After being an IT professional for several years(starting on Windows), I've seen first hand how painful it is to live under the restrictions of the closed source Operating System.

I've seen how the closed source OS attempts to be the "one and only" software solution for the entire corporate IS infrastructure, and I don't like it one bit. The cost of vendor lock-in that is experienced by using a closed source OS is utterly terrible because it limits us all as users.

That's when I realized the GNU/Linux operating system.

GNU/Linux represents everything that is exciting in our computerized world. Instead of restricting it's users, GNU/Linux bestows ultimate power upon the user. This power can then be harnessed towards making our world a better place.

Also, using GNU/Linux is liberating. The feeling of explaining to my children and to people I meet that they can freely redistribute GNU/Linux and the software it provides, and build upon it to make it even better, is a great freedom indeed. It's very exciting to be a GNU/Linux user!

When you switch to GNU/Linux, you've opened your mind to a world that is enabled by computerized technology, only then are you are free to make the world a better place using computers.

Shannon VanWagner
http://healthysystem.blogspot.com
http://digg.com/users/bicep
http://shannonvanwagner.com

I would have to say I saw a Ubuntu vid on youtube and was hooked. I dualbooted ubuntu with windows and after a week trashed the windows all together and have not looked back and never will !!!! LINUX RULEZ

The documentation is free, the source code is free, know-how to write code for Linux is easily acquired and most questions -- an overwhelming majority -- are freely answered one way or another.

If I were to make the jump to Linux (after supporting MS products fpr 20 years) I knew there was no better place than Fort Collins because of the many -ix programmers in the area. Since I'd never lost the foothold I found in VMS and Unix, as an undergrad, I switched but had help doing so. Since 2002 or so, I've built, repaired, and managing Linux networks, mixed networks and I've provided email support since 2004. (FWIW, my business savvy seems to be less than what Shawn admits to!)

I wouldn't feel good about writing this without thanking the Big Three (my mentors) to whom I owe much. They are John B., Hugh M., and Brian G.).

Today, we also have mature publications like Linux Journal and publishers like O'Reilly, and even more programmers. If you want to learn Linux doing so is even easier, today.

(My homepage isn't built yet, but the address provided is where I hope it will stay, once built.)

It was back in 1998 and I had a fairly new Compaq Presario 7170 (I still have it)Pentium 90Mhz CPU with 16MB RAM. THe machine had come with Windows 95 preloaded and a Windows 98 upgrade disk in the box. I promptly upgraded the computer to Win98. But almost immediately I begun experiencing random shutdowns and multiple boot failures. THe computer would often suddenly shutdown and then take upwards of half an hour and multiple attempts before it would boot up again. I was a graduate student at the time and teaching part time at a local college. Needless to say it was a huge aggravation to have a computer that basically worked when it felt like it!

I managed to beg and borrow another computer, some old no name 486sx 33mhz with 4mb RAM. This machine worked ok with win98 and after a couple of months I decided to network the headstrong Presario with the meek and humble 486. This proved to be a bad idea! It turned out to be impossible to network the two computers despite having an MCSE friend of mine do the actual work. Various tweaks and fiddles in the bowels of both computers left them both essentially non functional. I now had two computers that were completely unreliable. I was told that the solution was to reinstall Windows on both computers.

At this point I found myself on the horns of the classic Microsoft Monopoly Power Dilemma:
1. I had a Win98 upgrade disk from the Presario, but it was not possible to reinstall Win98 from an upgrade disk on either of my computers.
2. I had the Win95 install disks from the Presario, but it was not possible to reinstall Win95 on either computer as they both already had Win98. Microsoft did not allow reversions from Win98 to Win95.

So my only option was to either buy the full Win98 install for each computer or to pirate the software from somewhere. Neither choice seemed very appealing to me.
However, I was aware from some internet work that I had been doing on a Unix server that there existed free web browsers, text editors and other such software. I reasoned that if there were free applications there must be free operating systems as well and I was now desperate enough to try anything.

So one day when the Presario was in a good mood and booted up, I got on the internet and typed the words "free operating system" into I believe the Lycos search engine. In those days Linux did not really figure much in the OS universe and so the first page of links that came up was all FreeBSD. So I read up a bit on FreeBSD and then decided to install it. I downloaded about 9 floppies of FreeBSD (I think I may still have them somewhere in box) and tried to install it. It proved to be a bear! No matter what I tried how much I read etc I could not get FreeBSD to install on any of my computers. Finally after a couple of weeks of trying I gave up and sought help. At that time a good friend of mine was head of IT at the college where I taught and while in his office one day I got to talking about my problems with FreeBSD with one of the techies on staff there. This guy, Bill as I recall, not only offered to help me with my computer troubles but went ahead and burnt a CD of something called Redhat 5.0 for me and gave me a printed manual to help with the install.

