“Will it always be a Microsoft Windows world? That’s what I
hoped to find out when I sliced open the box containing the new PC
I’d ordered from WalMart.com. It had a respectable 1.6-gigahertz
processor, a serviceable 40-gigabyte hard drive, a CD-ROM drive, an
MP3 player, and enough other software to keep me occupied for life,
though supporting it all was a barely adequate 128 megabytes of
RAM. Okay, I knew this chunky black box wouldn’t be the sexiest PC
on my block. But that was fine, considering its paltry $278 price
tag–and that I’d really ordered it for what it didn’t have: any
Microsoft software whatsoever. Rather than Windows and Office, it
came with Linspire 4.5, one of the many commercial versions of the
open-source Linux operating system that are now available, and a
link to a website where I could download a variety of open-source
applications…”