Word: linux
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What is Be? To those mainstream computer users who've even heard of the upstart operating system known as the BeOS, it's the also-also-ran, that other alternative operating system besides Linux. In the past year the press has fawned over Apple and Linux as they boldly challenged the hegemony of Microsoft's Windows, while Be waited quietly in the wings. Now, with its parent company making an IPO this week, it's time for Be to make its grand entrance. So what is Be? Why is Intel spending millions on it? And why should Bill Gates...
Want to try Linux? Visit timedigital.com for a list of distribution sites. Questions for Quittner? Send e-mail to jquit@well.com
...chicken. I never downloaded Linux because I figured it would be too hard. While plenty of "distributions"--the files and tools you need to work in Linux--are available on the Net, it takes hours to download and unpack them. And if my computer survived the daunting Linux installation process, could I actually use the thing? The interface is user friendly only if the user happens to be a comp-sci Ph.D. Linux, after all, is based on Unix, an industrial-strength operating system one dabbles in but never really masters. I waffled. (Visual: calendar pages flipping...
Finally, a few months ago, a group of Linux hackers released a graphical user interface called Gnome that was supposed to make the system much easier to use. I could wait no longer. I paid $80 for Red Hat 6.0, a two-CD distribution that includes--since you're paying--a copy of Gnome and a lot of extras, and I hunkered down to give my machine a new brain...
Installing Linux was not exactly a walk through hell, but there was no way I could have done it without help--another reason to pay for something you can get free. After making absolutely no headway on my garden-variety IBM ThinkPad, I finally called "Thor," a guy in Red Hat's support squad. He checked around and then informed me that I was out of luck. My external CD drive was incompatible with the Red Hat distribution. "Laptops can be a nightmare," he confessed. Bowed, but not broken, I borrowed a desktop PC from the bowels of Time...