I need a break from Windows

I need a break from windows. It is driving me up the wall. It is not that it is bad, or misbehaving. In fact it has been quite good stability wise. I was quite enjoying working with it at first . I'm just over windows.
I was so glad the day I first left it. I felt that it was such a milestone in my understanding.

I remember when I first started learning DOS commands. I was so excited, it was such an amazing experience. After about 3-4 days I said to my partner this is so cool, there should be an entire operating system that you can control like this. He laughed...

A couple of days later I had my first experiences of a command line only system: FreeBSD. I loved it, I've never turned back. My understanding and knowledge has grown so much since then. It helps when you have an open operating system. In the BSD's and Linux's you can learn how everything works by read, writing and running the code. You can add to or change the code and most software is free.

At the moment I'm just frustrated because I don't like not knowing what my system it is doing. I can't just bring a command line up and check everything out. Opening webpages, downloading, and all other internet based tasks are slow. Things are constantly happening on the system, yet when I look into it windows reports that it is doing nothing :).

Plus my main whine is that everything is about money and locking you in. Any problem you can think of can be solved by buying this program or plug-in/add-on or whatever. I am so over it.