"Imagine an alternate universe where there's no Microsoft. In this alternate universe, software is free, and you only pay for product support and various conveniences of use to beginners.
"Those banes of home computer users--viruses, adware and spyware--are virtually unknown in the alternate universe. Oh, and while the software looks and runs pretty much like Windows, the computers that run it hardly ever crash.
"That's not quite the whole story, but welcome to Linux, the alternate operating system universe where I've been living for the past few months. We're going to spend a few weeks there together, beginning today, to see if there's anything there for normal people..."
