SporkBomb

Ever since 1995 I have been a user of Windows. It all started with my mother bringing a Windows 95 computer into the house. Long story short: I know Windows inside out. I wasn’t satisfied with this. I wanted more toys. There is only so deep you can go with Windows. The innards of the operating system are always hidden from you; you cannot change them in any sensible and easy way. What’s in the NT kernel? Can I read the source code? Legally? Nope, I cannot.

So in 2002, I went into a CompUSA store and purchased (or was it a gift?) a copy of RedHat 7.3. I tried installing it and it didn’t work! I tried again and it didn’t work again. I got frustrated and quit trying for four whole years.

In 2006, I discovered Ubuntu. I liked it, but I wanted to keep exploring. I tried everything I could get my hands on. Debian, Slackware, Knoppix, DSL, Gentoo, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Mint, PCLinuxOS, and many, many others. I remember the days when I reinstalled Gentoo over 40 times in a row. Compiling that thing over 40 times and then emerging X11 + KDE was great.

The thing is, I never switched to Linux. I tried, but it never lasted. I have one Dell Vostro laptop and a huge tower (dual core opteron, 3 GB of Ram, 1 TB of storage) at home. Up to now, I have been dual booting the laptop between Windows XP and Ubuntu and the only thing I have on the tower is Windows. Why do I keep living like this? I know what I’m doing (well, I do reasonably well) when it comes to Linux and BSD. I guess old habits die hard. Between running a Windows environment at work and doing the same at home, I never wanted to get off my rhythm. Well, that’s over folks.

The reason why I’m writing this is because my case is by no means an anomaly. There are thousands upon thousands of folks out there who like Linux–who use Linux! Yet, they never got around to switching. Do it now! Learn! Grow!

In a future post (hopefully tomorrow), I will outline the reasons why I believe free, libre and/or open source software is superior to commercial software (in certain situations).

Note: Linux = GNU/Linux and vice versa. I won’t want to bother with this argument… yet.