Conclutions

The Vista install was fairly straight forward after I figured out that it will have a sulk if it isn't being installed on HDD0. Although if you didn't know that, because it gives no information about why the selected partition isn't suitable for a install partition, you would be buggered. Once started it is fairly fool proof, but really really slow and frustrating because it gives no information of where it is up to and how much longer it will take.

The Linux install process was relatively fast and easy, it informed the user about what was happening and gave an indication about how much time was left. The difficulties encountered with the graphics problem would have turned off a Linux newbie instantly, but in saying that it is unlikely a newbie would have previous drivers installed to conflict the way I did.

The update process in Vista is annoying because you have to get some updates restart, get some more restart, get some more and then you are done. Linux on the other hand gets all the required updates and installs them, it happens once and that is it....the continuing updates happen just like in Vista, but when it comes to the initial updates Linux wins hands down.

So after installing both systems, Linux took about half the time, was less frustrating and on install has useful programs installed (office, graphics editing programming languages etc...) Vista has really nice media software, looks better (until I get around to installing Beryl and Compiz) and the graphics driver is just better...ATI catalyst control for windows is much better then the corresponding version for linux.

So both have their advantages but I would much rather install Ubuntu any day of the week.

P.S. Vista = gaming, and for that I can forgive it many flaws. when Linux has the same support for games as windows OS's do then that will be a great day.