Most people who know me would agree that I’m a Microsoft guy. I love my X-Box. I love Windows XP. SQL Server’s client tools are worth using and Visual Studio is surprisingly powerful. My previous business was an all Microsoft shop. So how in the world did I become a proponent of Linux and Ubuntu? Simple – I needed better compatibility with the tools I used, and neither Windows nor OS X could provide that.

I’m a partner in a company called Glued Ideas that develops fun new technologies and tools for the web. When we planned out how we’d handle documents and software development, we decided to use open source tools like OpenOffice.org, Eclipse, Inkscape and GIMP all being maintained using Subversion. As I used all of these tools it hit me that they worked OK on Windows, but they really worked well on Linux. The reason for this is obvious: most of these programs were originally built to work on Linux.

Another frustration I dealt with was switching between OS X on my Mac and Windows on my laptop. Sure, the software was mostly the same, but enough things were different that I ended up wishing I had a better solution. The solution: switch to Ubuntu on both. I would have all of the software I needed running in it’s native environment AND it would work the same on the Mac as it did on the PC. Hurray!

So there you have it: a fairly pragmatic reason for switching. Am I a fan of Linux, Debian or Ubuntu? Sure. Am I blind to the shortcomings of the system and the available software? Nope. Do I still recommend Windows for people? You bet. Personally, I think Vista is pretty cool, even if it’s got way too much window chrome for it’s own good.

So here’s my question for you… if you’ve made the switch, why?