First off, this is as much as I know about Unix: its an operating system. Now, I know it goes a tad deeper than that, so first off, what exactly is Unix? Next, im freakin sick of everything microsoft crashing on me, so Id like to make Unix my OS, but I dont want to lose anything but internet explorer, outlook express, and windows XP. I have a lot of games, even more applications, norton internet security (which i just love), media players, photo viewers, ect. I want all of this to work, i just dont want windows. Is this at all possible?

oh yea, and im also looking for networking services such as printer sharing, file sharing, etc. thanks for your help.

first read the rules, one of which is no MS bashing, in so many words.

second, you cant keep programs like internet explorer, outlook etc, because those are applications that run on windows.

there are equivalent (and what some would say better) programs available. such as mozilla, kmail (my favorite). you just have to got to search around.

theres a good chance that most of your games will not run on a unix operating system. ID software however does release binaries for linux, so games such as quake, and doom3 (binary to be released soon) will run on linux.

all networking solutions are possible with unix operating systems. the internet was built on unix!

If you decide to use Linux, you can use applications like Wine and Crossover Office that will allow you to run M$ Office, and a lot of other Windows applications under Linux. WineX will allow you to run certain games.

Look here for Crossover Office (commercial).

Look here for Wine.

Cheers
ZB

Unix is used mostly on company servers. And people usually use it using a command line. And the main function of Unix is usually as a server. It doesn't crash, but one of the reasons it doesn't crash is it doesn't have as many layers over its core function, and people don't go around installing useless non-business software on it.

Linux is very similar to Unix, except it is used more often as a personal OS, and has several GUI interfaces to it. However, I doubt many of your games or office apps will work on it. It will be even more of a pain finding video codecs or even playing DVDs on a Linux system.

For personal use, I suggest you stick with windows. If it is unstable, I bet its being strangled by spyware and viruses and worms.

If that is really your problem, let me know and I can tell you how to fix it.

a lot of what youve just said is simply not true. "unix" has become a generic term to describe a "flavor" or type of operating system. linux is a unix-like OS. some may disagree, but for all practical usages linux is unix.

most gui interfaces for linux, are also available on several other unix operating systems.

about the video codecs, go to the mplayer website, or the xine website. pick which one you like best, and install it from source. thats all. simple. and they will both play whatever video file you throw at them.