a year later.

My dad is still somewhat against it, as he keeps thinking that Linux is incompatible with the world. I am running Linux now most of the time and even at school I haven't got any issues. The issues will start appearing at the moment I will be required to use MS Visual Studios, next year.

[Rubberman]

Never left it per se, but did continue working with both Linux and Windows until about 3 years ago when I just got sick and tired of paying the Microsoft Tax and dealing with their egregious behavior toward their customers. So, I said "fark that", and migrated totally to Linux for all but one application that I have to run that only works on Windows (my stock/option trading software). So, that I run in a virtual machine. I no longer run Windows natively, although I do have a Windows boot disc for my laptop, which hasn't been fired up since I last needed to pull data from my old Palm Pilot before I put it up for sale.

[coopstah13]

I bought red hat linux 9 in 2002 or so when I built my first computer

Didn't last very long since I couldn't play games on it and was having a real hard time with the rpms since it had no package manager I don't think

Started using debian at sarge in 2004 to host a counterstrike server

Been using linux ever since