In the graphical section, KDE provides the best "different" experience (kind of).
But KDE is the most like Windows (or can be). With a few quick settings it can be as different as Unity or practically a clone of Windows. In any case, know your audience. I'm just saying that Unity, unlike Gnome Shell, is actually functional.
Unity is Mac-ish (I suppose - I have seen Macs only in shops) and I think its utility is only in appealing to those who switch from a Mac.
Or to those who'd switch to a Mac but don't feel like buying one of those overpriced computers? Perhaps. It does follow its paradigm quite closely, from the window buttons to the global menu to the way task switching works (Alt+Tab for applications; Alt+` for windows within applications).
Otherwise the only truly different experience is to do everything in the console.
Not necessarily. I can actually add Cygwin to the list of programs I used on Windows (with PuTTYcyg) because it offered a significantly more powerful shell than Windows. These days that's no longer true because of PowerShell, although the fact that the GNU utils in many ways work better in a Unix-like environment remains, but back during the Windows 9x days PowerShell was still a long way off.
To me it feels Xfce is the best desktop environment to make the switch.
However, Xfce (and Cinnamon) are more like classic Windows. I'd argue it's simply an extremely effective paradigm, but people looking for something else might at least initially be more pleased with Unity.
Hm? There's a DEB available for both 32-bit and 64-bit Linux. Unfortunately, it's not immediately obvious to me how to satisfy the dependencies. In that sense the Windows version is actually more accessible.
Otter Browser is an attempt to recreate some of Opera's interface, excluding some of the more recent regressions. The first binaries are now available <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/otter-browser/">for download[/url].
Besides using sock-puppets to keep resurrecting himself, of course.
I'd call that getting a fresh start, or trying to. The thing is, on this system we can ban a user for e.g. a week, so it's not an all or nothing proposition.
On my keyboard layout the answers are different (and ± can't be typed at all I believe), but on the whole I find it a more elegant solution than switching keyboard layouts or customizing them on the third (Alt Gr) level. In any case, you caught me somewhat unprepared.
I agree that would be a good idea, but I'd like to leave the core alone as much as possible. Plus this particular issue doesn't seem very important; there's the "personal text" field if your age or year of birth is something you want to get off your heart.
And where's the beginning? I mean, for us, mere mortals that don't have a clue about what are you saying? Why should I install Linux operative system in the first place?
If you're happy with Windows, you can safely stick with it. If you're curious, I'd recommend trying a LiveCD of one or all of the following. NB A LiveCD means no installation (and thus no risk) is necessary to try it out.
Doesn't Linux gives you much more work and much less available software? Etc...
More work—I'd say only if you want it to. Less available software, probably, but most software is crap anyway. I was already using Filezilla, Inkscape, Pidgin, LibreOffice (as OpenOffice), SciTE, Workrave, Opera, and several other multi-platform programs, so in my case making the final switch was fairly uneventful.
Of course, if you require MS Office, Solidworks, or other MS-exclusive applications for your work, you will need a Windows installation. In my case, the computer software I needed most the past few months was Python, which comes with most Linux distros by default. That is, it actually made my life significantly easier than installing Python on Windows would've been. Soon I'll have to use R, which doesn't come preinstalled but I guarantee it will be significantly easier to install for me than for a user of Windows.*
What are the benefits over windows? Why do you use mysterious terms no one uses?
It's all Unix terminology. Most of it predates even MS-DOS.
Benefits are personal. One benefit in my case is that Windows doesn't exactly make it easy to put e.g. all your user data on one particular partition or HDD, but most Linux distros tend to set it up that way by default.
But speaking of the last one, Alt Gr + what produces ™? Alt Gr + what produces ¥? How do you type ±? Why does z lead to æ and Æ? It makes certain things simpler and more intuitive. Compose, t, m = ™; Compose, =, y = ¥; Compose, +, - = ±; Compose, a, e = æ.
Even my somewhat vague statement might already be too precise for identity theft purposes and the like. If I call my bank, they ask me a few verification questions including my birthday.
My birthday might be out there—because of e.g. MySpace being hacked if nothing else, but I don't intend to make such things easier than they already are.
It doesn't actually show your birthday in public, but I'm not going to recommend you enter it or anything. I could view it, and I suppose that's not so bad assuming you trust me, but it this place somehow got hacked the attacker might walk away with all the complete birthdates—although I reckon the risk of that happening is far greater with the likes of MySpace and Facebook.
vnstat is really useful to get an overview of the network volume use on a particular computer. For more precise information of overall use you need to set up something where your router pushes stats to your computer or your computer retrieves them from your router.
Change Use quick reply on topic display to "Show, on by default" (that's now the default for new users). I'm not really sure why the default was to have it hidden; at the bottom of a thread it hardly gets in the way or anything.
I'm just saying that Unity, unlike Gnome Shell, is actually functional. 
