I don't intend to give up but will try to get more familiar with Linux in general by forcing myself to use it more.
Since I have three PC's I always tend to do things on the Win 7 machine out of habit but I figure if I spend more time actually using Linux things should become a bit clearer.
I'd have to admit I'm probably not the average student either as I struggle with attention deficit so sometimes when I read articles it just starts to run together and become one big jumble. That's where seeing the proper code before me tends to help but I can sure see your point in people abusing that method.
I help out at a couple of places with PC issues (Windows based) and I've lost track of how many times someone has asked me to give them the overclock values for their computer so they could run it faster. If only it were that simple.
As for the BOINC thing, well to each his own I guess, but speaking for myself I got involved with it because I've had so many I know affected by Cancer and I view distributed computing as a method by which I can do something positive in the way of contributing, yet have a modicum of control over where my resources go.
I don't believe in turning PC's off so they might as well be doing something useful.
I also have a large family and have built so many computers for them that it bothered me how much money I invested in hardware to simply have it used for MSN or some other form of social networking.
This way I feel my investment is doing something for the common good and I always focus on medical based projects.
Another thing I've noticed is that since most of these PC's are in other locations I can view the output of each respective computer through BOINC stats and often tell by looking at that whether it's time to do some maintenance on it or not.
In so far as operating systems go I will always have to keep at least one windows machine as long as I help out in that department but ultimately I'm sick of MS and license agreements and wish to do whatever I can to stay away from them.
I've already removed MS Office, Outlook Express, and disabled IE on everything I own and use only Open Office, Thunderbird, and FireFox so it's a start.
