The right to choose an Operating System

I’m trying very hard to avoid becoming a rabid Linux advocate but it’s really not easy sometimes.   I have more than a few reasons to feel resentful towards the folks at Microsoft.   Two years ago, when I bought the Windows machine I’m using now I didn’t want XP and Win98SE was no longer an option so I settled for Win2K Pro even though it was double the price of XP.   I bought a Sony DVDROM/CD-RW drive with it which came with NTI CD Maker Gold.   A few months later the NTI software wouldn’t function after I’d visited Microsoft Update.   I finally got it working by reinstalling the software.   The same problem has occurred several times since then but after last week’s update the NTI software wouldn’t run and reinstalling it didn’t fix it.   I sent an email to NTI but they didn’t bother to answer and I won’t bother trying to get help from Microsoft.   My wife hates to visit MS Update because many of her meticulous settings get whacked and she has to spend a couple of days putting everything back the way she wants it.   A few years back when I was learning to manipulate graphics on my Win98SE machine it took me over two weeks to learn how to add compression to a jpeg.   It’s easy to do, but I couldn’t find a tutorial or anyone who’d explain the process to me.   Six months after going onto the web with a "shiny new" win98 machine (the first computer I’d ever owned that had a modem) the computer was so full of malware that it finally wouldn’t even boot up.   I had to pay through the nose to have someone clean it up.

About a year ago we acquired a used 1.7 GHz HP Pavilion which was running an extremely corrupted copy of Windows XP.   Rather than have it fixed we decided to install Linux on it.   We tried several popular distributions before settling on PCLinuxOS, which was very easy to install, works beautifully, is intuitive and wonderfully user friendly.   The first time I had a "newbie" question I turned on the IRC client, by clicking the icon on the desktop, typed in a made-up nickname, clicked where it said to click and less than ten minutes later I had an answer to my question.   That happened at about 3:30 in the morning (try that with Windows, go ahead).   I was online instantly with our first Linux machine and by now we have three Linux machines, the youngest of which is about six months old.   None of them have anti-virus, anti-spyware or anti- malware software installed but the next problem we have with a virus, spyware or malware on these machines will be the first problem we’ve had.   I’ve installed Debian Sarge (the stable version of Debian) on several 300 to 500 MHz computers and it too has worked beautifully every time.   Yes, I had a tough time learning to set up the sound and get the monitor resolution I wanted but in every case I was able to find tutorials and/or helpful people who were willing to answer my questions and patiently walk me through the process.

My wife has observed that our first Windows machines were "Turnkey" systems, set up, tweaked and ready to use when we got them.   I built two of our Linux machines myself (from parts I scrounged and/or bought on eBay) and had to learn how to install and tweak the operating systems myself.   If we’d bought any of these three machines in their current state they’d have been a dream come true for us.   Every Linux distribution I know of becomes a better operating system on an almost daily basis because the developers are constantly working to improve it.

There’s no way we can afford another XP machine, let alone Vista but I know in complete certainty that I can drop a CD in my Win2K computer (1.8 GHz w/512 MB of RAM), turn it on and in less than two hours reboot it as a Linux machine that I can grow into knowing it will get better all the time.   The only choice I have to make is which distro and I know enough about Linux distros by now to know what I want (probably PCLinuxOS but I want to try Freespire, Mandriva and OpenSuse first).   I had to buy Windows fifteen years ago because there was no way I could afford a Mac; I had no other choice.   Today, I still can’t afford a Mac or Windows but I have dozens of alternatives that I can easily afford.

This is a good thing.

I can use what I’ve learned to offer more choices to others and that’s an even better thing.

Don Crowder