After almost 3 years of using only Linux on my primary computer at home, I am now running Windows XP Professional. I had several reasons for venturing back into the belly of the beast:

• A lot of the applications I like from Linux are also available on Windows (Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice.org to name three).
• As the "tech support" guy for my family and friends, I felt lost in Windows XP, where things were just that slightly different from Windows 2000 (the last Microsoft OS I ran).
• I like to play games to burn off steam and I was tired of fighting with Cedega to get them to work.
• DVD burning is much easier in Windows, especially with applications like Nero.

There will definitely be tradeoffs though: Windows XP is nowhere as friendly to developers who do not use .NET or Java. I am not looking forward too much to wrestling with Perl and R on XP. Windows XP is not a hacker's OS, in the original sense of the word "hacker" anyway.

Let us see how long this episode lasts.