LINUX
This is one word that sends chills down many people’s spine. Others have propably never heard of it or don’t know what it is. To those who are afraid of it don’t be. Those that never heard of Linux or don’t really know what it is read on.
I will dispense with all the history behind Linux, suffice to say, a student a while back needed an operating system and unable to afford the offerings at the time decided to write his own and put out on the Internet for others to use and improve upon it if they chose. Thus was born the ” Open Source ” type of software development and distribution. Today we are lucky enough to have hundreds if not thousands of applications and operating systems developed by volunteer software developers whose only reward is the satisfaction of creating and allowing others to use it for free.
Linux can mean dozens of variations of a OS that usually are written for a special purpose, or to provide a different enviroment to the user. Linux even comes with different gui desktops unlike windows which really only has one. Linux usually is downloaded from the WEB in iso format which really is a CD or DVD image file. You will need an application like Nero that understands how to burn these files to create a bootable CD or DVD. These ” distros ” usually include many different applications , most open source, that you can install along with the flavour of linux that you chose.
Ubuntu, Red Hat, Suse and Mandriva are only some of the more popular variants of linux that people download from sites like distrowatch . Many versions allow you to ” try before you install “. Just pop the CD or DVD in the player boot from the disk and the entire operating system runs from the CD / DVD without installing anything at all to your harddisk. This type of disk is called a ” Live CD “.
Installing the more popular versions, is as easy or sometime even easier than Windows. Most installations will ask a few questions, you supply usernames and passwords and that’s about it. Linux will do the rest , find all the hardware in your PC, get the harddisk ready to accept linux, ask you what additional software you would like to install and that’s about it. No need to go out and buy additional software like an Office Suite it’s all included in the ” distro ” unlike Windows.
Additionally, Linux will even setup your PC so that you can run Linux or Windows. During the install it will see windows and ask if you would like to create a multi-bootable machine with both OS’s installed. Then at boot time you decide via a menu which OS you wish to boot.
There are two popular desktops that come with Linux: KDE or GNOME. Which should you choose? I find that question very subjective, if you want to have the closest thing to a Windows experience I would suggest KDE. It seems to me anyway, to be much more like Windows than GNOME, but they both very graphical. Also by choosing one desktop over an other some applications are installed by default for that particular desktop.
An other plus for Linux is that it will install and run quite happly on older or lower end PCs without any loss in functionality or user experience. Try running Windows XP on 128MB or 256MB of RAM… can you say crawl, where Linux will be quite happy in that configuration.
So to some it up there is really no reason not to try Linux. It is a very mature and still growing OS which is giving Windows a run for it’s ” money ” .