Bill told me try get Redhat Linux installed and that if it did not work he or a friend of his would come out to my house to help me out. So I went home that day and popped in my Redhat CD into the computer, rebooted and commenced the install. To my astonishement the install went flawlessly. In a couple of hours I had a functioning Redhat Linux desktop, with I believe Enlightenment as the window manager. I even had sound and the modem working and I was surfing the Redhat website before I went to bed that night.

Needless to say I was hooked on Linux from then on. I now had a computer I could actually use and use reliably. Gone were the random shutdowns the interminable boot attempts and the frustration from not knowing if the computer would cooperate when I had an important paper due the next day.

I used Redhat through version 9 in 2002 and then switched to Debian and used that untill about 2006 when I switched to Ubuntu and I'm now writing this on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. I kept my old Presario as a file server running Debian until late 2007 when I finally retired it. It still works great, but I needed a computer that could take 500GB SATA drives (Kudos to Compaq of yester year, the monitor that came with the Presario is still in my service. I have gone through a couple of brand new monitors from other manufacturers in more recent years).

In many ways I'm thankful that FreeBSD was such a darned hard install back in 1998, otherwise I would probably have become a FreeBSD user. Not that that would be a bad thing, but I can't imagine that I would have had as much fun with FreeBSD as I have had with Linux over the years. Many thanks also go to Bill who introduced me to Linux in a very calm, helpful and low pressure way. I still remember my own astonishment, when I attempted to return the Redhat CDs and book that Bill had given me and he refused to take them, telling me that they were mine now and I should pass them on to somebody who needed them. Thats the way things were done in the Linux community.

emk

I started using Caldera back in 1999, and for the next 8 years I just used GNU/Linux mostly as a toy rather than a true OS. I then decided to be a beta tester for Windows Vista 64 bit with a 64 bit machine. After seeing 'Windows ME Version 2.0', I quickly changed to Ubuntu and that is what I'm using now (8.04). It was a learning curve to use GNU/Linux everyday; but after getting some advise from 'the very polite community of Ubuntu', I have stayed Microsoft free for the last two years. Almost sounds like a recovery program doesn't it? ;-)

It still feels odd not purchasing software when entering Future Shop or any other dept store; but then again the freedom is truly wonderful! (and it helps the pocket book as well).

I came to Linux through the Mac/Unix world.

Stanford 1986: I was going to buy my first personal computer. I could have a IBM running DOS or a Mac. I bought a Fat Mac (512K memory, built in floppy) with an external floppy drive. I could run the OS and MacWrite on one floppy disk and save the results to the other, bliss!

As time went on, I used more powerful Macs and developed a hatred of Big Blue and all things Microsoft. After a string of Macs, I wound up with a Titanium laptop (the wimpy one) but I had to use Sun workstations at work for some scientific programs. When I left that job I needed to have my data and some operational scientific software so I bought a Toshiba Satellite laptop and had it dual booted with Windows XP and Red Hat. I never used the Windows. The Red Hat was later replaced with Fedora and the Windows was wiped out at that point. Soon, I was doing all my work on the Satellite using OpenOffice, Latex and Emacs.

Later, the Titanium needed replacing and I looked into Mac laptops. Couple of thousand for the laptop and a couple of more to upgrade all my software. I bought a IBM (lenovo) T60 with Ubuntu Feisty Fox (now Hardy Heron), no dual boot and have not looked back. My computer at work is a Mac Power PC running OS 10.4 but I run Fink and so have access to open source software. I came for the free beer but I stay for the freedom.

I will admit the the #1 reason I switched to Linux back in 2001 was control over my computer security. It was the dawn of hacking as it were, and I was MORE than aware of my system's (and consequently my) vulnerability. No more stealing my life thank you!

Oddly, at about the same time, I was doing SO much work on Unix systems, that I figured--heck! I'll just run my own *nix system! :)

I think I may have first heard about Linux from some students who were messing with it in about 1998, but, I was, well skeptical to say the least. Then, I found out that in 2000, a co-worker was using it on one of our "real live" servers, so I picked his brain a bit about the whole experience before diving right in.

