I started to play with Slackware '96 back in September of 1996. I dual
booted with DOS and Win 3.11. Although I'd boot back and forth it
wasn't ideal as I wouldn't commit to doing many useful things on the
Linux side.
I went to Win95 in August of 1997 and it never really had any problems.
However, by early 1998 I began to believe that Linux would be the OS of
the future. I also didn't like the opaqueness of that Win95 had become
over being able to control much of Win 3.1x.
In January of 1998 I committed myself to doing as much in Linux as
possible. Mind you, this wasn't very easy compared to the way it is
today for a desktop user. I perservered, learned a lot, and watched as
Linux evolved from a curiosity to a contender on the desktop.
Things weren't easy at first. For Web browsing I used Netscape 4.5 (I
think) and eventually used it for email. I played with Wine with mixed
results. Finally, I downloaded Star Office 5.something that was rather
slow on my 486-100 I was using at the time. The occasions I found
myself booting into Win95 were getting so rare after a couple of months
that I realized the switch had occured almost so slowly as not to be
noticable. It was also during this period that a lot of online Linux
media sprang up almost overnight. Linux was gaining momentum and it
was fun to be along for the ride.
In September of 1999 I loaded Debian Slink on a spare laptop and I've
been here ever since. Debian has evolved considerably over the past
five years and I suspect another exciting five years (and more) are
ahead.
These days there is almost little technical reason to wonder if Linux
can function on the desktop. With the availability of some finely
crafted live CDs (many based on Debian), trying the Linux desktop is a
snap. Gone are the days of compacting the DOS drive, partitioning,
formatting and installing just to test Linux to see what it's about.
So, jump on in. The water's fine and the only real way to find out if
a Free Software desktop is for you is to commit yourself to doing your
daily work with it. Things will be different with most being better (I
hope) and some not as good as you're used to. Only you can decide.
- Nate >>
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