microsoft windows

Here is an update of what I've decided:

I use Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a home desktop OS because that is what we use at work. Also Red Hat is very strong if you are going to run it as a server - not as a workstation. If you do programming with non-gcc compilers, like Intel's compiler, Red Hat is a good distro because it has strong compiler support (by Intel). Some people have trouble getting Intel's compiler to work right on a Debian based system like Xandros. But SUSE would be fine in this regard. Also, Red Hat gives virtually no worthwhile phone or email support. But I doubt the other distros give any worthwhile support either. You can also get about the same thing from Red Hat by getting their free Fedora edition. Red Hat's new Wide Open magazine will help you learn more about this and other Red Hat packages, but again you won't get any hand holding. I'm not sure they even print a decent book any more, just giving you that annoying pdf file edition that you have to scroll back and forth and never know where you are at or where anything is and can't make any notes in.

I'm thinking now for a desktop distro for the Windows type lover, Xandros might be the best distro. It doesn't change very often, and they have concentrated on the desktop, rather than on the server like Red Hat. However, Xandros only works on 386 architecture, whereas Red Hat supports AMD64, Opteron, Itanium, and other CPU chips. So don't get it if you are a engineering type person who is dreaming about doing serious 64 bit computation at home someday, or a gamer who whats 64 bits.

SUSE falls somewhere in between. I think as a desktop product it is a bit better than Red Hat. It has fairly good non-gcc compiler support. It works well as a server, but not as strong as Red Hat.

If you purchase this particular type of WS, you are going to lose $100.00, there is not great differences between Redhat 9.0
and Fedora Core 1,2, anybody is able to get them for free,Rednat support is lousy,it is like talking to a wall,you have to provide your own support, the updating procedures are lousy too,and they can be obtained thru the internet, you will be getting less features than in the old personal and professional box,4032 packages compared to 6,632 from Fedora, it is a big difference, no more books, no more DVD disks. It is time to move to another distro like Suse or Mandrake that even provide better customer service, if you do not like their products, you obtain an RMA, it can be returned to them, win RedHat PWS, your money is gone to the trash, it is not the old Professional set, it is the personal set with network updating, it is not their enterprise software neither, it is only named like that, but it is the same old personal set that will cost you more money, and if you want to read about it, you must spend $55.00 more dollars to buy a book from a book vendor

After purchasing this software I quickly found out
that you are your own 'support' person. If some
application does not work, then you have to search
on the internet, or user forum. I don't know about
you but I do NOT trust complete strangers on the
internet. It is like inviting someone into your
house you don't know. If you want to use Adobe you
can forget it because they do not make any software
for Linux. And several other popular Windows apps that
are not there. So in the end I wound up buying a MAC, at
least there is software available and MS Office!