Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
It started with Ubuntu 07.10 when a friend showed me a Knoppix Live-CD, and then I Googled about it, found Ubuntu and asked for a CD from ShipIt.
At this time I had an HP laptop with a 1.7 GHz Centrino Mobile processor and 768 DDR Ram. I dual booted it with XP and I loved Ubuntu. I didn't notice big performance gains but I loved the idea of open source software.
The only problem was that I couldn't connect Ubuntu to the Internet. I was then in Central Asia and had to connect to the Internet thru PPPoE protocol or something like that, and it was impossible to do it in Ubuntu, for me at least. So I had my laptop connected to a PC with XP thru a wired connection in order to have Internet on my laptop.
Also, there was a very powerful dictionary that didn't run in Wine, so eventually I used XP most of the time. However, I started to use open source software in XP whenever it was possible, so I installed Thunderbird, Firefox, OpenOffice, etc.
Then I moved to another country in 2009 and bought my current laptop, an Asus K50ij from BestBuy. Ubuntu worked great but the webcam was upside down so I eventually stopped using Ubuntu and used Win7 a lot more. In time, the camera issue was fixed but not in Skype. I Googled a lot and found a transitory solution that fixed the issue, but I had to do it every time I logged into my session*. So, again I eventually started to use Win7 because it didn't have that problem.
I wish I could fix that issue and use Ubuntu 12.04, which I really liked. I liked also Lubuntu and Bodhi Linux because I could see significant performance gains, but the issue in Skype appeared on those distros as well.
Right now I use only Win7 and I hope to have more luck when I buy another laptop. I don´t think it will be in the near future because my laptop works great so far, and laptops have become very expensive in my country. It´s a pity because I don´t use Russian a lot anymore and there are places like Wictionary and others that do the job very well. However, Skype is a must for me now. My friends don't use Google Talk, which could be a replacement for Skype, so it's Win7 for the moment but I am looking forward to going back to Ubuntu. Also, I don´t like to dual boot.
* Gord notes: This web page may have the solution: http://pc-freak.net/blog/how-to-fix-upside-down-inverted-web-camera-laptop-asus-k51ac-issue-on-ubuntu-linux-and-debian-gnu-linux/ But don't access it in Windows – the site might contain malware.