Hello everyone. This is my first post here.
When I was really young, I was exposed to computers a lot. I grew up mainly around Windows 3.1 and MSDOS (I actually like DOS). I used to mess around with Windows all the time. I even figured out how to get past my mother's password she put on, and learned to weave my way around pretty easily. Then Windows 95 came out. I thought Windows 95 was the coolest thing ever (Hey, I was young). After Learning Windows 95 inside and out, my friend got a Macintosh (I can't remember which kind) and I would constantly go to his place and mess around with that (I had been exposed the Mac OS before, but not as much). Anyway, Windows 98 came out, and my parents bought a computer with it installed. It was pretty much the same, supposedly with upgrades. It was mostly around this time that I started to experience CRASHES. Since I was doing a lot more than just play simple games or type a letter. I started to doubt Windows being a good operating system, and wondered if there were others.
It was in 7th grade when I first heard about Linux. I was very interested. Since I'm open-minded and curious, I wanted to check it out. I read up on Linux, and was shocked to hear it was free. Now I wanted to test it out. Well, I never got to, until much later. I got Red Hat Linux when I was 15, and tried to install it on my old computer. I had problems right off, but not in the way you think. Linux would freeze during installation, but it was because the computer was heating up (I had a crappy fan that sometimes doesn't work). Well, I finally got Linux to install. So I checked it out, There was a lot of stuff I wasn't familiar with, but I kept messing around. One thing I noticed, was that there were no Crashes! Linux was amazingly stable, and the computer it was installed on always crashed with Windows on it.
After messing around with Linux, my mother decided to get a new computer, which had Windows ME on it. I decided To see if ME had improvements. It seemed so at first, until It started to crash nonstop and freeze up on everything I did. So I upgraded it to Windows XP, (Which is what I'm currently using as we speak). Windows XP Had a simple installation, and everything Appeared to work fine after I had installed it (Or so it seemed). Well, Microsoft was right about one thing, Windows XP doesn't crash, THE PROGRAMS DO INSIDE IT! I have major compatibility problems with old programs too (I've even tried setting up the program to run in compatibility mode, which doesn't work). And I can't get some third party programs to run properly, namely, Mozilla and Netscape. So I'm stuck with Internet Explorer (DAMN).
My Linux hacking continued, and I downloaded Mandrake 8.0 and installed that. WOAH! Easy, Easy, Installation! The only Drawback is that Mandrake is slow. I tried The Newest version of Red Hat afterwards. Easy Installation as well. Shortly afterwards I heard of FreeBSD, which IS Unix. so I tried that. It's installation is Kind of confusing, but I figured it out. The first thing I noticed was SPEED. This OS is FAST! Almost as fast as the computer I'm using now (Athlon XP 1100, 256 MB RAM, TNT2 16 MB, my Computer with FreeBSD has 233 Cyrix, 32 MB RAM, no graphics card).
Well, That pretty much sums it up (Sorry this is long). I still mess with Linux and Unix. and I'm amazed how easy it is becoming to install Linux. I use the SuSe Live Evaluation CD on our Windows Machine, and it works quite well. Windows XP User, I hope you're reading this. Windows is not as powerful as Linux or Unix based operating systems. And I should know, I've had experience with a TON of operating systems. And another thing. Windows is NOT easy to install on a no-OS machine. It took me 2 hours to install Windows 98 on a Machine which had Linux originally. And that was from all that stupid partitioning that messed up as well as the installation encountering FATAL ERRORS! Unfortunately, Microsoft advertises the hell out of their OS. And they have more applications and Programs. However I believe that will change over the course of 5 years.