I'm an old command line hacker, didn't grow up on "icons", so the change was minimal and exciting! WOW! I am now the mistress of my own universe!

It has been a wonderfully exciting experience for me. Loaded it up on everything I use and never looked back! ;}

Having used Microsoft software for almost two decades, I awoke one day in 2006 and realized that I could no longer afford to continue using it. Add in the EULA; DRM; ever-increasing hardware requirements; WGA/OGA; MS-OOXML; increasing costs, etc., and I looked for an alternative. Apple was out, as it's merely a cult. But GNU/Linux had continued to get better and better. Tried Ubuntu: didn't care for it. Tried Fedora, liked it. Kept it. It took me about a year to fully wean myself off of my old Windows machine and find all the free software to do my work. However, once that was complete, I've never looked back and I've never had so much fun computing!

In college (comp sci) we had a big project which we did on SunOS workstations in a lab 5 blocks away from my dorm (large campus!). It was winter, and I was tired of going there all the time.

I heard with Unix OSes one could log in remotely and even display graphical environment across a network. Luckily I haven't heard of Putty, so installing a Unix-like OS seemed like a good solution. Plus I was curious about this Linux thing I kept reading about online.

It was late 2000 and I had a laptop with Win98 on it. I also had a friend who has been using Debian for quite some time already. So numerous phone calls to him and a few days after, I managed to slap together a Debian Potato installation with a working X and network ( it took me another couple of months to make sound work )

I was dual-booting for some time and around 2002 I found out I didn't need Windows any more.

- 1994 I got my first computer. Windows 95. Used it for basic word processing and a few games.
- 1999 I was given a computer (my own to do with as I pleased) with 98 and I fell in love with computers. Hardware and Software. Fell hard for games. Introduced to Red Hat. Got it installed but had lots of problems. Win98 was my primary OS.
- 2000 Was introduced to Mandrake and I hated it with a passion. Swore off Linux. Picked up a part time job at CompUSA to get games and parts at a discount. Took their classes (for free!) to find out more about computers. In the Fall I went to college to study computers.
- 2001 Was introduced to Slackware and built a file server. Learned a lot about Linux. Was still running Win98 as my primary OS. Till I bought a new computer with XP. Hated XP with a passion. Nothing worked, ever. 98 had no drivers for the hardware. Began dual booting with SuSE. Joined a Linux group to learn more.
- 2002 Was using SuSE more then Windows. Windows was just gaming. All my work, school, entertainment was under SuSE.
- 2005 I had moved to Debian. No longer ran Windows at all for any reason.
- Today I work with Debian and CentOS daily. I run a number of computers at home and help many others out and the only Windows box I "have" is a test box at work that sits in the corner until I need to test something out. It gets little usage.

I'm a WinDoZe hater from way back. I was using Desqview on a 286 back in 1990. I picked a copy of OS/2 v2.1 in 1992, and finally had a secure, multi-tasking, multi-threaded OS with a stable and usable GUI that could run multiple DOS programs with no problems. However, OS/2 faded away, and I ended up back on Windows with Win98. While it was an improvement, it still wasn't secure and it still crashed. Then I stumbled upon a "Sam's Teach Yourself Linux" book with a copy of Red Hat v5. I was impressed with the capabilities, but it didn't have any software, and without an internet connection, it wasn't very useful. Then I got a copy of SuSE v5.3 and found out what was really available. I've stuck with SuSE since. No viruses, no spayware, few problems. Sometimes it has problems(dependency hell anyone), but it's gotten better. And it runs on all my hardware: PCs, Macs, etc.

The reason I have around ten distros is because its THERE .

I did most of my computing on a VAX system before purchasing a DOS/Win 3.0 box. Found myself dialing into the VAX/VMS system to get things done. When I discovered Linux, I was able to dump DOS/Win and get to work locally on my system at home. No more breaking into the network at University. Long Live Vi/PINE/Nethack!!!!

When I retired I had a lot of spare time and did a bit of PC recyling for myself and others. With my bunch of PCs around me I became aware that they were taking up all my energies and time just to keep up to date and secure as possible. That was not all, I still could read about problems with security *regardless* of my latest and ongoing work! There was no way I felt at all comfortable with that. All that effort and concern and it was still *not* something I could trust.

