martago - in the last two years, this was my experience:
two years ago (almost) - took the windows 7 original dvd and a hammer (i swear it's true) - smashed it in little pieces. it was similar to an orgasm - very satisfying!! Immediately after that removed ubuntu which I was using for few days and installed linux mint because I hated unity - liked it very much and for a few months used it alongside some proprietary shit (like skype)
a year and a half ago (give or take) - started to distrohop like a drunk rabid rabbit and rejected any and all proprietary applications. At first it was hard but soon I learned how to live without it and to install "opensource" (i was an opensource advocate then) alternatives for everything. I really liked Xubuntu. Learned the most using debian. hard and sublime debian...
3 months ago - read a book on stallman and decided not to ever again use anything but free software (so no blobs, no proprietary drivers). Used gnewsense a couple of weeks. Then installed Trisquel. And I will tell you - I didn't have to sacrifice anything this time - I do anything I need with Trisquel and there is nothing that I could do with proprietary software that I can't do now..
the point of this monolog - freedom takes some research and sacrifice but in the long run you will have freedom without having to sacrifice anything for you will have learned how to do everything you need using only free software!!
:)
