As I said, my first exposure to the linux operating system was in the IRC channels on the undernet network. And it seemed to me that the people who were talking about linux (at this point in time, linux was still early in its 1.2.x kernel phase) were the people who were very knowledgeable about computers in general, and seemed very well-informed about operating systems in particular. I looked up to these people–felt a kinship with them. And more importantly, I felt intrigued enough about this freak of programming, linux, that I just had to look at it some more. Now, having come from the hellish days of DOS 5-6.22/Windows 3.xx, Windows 95 was a very nice improvement. It seemed much better-designed. At the very least, it made some things easier. But it was still so obviously not anything close to what I thought my computer should look and feel like. So I went to a local college book store and found the last copy of Linux Unleashed. I forget who wrote it, but it came with Slackware’s distribution of Linux–kernel 1.2.13. I was living large.

Having not had any exposure to UNIX before, Linux was quite a shock. But I was determined, and stuck to it. And I loved it. It was a completely different way of looking at my system–and for the first time ever, I had complete control over the way my system ran, the things that it did, and the range of things I could do with it. Granted, having a book to help you along the first couple of months with any new operating system is incredibly helpful. I’ll not go into any great depth here as to the advantages that Linux has over Windows, as there are SO many other pages that do just this. But suffice it to say that compared to the Windows Operating System (TM), Linux performs better than it, has more uses than it, has infinitely much more reliability than it, and costs infinitely less than it (do the math–Windows costs $70 per version, at least, while linux costs you $0 per version, at least).

And I was extremely happy with linux. And there are SO many different Linux distributions, such as SuSE Linux, Mandrake Linux, Redhat Linux, Debian Linux, YellowDog Linux, Slackware Linux, … erm… and a bunch more… Now THIS is REALLY funny…. =:) I just found this–click here to read a VERY funny article by the bbspot guys about the number of linux distributions…. bwahahah!! Okay, but seriously, Linux is a very good operating system–especially compared with Windows. I have several servers set up at work running linux that have been running IBM’s DB2 database instances, Oracle 8’s database instances, mySql, PHP4, apache, full development environment, X, etc., and haven’t been re-booted in 8 months now. Very solid operating system. Of the distributions out there, in my opinion debian Linux is the best of the bunch. It is very well-put-together, and if you’re considering linux as a reliable solution, (and you have some idea of what you’re doing) I highly recommend debian as your Linux distribution of choice. Anyhoo, suffice it to say that Linux is good. Linux is great. Linux beats Windows ™ hands down. But….

It was not out of displeasure with Linux in any way, but after 5 or so years of running with the Linux crowd (and being extremely pleased with Linux), I became aware of another UNIX variant–this one also free….