Over the years in my writings and on radio I often broached the subject as to which team is better, Apple or Microsoft. My approach has been and still is that in reality the one that works best for the type of computing you want to do is the best fit. My motto has always been "there is no one-size-fits-all" in the computer world.

Most others were considerably more zealous about it than I. Nearly weekly I relieved some still smoldering piece of correspondence advocating what to the obviously more informed than I critic was the best operating system.

They would outline to me truths as to the measure of a good operating system. Those four horsemen, Simplicity, Correctness, Consistency and Completeness, these were the measure of a good operating system. And based on these, they would provide as proof that this was why Mac or Windows was better.

In the end I just got tired of the rhetoric and installed Linux.

Now I can already hear the collective gasp from the audience, and a few are even at this time shaking your heads because clearly Linux is just an operating system for hackers, not those who do "real work".

Linux isn’t all that simple. While you can get some boxed installation sets like Redhat 6.1 that make it easier you will still need to know quite a bit about the hardware under the hood of your PC. Linux isn’t all that correct, at least not politically but then that never hurt the President either. Linux isn’t all that consistent. There are a multitude of distributions and if you don’t like one you can even roll out your own. Linux definitely isn’t complete. New releases for the core kernel and various add-ons come out almost daily.

Of course the above paragraph could have just as easily been written with the word Mac-OS or Windows replacing Linux. Let’s face it. No piece of software is ever really all of those things. Apple and Microsoft would have gone out of business years ago if they tried to release perfect software. They have deadlines to meet or they don’t make the necessary money to pay all those people and provide for those third quarter earnings their shareholders expect. Given the number of bugs, inconsistent features, in the shipping versions of their products and the shear size of both the popular operating systems I sometimes envision the product managers at Apple and Microsoft standing over the programmers shoulder screaming, "Does it compile? Great then ship it!"

But alas even though the products are not all that reliable or even useable both of these companies have big marketing machines that have us lined up outside of Egghead Software at midnight anxiously awaiting their next release like a bunch of teen-agers trying to get passes to a Back Street Boys concert.

(Sorry Mark Voyles, couldn’t resist that one <grin>)

And those same marketing machines keep the hype that little old Linux is the worst possible choice for anyone who wants to do serious computing.

Well, I am here to testify folks that in many ways worse may be better.

At this point in time both the current MacOs and Windows will run on less than half of the PC’s that were ever made. Don’t believe me; just try to get Windows 2000 to run on a Pentium 150 with 16mb and a 1gig drive. Linux will, quite nicely I might add.

Linux will also run on that old Mac, or Amiga, or even that Palm Pilot your buddy has. Linux has a bit of simplicity doesn’t exist in most of the bloatware currently stocking the shelves of your local computer superstore in that it’s small and easy to port to all sorts of hardware.

The interesting thing about this is that even though up until recently Linux had less than 50% of the functionality of commercial operating systems it did run on more than 50% of the hardware that was lying around the closets of most geeks. It stands to reason that if you have an operating system that can run on this many machines it will spread like wildfire. And it has.

Linux is the ultimate computer virus.

Oh, and did I mention it was free?

Funny thing about Linux, people seem to be getting rich giving it away. That is to say, the original creator of the operating system Linus Torvolds (http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/~torvalds/) decided to distribute his operating system freely. He gave it to the public. "Play with it, share it, make it better if you can" was the idea. People all over the world took him to heart and a few years later here we are.

What is interesting about the change that is going on now is taking place is that Linux, a free operating system supported by a loose group of folks working together because they enjoy it is starting to enjoy commercial success.

Take Redhat (www.redhat.com) for example. The company makes money distributing Linux and associated applications. Yes, I said the operating system was free but companies can charge for the cost of distributing. You have a choice to either make use of the convenience Redhat has provided by putting a copy of Linux, several hundred applications on a CD and a book into a box for $149.95 or you can go to their website, download all the above and do it yourself. Ain’t the Net wonderful?

If you were thinking that there wasn’t as much software available for Linux as there is for Apple or Mac then I would challenge you to do a Yahoo search for Linux applications sometime. There is free software such as Star-Office from Sun Microsystems that allows you to work with almost any Microsoft file format. Corel WordPerfect has a Linux version. Games like Quake are freely available. There is a whole world of software out there free for the download. To-date I have only found one application that I cannot directly replace, Outlook. I can get plenty of mail readers but my company uses Exchange to transfer e-mail, share schedules and such. I am disappointed that I cannot find an application that will let me connect to an Exchange server and work, though I think it is only a matter of time and until then I thankfully have Outlook Web access.
As for the hardware support, if you are considering trying Linux and want an easy install I would recommend Redhat 6.1 or better. This latest version supports PCMCIA, USB, Sound, and even plug and play. The hardware probe and graphical setup make this distribution of Linux much easier to install on a variety of hardware. I was even able to successfully install it on an old Dell P150 notebook that I thought was at the end of its useful life.

Linux is a great operating system that holds much possibility and you really have no reason not to try it out. With the rate at which PC technology becomes obsolete most all of us have a closet full of junk that would serve nicely as a Linux box.

Go ahead, what are you waiting for?