Opinion: Second look at Linux proves persuasive

Computerworld - Back in 1991, a brilliant and determined 21-year-old computer science student at the University of Helsinki had an idea. From what I understand, Linus Torvalds was unhappy with MS-DOS, and since he was already familiar with Unix, he decided to try his hand at creating his own PC-style operating system. He did just that and called it Linux.

Linux has since evolved to become ever more refined and useful. Distributed as open-source, Linux is the product of the combined brainpower of millions of brilliant programmers around the world, each making a contribution to it. It has reached the point where some foresee that it will become a serious threat to Microsoft.

Having toyed with computers since the late 1970s, I can say I’ve seen many predictions about which technologies will likely make it and which ones will fall by the wayside.

With demonstrated staying power, Linux looks to me like it’s ready for prime time. As evidence, I recently shook the dust off my old Compaq 1800-XL notebook computer to see how easy it would be to install a modern-day Linux operating system. With so many distributions available, I began a Google search for something lightweight and small that could be downloaded quickly and was contained on a single disk. My search led me to several Linux distributions, and I chose Mandriva One, which came as an ISO CD image for download.

After I downloaded and burned Mandriva One to a CD, I simply inserted the CD into my laptop, set the machine’s BIOS to boot from a CD and restarted the machine. The beauty of some of today’s Linux distros is that they come as ready-to-use disk images, which you can use directly from a CD, enabling you to install them to your hard drive at a later point in time.

Once the operating system booted, I was pleasantly surprised to see that everything was working. It’s always good when your hardware is detected and working properly, something I found lacking in early incarnations of Linux. I liked the K Desktop Environment (KDE) in my early Linux installs, and this version did not disappoint on that front.

For Linux to be a successful operating system, there must be plenty of useful applications available for it. I’m happy to say that many of today’s distributions include word processing, instant messaging, e-mail and Web browsing at the ready.

The second requirement is ease of use. I found early versions of Linux weren’t very user-friendly. So this time around, I used my 7-year-old son as my test subject. Growing up in a Windows world at school and on some of our machines at home, I knew he was familiar with the concept of clicking on “Start” to access applications. KDE in Linux works the same way.