Whether or not a UNIX-like system is for you is really for you to
decide.  I'm sure that many here (including myself) are willing to help
more people get started---especially with NetBSD---so you should at least
find the atmosphere friendly.  Welcome, and good luck.

I'm not Japanese, but I hope that you will find my comments of some value.


I don't know what kind of trouble MS-WINDOWS has given you, but I've
always disliked the way that MS-WINDOWS tends to second-guess the user,
making it harder to get stuff done.  I found that it often guessed wrong
and greatly irritated me.  If that's the kind of trouble that MS-WINDOWS
has given you, you will probably find NetBSD a great relief.

As to whether people use NetBSD in desktops: I do.  I can't speak for
anyone else in particular, but I'm sure that many others do.  You can see
some evidence of this from the ``NetBSD in Action'' page (off of the
NetBSD Gallery, from the NetBSD main web-page).  I use NetBSD for tasks
ranging from programming to web-browsing, to printing, to playing games.


As far as vendors and buying a complete box with manuals, bear in mind a
few things:

 (a) The OS is free, runs on a wide variety of hardware (including the
     common PC), and is fairly easy to install.  Make sure that if you
     pay a premium for a complete box, you get your money's worth.

 (b) NetBSD comes with a set of man-pages.  Although these are not always
     ideal introductions to various topics, they are ``the system
     manual''.  If you have a nice printer, you can arrange to have the
     man-pages printed out.  (They are provide in electronic form, but
     printing them isn't terribly difficult.)

     You might also look at Federico Lupi's NetBSD guide (available in
     Italian and English):

     http://www.mclink.it/personal/MG2508/netbsd/netbsd.html
     http://www.mclink.it/personal/MG2508/nbsdeng/netbsd.html

     (The former is Italian, the latter is English.)

     ...and the FreeBSD project has some good documentation online,
     much of which can be applied towards understanding NetBSD.

 (c) If you want to use a UNIX-like system as your desktop machine,
     you will almost certainly have to learn a bit about system
     administration, sooner or later.  Not to mention that you may
     wish to upgrade your hardware.  The more that you delegate
     system setup to some vendor, the less sound your footing will
     be for maintaining your system on your own.  Unless you have
     special needs, or no time to learn about NetBSD before using it,
     you might consider setting it up for yourself on a computer that
     you already own (or on one that you select for yourself).

In any case, good luck finding what you want and need.  Hopefully, you
will find it with NetBSD.


  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about." --rauch@eecs.ukans.edu