"I spent several hours trying to fix the problem, but in the end was forced to format the hard drive and start over. Worse yet, that was the second time in four months. By the time I saved my data, formatted the drive, reinstalled Windows XP Pro, removed the junkware and installed my programs, I'd wasted more than two days.
"This time I decided to dual-boot, running Linux Ubuntu as well as XP. Everyone had the Ubuntu password, but I kept the XP password to myself. There was perhaps a tinge of revenge in my strategy - if the others couldn't use the computer responsibly they would be forced to endure what I thought would be a less friendly operating system.
"I knew Linux offers robust security with very low risk of viruses. It's also powerful and scalable, widely used in science and web servers. Google's massive servers, for instance, run on a custom version of Linux. But what about for the average desktop user? Is it too "geeky"? Are there problems finding and installing drivers? These were my expectations."
