How to somewhat correct your huge error of buying a Windows computer.

The big buzz in the Silicon Valley right now is Linux. It's a free Operating System much like Windows98, except for the fact that it doesn't crash every five minutes. It's amazingly stable according to its proponents and will run on older machines, unlike the crap you get from the boys in Redmond, which is considered "bloatware" by the programming community.

Every software "upgrade" (i.e.—bugfix) Mr. Gates spoons out adds millions of lines of Pentium-choking code to your hard-drive. Of course, nothing makes you want to buy a new computer faster than fat, inefficient code— something that no doubt tickles the toes of their friends over at Intel. Bloated software means slow computers. Slow computers means new purchases. New purchases means more sales. And so on, and so on.

Intel even went so far as to pay popular websites to use larger and slower-loading graphics hoping that people would say, "Hey, my computer is a dog. I need a new one". Nice of 'em, huh?

Meanwhile, a cadre of really bored, lonely and/or out of work programmers lead by a mild-mannered Finnish guy named Linus Torvalds put together their own OS called Linux. Essentially a clone of AT&T's UNIX operating system, Linux is Open Source software which means it's free of licensing fees. It is fast, stable and lightweight. It is perfect for servers that hardly ever crashed. It just wasn't easy to use. Its Command Line Interface made it intimidating to a world of users expecting the Macintosh rip-off they were familiar with. Well, thanks to some German guys who created the K-Desktop Envirnoment, now it is. Pretty much.

I bought an old HP Pentium PC for $150 and successfully installed Linux on it. Actually, it was pretty simple from the CD I bought. (I wasn't brave enough to try and download all the pieces individually.) The only problem I had was having just 16MB of RAM when the box called for a "minimum 32MB". Oops. So I installed another 16MB and it worked like a champ. It's no speed-demon, but what do you expect for $150?

I downloaded all these FREE software programs at work (gotta love those T1 lines) and burned them to a CD-ROM to bring home and install. I got StarOffice (compatible with MSOffice and also available for Windoze—get your copy now!) from Sun Microsystems for FREE and tried to install it the other night. It was super infuriating. I even have a really thick manual book I bought to help me. It didn't. And I'm not a total idiot, either.

FINALLY, after hours of searching the Internet usergroups, I found the one command line necessary to uncompress the file and install it. Something like: tar -xpvf so51a_lnx_01.tar [ENTER]

What the heck is that crap? It's like gibberish! But it worked like magic and then the install was pretty standard (Answer the questions, then press Enter). Still, there was NO WAY I would've known that sequence!

I now have even MORE appreciation for my Mac. It's like butter. Smooth, polished and most importantly, comprehensible.

DO YOURSELF A FAVOR. SELL YOUR PC AND BUY A MAC! Prices are very low now and the difference is STILL laughable. At least with Linux, you don't have to pay for ugly and confusing software.

So if you are dead set on keeping your beige box of bolts, you might want to consider erasing the hard drive and running Linux. (You'll be amazed how good that feels!) Right now, Red Hat is the most popular provider of install CD's (about $40; even less from CheapBytes), and I've heard their customer support is pretty good. (Ed: Corel just put out what is considered the easiest install yet.)

NOTE: I just got the BeOS for Christmas (Thanks, Pat!) and let me tell you, it's the sweetest OS I've seen. It's the closest thing on the PC side to a Mac. If you got stuck with a Intel box, do yourself a favor and erase your hard drive. BeOS is a breeze to install and it runs wicked fast. It boasts way too many perks to mention and only one downside...it won't run any Microsoft software. Wait, did i say downside?