I had been looking briefly at articles on linux for years but had never taken the plunge. Eventually I purchased a retail Suse 9.1 from Amazon and installed it on a spare old PC. I was aware I could download free anyway but felt more comfortable in making the traditional retail purchase(!)

I was totally amazed at the smooth proficiency of the install. Windows was a labyrinth of getting drivers from all over the place. Suse just installed and worked and there was the internet, connected with ethernet. It was as much of an emotional shock as my first love affair!

There has been no turning back since then. After a couple of years I moved to K/Ubuntu, systematically distanced my self from all of my ties with Windows related activities, and began advocacy activities for FOSS.

Like most people I started out on windows 3.1, used 95, 98, my dad unfortunately at one point had a laptop with ME (the most shocking version ever) and finally XP.

I guess firefox was my first real brush with open source software (no doubt I've used other oss without realising), and it opened my eyes, I then found OpenOffice which I loved, then I found linux, I had an old laptop that was struggling to work at a decent speed so I tried OpenSuse, took me hours to get the wireless working but once I did I liked what I saw. Anyway after tinkering I eventually switched to Xubuntu which ran like a charm.

Back to my main PC, I use it as a media center for streaming video around the house as a result I have two large hard-drives in it. I was constantly getting "Delayed Write Failures" and having to restart the machine, I attempted every possible fix but in the end nothing worked, it was either shell out £200+ on vista and hope that it solved the problem or switch to Ubuntu.

I did the latter, works brilliantly.

I have a vista laptop (Vista came with it) which I use, and I don't think it's a problematic as people make out, plus there are still a couple of programs that I just can't get to run on linux and can't find better alternatives for.

i tried firs kubuntu 5.10 but then i do not had internet connection home and it is almost imposible for me to use kubuntu with the default programs(i need mp3 suport, video codecs, wine ,etc) i tried Ubuntu 6.10 when i had finaly internet and now i am writing from ubuntu 8.04.
Why linux?
Because i can have fun with it. I can hack it, i can learn new things , and al the time something new is out to try(KDE4, wine,compiz)

I first encountered UNIX, in the form of SunOS, while in high school during the early 1990's. My family didn't have a lot of money, so I took to doing odd jobs to save up for college, and one of my jobs involved data entry for a local medical equipment company. Due to the fact that my machine at home was a 486 that had been patched together out of second-hand and scavenged components running MS-DOS v4.01, I was already comfortable with the DOS command shell, despite its shortcomings; it didn't take long to fall in love with the flexibility and simplicity of the UNIX command line as a result. When I did go to college in the mid-90's for comp.sci, I discovered that I needed a network capable machine for some of my classes. My computer couldn't run Windows 95 at the time, and there wasn't a TCP/IP stack for Desqview. The networking functionality of Windows v3.11 was, to the the least, not particularly usable. Somewhere or other (I forget exactly where - maybe it was on a BBS) I heard about Slackware Linux, which at the time was installable from floppy disks. I figured that I'd give it a try.

By late 1997 I'd dumped my DOS partition entirely to make more room for Slackware, and later Debian because everything I needed to do I could do much more rapidly in a Linux environment than I could under DOS or even Windows 95 (why pay for MS Office when I could download Wordperfect for Linux for free?)

Since then, I've tried not a few distributions of Linux - for quite a few years I kept returning to Slackware because I loved the hands-on aspect to it (as well as learning a lot because I kept breaking it), but lately I've started using Gentoo due to the Portage system. While I'm not one for hotrodding my machine with three screens worth of GCC flags, I enjoy the simplicity of using emerge to pick out and install an application, walking away to get a cup of coffee, and coming back to find that the build's done. I especially like not having to track down multiple tarballs of source code to compile something, Portage does all of that automatically. I'll admit that the bootstrap time for Gentoo (even with a stage 3 install) can be up to two days to install everything, but once the system's been built not only do you have one of the most useful LiveCDs I've ever worked with but maintenance of the system is easy (emerge --update --newuse world).

Like several people my age and in my profession, I was first introduced to Unix style operating systems (including Linux) when I started at University (Computer Science, Software Engineering major) in 2000. I was always pleased at how well Linux seemed to work, especially on older machines, but I had some strange ideas about it.

