Linux
... because a PC is a terrible thing to waste

Linux was created by Linus Torvalds, then an undergraduate student at the University of Helsinki in Finland. After much, much, much work by countless developers around the world, this home-made OS for PCs has hit the limelight, as the only (credible!) competition faced by Microsoft Windows (known as The Herald of The Evil Empire by countless hackers, see here). Competition is good; ask Charles Darwin for details.

Just a bit of warning, though - Linux is a hacker's OS. You will have to learn much if you're migrating from Windows to Linux. You will have to understand your computer better than you do now. You will have to work at things which would happen automagically in Windows - and you will have to strive on if you want to get your camera/mouse/CD-ROM/hard-disk working, knowing that a simple reboot, reformat, and reinstall of Windows will solve all your problems. Most importantly, you will have ExtraOrdinary Power at your hands - a simple mistake in a tiny text file, and all that power could chop your hard-disk into tiny pieces that will fall out from the bottom of your computer (or something equally scary). The C Programming Language, it is said, gives you enough rope to hang yourself. With Linux, the rope becomes a chainsaw.

All it takes, naturally, is practice. A little while screwing around with computer internals, man-ing (type 'man man' into any Linux/Unix shell prompt to see what I mean), and a great many words with your local Linux guru, and soon you too will understand. And suddenly that chainsaw will be a toy; something you can use to chop up trees in your spare time.

Of course, there are all those many things you will have to give up on. Paying tons of money for programming tools, scientific applications, databases and web servers, for instance. The Blue Screen Of Death. User support? If you have a problem you can't solve, you can Google for it - generally, you'll find it on a discussion board somewhere. There are those who argue that learning a bit more about your computer isn't entirely a bad thing either. Happy Hacking!

For more information, check out:

Registered Linux User #330418 This webpage was written in VIM
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