After I wrote in my article, Living free with Linux: 2 weeks without Windows, about the trouble I had with installing and updating Linux applications, I received literally hundreds of helpful responses offering me advice on how to handle things better. Here are seven top tips from the responders to help newbies like me.

Can a dedicated Windows user make it for two weeks using only Linux? Preston Gralla tried it and lived to tell this tale.

Let me introduce you to Linux. A free Operating System that can replace Windows for a very good fee. FREE. Yes you heard me...FREE, NADA, ZIP, ZERO, ZILCH! What is the catch? Well you may have to give up a few things like native gaming but even that is a minor point.

It’s the last day of the month once again. To our avid readers, you may already know that it is time once again to honor an über geek whose works and life changed the course of technology, particularly the field of computing. So without further a do, let’s give importance to a very famous free software evangelist, the living legend himself, Richard M. Stallman.

"Over the past eighteen months, the music industry has almost universally turned its back on Digital Restrictions Management. [...] We've just updated our Guide to DRM-free Living to reflect these developments, but we know there's a lot more that can be added. Please let us know about ..."

Pain-free networking is the promise that the NetworkManager project makes. This week we will introduce NetworkManager and its features (and drawbacks).

It has always bothered me that this site and my experiences stay inside of Linux so much, when the whole site is about "free and open source software". I've only dabbled in non-Linux FOSS with live CDs and such, but I'm ready to install a real BSD and stick with it for awhile. So, the recently-acquired box with Windows-XP will now be sharing space with a daemon.

Like most people, I have been using Windows for the most part of my life. However, about 2 years ago in late 2007, my Apple curiosity got the better of me. Since then, I’ve been bouncing between a Windows notebook and the Mac. Until about 5 weeks ago.

I’m a Windows Guy. I work on a Windows network for a living. I’ve been a network engineer for over a decade. It’s not that I’m opposed to Linux or OSX, I’m just more familiar with XP and Vista so I tend to use it for everything. Some of you might be laughing already, but I like Windows.