Any attempt to get it to work on any one of my machines was just a nightmare, with lots of missing bits and pieces, namely 3D acceleration and wireless. I never got really involved in the on campus LUG, and only learned enough to turn in my Computer Science projects, and to get my work done in the lap. I thought of distributions like RedHat to be flawed with lots of proprietary support and configuration tools which prevented anyone from using any other. It was as bad as being locked into Windows. Thus, I started playing with Slackware. I still considered myself mostly a gamer and found that windows was much more conducive platform for that end. When I left school New Years 2005 after a year and a half of post graduate work, I had a working knowledge and respect for Linux, but I wanted something a bit more coherent.

I quickly started playing with FreeBSD. I was amazed at a couple of parts of the project, such as the excellently written hand book, and the ports system. I would marvel at not only how easy it was to install new applications (find, cd, make, make install), but that it would ALWAYS work. There was no hunting for patches or source code or dependencies. I was thrilled to just see any given application being built from scratch before my eyes with all my machine specific build flags just scrolling in dozens of xterms spread out across my three monitors. Surprisingly everything just worked on my desktop as far as hardware was concerned. It was only a few steps to get 3D acceleration on my NVidia 6800 turned on too. It was during this time that I also fell in love with the schedule and formed a lot of opinions about what I considered my favorite window managers, applications, tools, etc.

About a year and a half ago, I tried Ubuntu, wanting something that would work on more machines, and being agrivated at the lack of wine support. While FreeBSD worked nicely on my desktop, setup was always iffy on other machines. The live CD which allowed me to use it on my work laptop without changing the IT controlled XP, and the fact that everything "Just Worked", including the dreaded wireless, out of the box was great indicators. I also found almost as much freedom in the deb package system as I had with FreeBSD ports, trading machine specific optimizations for install time. Soon I was more interested in the Debian it was built on, not being afraid of "lack of polish" and often desiring to do without it.

I finally bought a new laptop for personal use, an Asus EEE 701 at the beginning of this year. And quickly put on a basic copy of Debian instead of the default OS. A few days later, and I had a WindowMaker based desktop, with no file manager, the super quick rxvt-unicode terminal emulator and all my favorite applications setup. I still consider my self quite a gamer, but I found that my taste in games haven't changed much since 1999, and the EEE would play all my favorites either natively (Exult, Doomsday), via Emulator (zsnes, epsxe, MAME), or via wine (HomeWorld, Baldur's Gate). I'm one happy user, and I'm always learning new things. 2.0GB is enough for all my programs and documents, although my media drive can add up to terabytes between what is live and archived.

I still have to develop on XP at work, and the differences are becoming more and more apparent to me in terms of process scheduling and file system performance. My patience with windows really is waring thin, and the copy of XP I bought in 2002 will most likely be my last Microsoft product. I had a respect of Mac OS X and would recommend it to lots of people, but I like the freedoms that come with my Linux.

I can't leave well enough alone. I like to dig in and see how things work. I like to try to make things work better (read that: differently). Linux lets me do that. I can set up a rock solid server on an old desktop machine that has nothing more than a command line, or I can have a new system set up with enough eye-candy that it leaves Vista users drooling (They always ask me "Why doesn't my computer do that?! I've got Windows Vista Ultimate Warrior World Domination Edition on it!"). I like that Linux allows me to be in charge of my own user experience, instead of forcing their idea of what I should be doing on MY pc like the other guys.

I was working for Data General, we had just moved from proprietary OS to Unix on Sun platforms. I was impressed by how much better Unix and X was, compared to Windows 3.1, and wished I had a PC version.

I poked around on USENET and found the Minix, and later Linux, newsgroups. Thought I'd give it a try as soon as it looked ready for prime time. That happened in 1993, and the pivotal moment was when I loaded Linux/X onto a 486 at my new job, and was impressed by how much better Linux/X performed compared to Win3.1 on the same machine (we were using it for schematic capture, if you can believe it!)

The lack of a good office suite kept me from doing anything but toying with Linux, until recently. I would try it out from time to time on old PCs I would acquire, but not much else. The combination of a mature Open Office suite with Ubuntu was the tipping point. One of my co-workers nagged me into trying Linux again, and I discovered that Ubuntu was a real competitor for the Win2K I'd been running at home. I had never felt great about running bootleg Windows/Office (never felt bad enough not to, though), so Ubuntu made me feel better that way, too.

I switched over completely about two years ago. Gave up my home use of Windows completely (my wife still insists on using it on her machine), and even converted my brother and my daughter. Except for iTunes, pretty much everything I need to do can be done in Linux. I like the fact that I have more control and the OS has more transparency than a proprietary OS. If I have a problem, a Google search usually comes up with a solution or at least a few hints.

