Disclaimer: I have a degree in computer science, which came with an awe of Unix and I've been using Linux on my desktop for nearly 10 years. I've put Linux Terminal Servers in 4 classrooms with great success. I may be different from you. You might not know that Linux is an operating system that precludes the need for MS Windows. If you don't, check out The Open CD that lets you run Linux from a CD.

I read the LANMAN list at UT and am continually amazed by the stories of Windows viruses and worms and the work it takes people whose job it is to manage computers to solve these problems. I'm better at managing computers than most people (though not very good with Windows anymore) and when my mother's got a new laptop I painstakingly set it up with all of the service packs, virus and spyware detection stuff and a firewall. Within a few months, it was acting funny. Norton wouldn't get new updates & after I cleared the firewall rules, I found that it was contacting several sites in Russia as soon as it booted up. Since I didn't know what was contacting Russia, the only solution was to re-install the operating system. It hadn't been long since I'd done that and the last time it took me the better part of a day. I installed Linux on her desktop. A few things have been a little inconvenient for her, but the thing still works. So, yeah, my mother uses Linux as her OS. Clearly, I'm crazy.

Two stories in the news today make me think that maybe I'm not crazy. Actually, these stories are in the news every day. I really don't understand how anyone uses Windows and gets work done. First, there's a story about how it's easier to throw your computer away than to get rid of spyware and viruses. Really, the New York Times (who'll make you register to actually see the story) reports that "throwing out a computer 'is a rational response,' " according to Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a Washington-based research group that studies the Internet's social impact. So according to this guy, who can get quoted in the New York Times, throwing away a computer is a rational thing to do if you want to use Windows. The laptop that I'm using right now is running at 400Mhz. UT surpluses machines twice as fast. It's running Linux, and it's rare that I do anything that makes it seem slow, even compared to my dual 2.4 Ghz Xeon desktop.

The other story is about Novell trying to migrate to Linux on all of their desktops. The same story tells the tale of another company making the switch to Linux.