I think you must've misread somewhere, because nobody mentioned Macbooks. JMad was asking about Linux on a PC notebook, which doesn't save you any money because they all come with Windows anyway and you're unlikely to find a "bare" notebook or one with Linux pre-installed that's worth a darn and going to save you more than a token amount of money. And since He already mentioned using free/open-source apps (those exist on Windows too ya know) he isn't going to save money there either.
Like I said, if he's curious about Linux, I'd say go for it, but don't do it thinking it's going to magically save you a bunch of money somehow. In fact, one of my biggest knocks on Linux as a desktop OS is that there's no compelling reason to use it - almost every great 'nix app has been ported to Windows and works great. There are also several great free Windows apps that are Windows-only (which of course can mostly be used in 'nix via WINE).
I was expanding on his theme: My response to Jmad was one line. Thought Nathan or someone mentioned Macs, but whatever.
Let me know when you can run graphical apps on a remote server in windows without remote desktop bullcrap. Until then, Linux and Mac are quite necessary. The LaTeX implementation for Windows just plain sucks. CDParanoia is Linux only and legally needs to stay that way. For those that don't know, CDParanoia does it's damnedest to extract audio from CD's that are pretty heavily scratched. It's salvaged so many CD's for me. Three reasons off the top of my head. Four: creating and compiling C code. Why the hell would you do that in Windows?
But I run Windows, and lots of open source software on it. Some of my applications are BETTER implemented in Windows. I'm working on an upgrade to 7 right now - but the damn open-source GParted is taking a year to move enough free space to my Windows partition to install it because windows magically ate several GB of free space as is its wont.
Anyone upgrade from Vista to 7? How long did it take? Might hold off since this repartition is taking forever and my other laptop doesn't have enough juice to websurf, play music, and work at the same time.
