Why I use Linux

Recently, this comment was made to my previous post.

Yakiniku said...
Let me be the first to say that you dress funny and Linux stinks!
7:32 AM

In response, I'll explain my reasoning for moving away from Windows.
I had seen and started using KNOPPIX in doing random repair operations on systems for which Windows had fallen apart, and recent drivers with which to rebuild the system hadn't been backed up. Shortly after that, my machine started to exhibit an annoying reboot/shutdown bug in which the machine would perform all the actions of a reboot/shutdown except for actually triggering the hardware action to reboot or shutdown, so the machine would be stuck on a blank desktop with a frozen cursor until I actually pushed either the power or reset button to get the job done. So that's strike 1.
I had further trouble with necessary components of Windows checking out midweek for a long weekend and then deciding not to check back in. So, the only option was to erase the OS partition and reload the operating system. The big massive downside to that is that each reload is pretty much a full day operation.

OS reload, 1 hour.
Retweak settings and reload drivers, 2 hours.
Load "critical updates", 2 hours (dispite broadband).
Reload software and retweak, 4 hours+.

So, in order to get back online and web banking (which is important to me), I'm kept facing 5+ hour turn around times, and 9+ hours for a full reinstall. That's a very big waste of time. So, being annoyed by needing to do web banking and having to spend so much effort each time I needed to reload the OS, I started using KNOPPIX as a temporary measure to do the web banking and Paypal stuff I needed to do instead of spending the time to reload Windows. So, I started flipping and flopping back and forth between Windows and KNOPPIX. I started spending more and more time using KNOPPIX because it was much harder to accidentally break things and have to reload the OS. At one point, I noticed that I had spent 3 weeks using KNOPPIX and hadn't felt any need to go back to Windows. So, between the annoying need to do "critical updates" to do web banking and the annoying reload times, that was strike 2 and 3 for Windows. Since then, I've used several versions of Linux, each with different strengths and weaknesses, but all of them reload quickly, are much more stable than Windows, come with banking level encryption onboard, and and don't suffer annoying reboot/shutdown bugs. This makes all of them far superior to Windows in my mind.

Here's a short list of the Linux distros that I have used:
KNOPPIX - Live CD based Linux. Very handy and useful.
Slax - Like KNOPPIX, but based on Slackware
Debian - The Distribution on which KNOPPIX is based. Also very useful for headless boxes and/or servers
Redhat (v9 and Fedora Core 2) - Good beginner distro
Mandriva - Another good beginner distro, but different.