And, most of all, Linux is fun! There's the cute little penguin mascot, lots of folks, apparently pretty much like me, who like to play with and improve technology, and are willing to work together to produce something that's given away. Kind of like the software engineering version of "stone soup". Contrast that with the "evil empire" -- centralized, authoritarian corporate control of your computing experience -- which seems to be oriented more towards redefining your home computer as a paid content delivery platform, locked down and designed only to allow you to use it for purposes which result in an income stream for the content providers.

I don't see any reason to go back. Operating systems are really quite simple things, software platforms on which to run applications. There are quite a few of them out there, and Windows isn't by any stretch of the imagination, the best of them. And it's not getting any better, just more bloated and unreliable as a general purpose OS. And for me, the key is to have an open, flexible, reliable computer, that does what I want, when I want it to. I don't need or want anyone else telling me what I can or cannot watch, download or edit on my machine. And I certainly don't want any of the software or files I paid for to "expire".

Try Linux. It doesn't suck any worse than Windows!

Linux was not my first Unix-ish experience. A buddy of mine was studying 3-D animation in the early-mid 1990s, and he had access to a lab of SGI O2's and Octanes running IRIX. There was a magical aura about the IRIX desktop compared to the contemporary Windows or Mac offerings, and I was intrigued -- the funky hardware certainly helped. Of course I couldn't afford an SGI, so I started looking around the Web for a Unix that could run on much cheaper Intel x86 hardware.

That search led me to FreeBSD, which I promptly downloaded and installed on a spare 100MHz 486. I was immediately converted. It wasn't IRIX, but it was Unix (Unix-y enough for me, anyway). After a year or two of using FreeBSD, I kept hearing more and more about Linux, so I eventually downloaded Red Hat 6. Again, it was an immediate conversion. Red Hat Linux gave me access to all of the software I was using on FreeBSD, but it had a very easy to use package manager that didn't require me to recompile anything -- I didn't mind the recompiling, but not having to deal with it meant a huge time savings.

I've used many different Linux distros since that first taste, but I have gravitated toward Fedora, RHEL/CentOS, and Ubuntu as my favorites.

Coincidentally, just about two weeks ago, another friend of mine called me up and gave me an SGI Octane that his workplace was getting rid of. It's been very gratifying to play with the system that inspired me to learn Unix. Although it's a fun system to tinker with, IRIX makes it very apparent how much progress that Linux has seen on both the desktop and system level over the last 10 years.

So when it comes down to it, I switched because of the mystique, but I stayed for the usability, power, and flexibility.

Chris Stark is a Linux Journal Reader Advisory Panelist.

For poor me it was because I broke Windows, too much playing around and too stupid to do it the right way. So I switched to Linux (SuSE Linux 5.1), which was really really scary for me, because I only knew Windows and for a long time thought, that there are only Dos and Windows around. But it was fun until it broke because of too much playing around. Switched back, broke. Switched to Linux, broke Linux. Switched to Windows and Linux in parallel and broke both (Hardware defect - damn you hard drives!). Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. And then I grew out of puberty, erased my whole System once more and for the last time I installed Linux (Debian this time). It never broke again (for 6 Years), and I won't switch again if it should, because of my painful experiences I now can repair any broken Linux. And thats why I stay on Linux.

I have worked in the IT business in some capacity or other for eighteen years. Most of that time was spent on Windows. I found it increasingly frustrating how I got locked out more and more with every new release. I didn't even make the switch to Win XP for that reason because I hated the very idea of the activation process (and have been proven right a lot at work).

At one time, Linux was not a household name by a far shot yet, the company I worked for got connected to the internet via a Linux server, running a text-only version of Mandrake. This machine also acted as a file server for us. It was the only machine which didn't crash all the time. I got intrigued.

At the time of SuSE 9.0 I finally got around to trying Linux at home. The learning curve was steep, I even gave up for a while, but I liked the way I felt that it was my inadequacy which made this project fail and not the inadequacy of the operating system, as it is the case with Windows. So I learned a little more, tried again, and now I am a fully converted Linux user at home (with Gentoo as my distro of choice), and am in the process of replacing as much of Windows as I can at my workplace. My personal workstation is Ubuntu these days, but I am going to install Linux servers in place of the current Windows 2000 server and push the company into the direction of freedom.