I have been Liinux only on my personal machines for something approaching 20 years. On family, friends and business machines I think I wiped my last dual boot around 2003. It is good that I no longer remember exactly as it means the last traces of time as measured by M$ have now faded into the mist!

I do remember that the last machine I bought new ~2005 came with XP and I initially installed it as dual boot with Mandrake 9 or 10. Although I recall booting to it a few times, I never even configured networking on XP as I wanted to NEVER AGAIN experience add-on M$ exploits, the built-ins were bad enough... So although it was there, it was never used - at all.

Shortly thereafter I took some delight in reformatting the entire drive and installing Slackware. I am typing from that machine right now, now running Slackware 14.1!

I now run mostly reclaimed hardware and still take some delight every time I wipe a hard drive that comes with M$ malware on it, without even enough interest or curiosity to explore it - kind of the ultimate rebuff to a company and product that worked hard to earn my disdain - absolute non-interest in their offerings!

All that said, it was surprising to find that I do indeed have a W7 partition still intact on a multi-boot, multi-disk machine! In answering a multi-disk with lilo thread here on LQ I recently discovered a W7 stanza in the lilo config that I had forgotten was there and don't remember setting up! The partition was still intact, having been resized with gparted. According to my own notes from 4 years ago I did that to test lilo configs, not to save W7. I do not recall ever booting to it, but a quick test showed that it does boot, at least long enough to find and click the shutdown thingy...

Perhaps I'll reformat that soon, I can always use the space! Or perhaps I'll leave it installed, but never booted as a different kind of rebuff - here it is, no-cost, installed, functional, ready to use... and still of no interest at all... I find that kind of satisfying!

On that same machine, in addition to Slackware 32 and 64 installs, I now run a FreeBSD instance - which is frequently used, and plan to increase my BSD use in the coming year. I do not plan to replace Slackware/Linux with a BSD, but to have it as a ready alternate if the Linux landscape changes in ways I prefer to avoid.

So I would still claim to be Linux-only, but with an interest in BSD, but more importantly - M$ free and sober!

I used linux only and occasionally the BSDs. The only drawback to this is, I have to do some research on hardware before I buy it. Linux is not in bed with the manufacturers like M$ is.

Linux has been good on new hardware for me. FreeBSD not nearly as much.

Yes, linux hardware support has improved, but on rare occasions there will be issues. Last year or so, I bought a Dell laser printer and I tried everything to get it to work. As a last resort, I went to dell's website and they had a driver for it and to my amazement it worked. If it hadn't, my only course was to return the printer.

If you are of the sort who builds their computers, you will be doing the research anyway.

I only research on specialty hardware I never used before in linux. Other brands and hardwares that worked in linux fr me in the past, I don't research it that much.

I never used Windows. Before I jumped over to GNU/Linux I used Mac OS (from version 7.1 until OS X 10.1). Still use OS X at work though, not by my choice mind you!

At home there is no machine (not even virtual) running Windows.

Yeah Linux hardware has gotten way better since I started using it 13 years ago.

Home desktop and travel laptop run Debian Jessie, and my work computer is Centos 6. At work we are 90% Linux, 5% Windows and 5% Mac. Love that we hardly have to touch Windows machines though..

On the plus side, I still have some old PCI cards that still work today in linux. Whereas in windows, older hardware support has a shorter lifespan with each window's upgrade. Either because MS or the manufacturer have ceased support for the dated hardware.

I've had a couple printer/scanner combos. That's usually the hardware not supported to well for me. I've been able to use the previous model's drivers until current drivers came out.

To be honest, I am still leery about buying combos and I always avoid them. It's best to buy them separately. If I do decide to buy a combo again in the future, I would visit the manufacturer's website first prior to buying and see if it support linux.

I started using Linux around the time when I registered here, so it's been about 2 years. At first I was just dual-booting with Lubuntu on one laptop, but today I hardly ever use Windows. Like most other people here, I keep it for Windows-only programs. In my case, the software that my school's robotics club uses doesn't have a Linux version, and from what I've found online Wine will run it, but it can't talk to the robot (which defeats the whole purpose). However, next year they're switching the hardware next season (from Lego Mindstorms to Android), so that may no longer be an issue...

We have a HP Photosmart C4240 printer/scanner/copier that's been in use for over 10 years. Great Linux support, the hplip driver gives me more options than the Windows driver did! And xsane seems to work fine, though I rarely need to use it.

I did, I was certified microsoft system administrator but after few years I started linux. After that till now I am not using windows at all In my opinion it was just wasting time. But still some companies require windows and in mixed environment it is useful. Now on my desktop and laptop running fedora and for servers i use CentOS i feel free an fine There is still one small detail, visio. dia is not bad but visio is better i think. if someon will suggest alternative it will be great.

Assuming the NSA keeps a watch-list of suspicious types who do not fervently support the MS establishment, I just want to say that, although I have three linux boxes, I do have a 1996 Dell running Windows 95. I turned it on just last month and it still boots! I hope that counts for something when the NSA comes to take me away.