New York Times: Putting a New Soul in Your PC

[ Thanks to John F.
Gibson for this link. ]

“I have used the Macintosh operating system for more than a
decade, and Windows off and on since it became less annoying a few
years ago, but the notion of trying Linux intrigued me. Could
someone like me, without a computer science degree or past love
affairs with a Radio Shack TRS-80, do anything with Linux ? like
installing it on an old PC and getting it to do things I usually do
on my I.B.M. ThinkPad or Mac G4 desktop-tower machine?“

“Linux, the free, sturdy operating system created 10 years ago
by Linus Torvalds of Finland, has been getting more and more
attention in the last couple of years because it has a populist
cachet and runs well on inexpensive hardware; Version 2.4 of the
Linux kernel (the brains of the system) was released in January. It
has made inroads in the server market, but it is also starting to
show up installed on personal computers from major computer makers
like I.B.M. and Dell as an alternative to Windows.”

“Mr. Torvalds has made the Linux code freely available to anyone
who wants to tinker with it. Programmers around the world have
improved Linux and written software to run on it, a sort of Amish
barn-raising approach.”

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