Saturday, August 11, 2007

The Linux Experiment

A while back I picked up a Dell Workstation that wasn't working. Great system, P-4, fast, but I had to fix it. After it sat around for a year, I finally got motivated to fix it, loaded up an old copy of Windows 2000 I had laying around, and ended up with a cheap, but excellent quality system.

I started to get this idea that I'd like to play around with Linux, and this was a great opportunity to do that. For those who don't know, Linux is a free, open source, operating system. It's used instead of Windows. Where a full copy of Windows XP or Vista might cost $200, Linux is free. Of course, programs made for Windows won't always run on Linux, such as Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office, and so forth. But there are options - Firefox browser, Open Office, and others take their place, and are also free. And the best thing? It's not Microsoft.

If there is any interest in this subject at all (doubtful), leave a comment and I'll start listing some geeky details.

As I move forward with this I'll let you know how things are going in the great Linux experiment.

By the way: This post was made using my new Linux system - Linux Mantriva Gnome, Dell workstation, D-Link wireless PCI network card - I could go on...

3 comments:

Philip. said...

If only I had the balls to move away from Microsoft!

Perhaps when I next buy a PC I will install Linux on the old one to see how it performs.

Anonymous said...

I support moving away from microsoft completely but I'm a moron as far as being able to appreciate techie stuff.

Jon said...

Philip and Gianna - The more I mess with this, the more I realize it will never completely take the place of Windows, at least in my house. I have a large family, and 6 computers on our home network. I was THRILLED to be able to configure one Linux system to connect to a Windows network. If I were to do them all, I'd really need Linux compatible hardware such as routers, wireless adapters, and so forth. It would be a significant investment to move all the hardware to Linux compatible. Then, most software is written only for Windows. You can get alternatives for Linux, but not for everything. So, it's an imperfect system all around, but it sure feels good to take that first step!