"To celebrate the release of the all-singing,
all-dancing, all-invasive, almost-all-proprietary Windows XP later
this month, I decided to install Linux. This was more than just an
installation exercise. What I actually set out to do was use
nothing but Linux for a month. Whoa, heavy! It's one thing to throw
it on your system from a magazine cover disk, tinker about a
little, then reboot to Windows. It's quite another to go cold
turkey.
Suddenly I was a newbie again. Some of the most basic things ?
like cutting and pasting between applications ? are just different.
You see, I've been on "W" a long time ? 10 years or so. There's not
a lot I don't know about it. Hell, I can even remember version two.
I've seen more crashes than a stockcar promoter and I've survived
with, well, most of my sanity intact.
But once I'd given myself time to explore this strange new world
and sort out my personal preferences from the vast array of
configuration options and applications on offer, once I'd set up my
email accounts and address books, once I'd discovered Opera has a
Linux incarnation (oh bliss!), once I'd got Seti running in the
background and tweaked StarOffice so it was just the way I like it,
it didn't seem so strange at all."
