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Ubuntu – Linux for Human Beings
Ok, the “human beings” thing might be a stretch. I’ve found Xandros Deluxe to be more newbie friendly, mostly because it offers Windows emulation via CrossOver Office. However, you have to pay for it, and it costs about the same as Windows XP Home upgrade. I have no problem with that, but I perfer a free as in beer distro for home, because I’m cheap.
For the average techie who wants to make the transition to Linux, I’ve found Ubuntu to be fantastic (and it’s free as in beer and speech). It’s a fairly simple and straightforward distribution, and has good community support. I’m also a big fan of Debian (at least on the server), which Ubuntu is based on. On my spare machine, I actually run Kubuntu, which is the KDE version of Ubuntu (which uses Gnome), because I find myself more comfortable with KDE.
I’ve been trying to make the switch from Windows for several years, but there are just a few killer apps that have kept me on Windows. I’ve tried Fedora, SuSE, Ubuntu, Mandriva, and Xandros on the desktop. I really like Fedora, but Ubuntu is gaining more and more of my attention. As the article says, it just works (at least as much as can be expected from a modern Linux distro). I’m still light years away from making the switch, and since I’m currently an ASP.NET developer, I may never make the switch (yes, I’m aware of Mono). But it’s a cool distro to play with.
I’m also fond of Win4lin, which allows you to run Windows in a virtual environment on Linux. However, the standard and home versions only run Windows 9x. The Pro version, which allows Windows 2000 and XP costs $70. Not too bad of a price, but it slightly diminishes the value of switching to Linux in the first place. CrossOver Office Standard costs only $40, but it doesn’t give me the flexibility of Win4lin for doing real testing, and I dislike dual-booting.
Sim City 3000 for Linux for Sale
I have a rare copy of Sim City 3000 for Linux for sale on eBay. Since Loki Games went out of business, this edition is no longer manufacturered. Bid and play your favorite game on Linux today!
SCO vs. the World
If you haven’t been following the news coverage of the SCO vs. Linux lawsuits, this article provides a nice summary of the case, albeit long and slanted against SCO.
January 22nd, 2004 
News & Current Events 
Tags: evil, lawsuit, linux, News & Current Events, sco, more... ASP.NET on Apache
I just found out that it is possible to run ASP.NET on Apache using, amazingly enough, Microsoft open source sample web server, Cassini! That’s pretty cool, considering how incompatible Classic ASP was with non-Microsoft web servers. Hopefully it will only be a matter of time before someone writes an Apache module for it.
up3date for RedHat
I just found a cool little script called up3date. It automatically checks a FTP mirror for updated RPMs, verifies them with a digital signature, installs them, and sends an e-mail to the admin detailing what was updated. I tried it on a development server and it works great. This, combined with apt-get, who says keeping your Linux box patched isn’t easy?
RedHat 9 Switch
Well, I finally did it. I made the “switch”. I’m now running RedHat 9 on my primary desktop. It wasn’t easy, and I waited ro post this until I was fairly sure I would uninstall it right away, but I’ve been running it for a week now. I even got it to work with my Promise RAID! I’ve found suitable replacements for Outlook, Office, Paint Shop Pro, and FileZilla. Click here for a screenshot (529k).
RedHat 9
RedHat 9 has been released. It’s very decent. Scanner support isn’t great, and I couldn’t get my hardware RAID to work, but other than that it’s a pretty slick distro. Get it off of BitTorrent if you haven’t already. It was even easy to get working with my Linux-not-supported print server.
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