Hello Linux

Those of you who know me know that I'm a bit of a computer nerd, or maybe more appropriately a computer nerd wannabe. As further evidence, I discovered the other day that it is possible to download and burn a bootable CD that will run the free Linux operating system on your computer. It takes a little bit of work (the download is over 650 MB and I had to change my CMOS settings to get the computer to recognize the CD ROM drive when it was booting up), but once that was done, the Linux OS installed in a snap. Because it's running from a CD rather than a hard drive, it's a little slow, but very cool ... it seems to do everything that Windows does just as well as Windows does, and it's free. It also comes with a number of very functional free programs to do all of the more common tasks ... a web browser (Firefox), an image viewer and editor, and the OpenOffice suite, which is compatible with Word, Excel, etc. The one thing that isn't clear (and I think it's a limitation) is the compatibility of other common programs with the OS, which is obviously a problem. Still, when you think how much the cost of Windows, MS Office, etc. etc. adds to the total cost of a new computer, Linux looks better and better.

You can download the CD image file here.