Linux to the rescue!

Doug and I have always thought that Linux would become the primary OS of today.

We've seen it go up and down, but now it's really becoming powerful, between OpenOffice, Chrome, The Gimp, Krita, Audacity, and many other tools, you can do so much that it more and more renders the expense of running MS-Windows less and less viable for most.

Now there is this new company offering a thumb drive with an optimized version of Linux called Xtra-PC which boots really fast and offers all the basics that one needs to run a computer. There is nothing to install, the OS will automatically detect your Desktop or Laptop hardware, it should even work on an old Mac (as long as it is Intel-based—as in the processor cannot be a PowerPC).

This is yet another great use of the Linux system. It will give a new life to your old computer even after you thought it couldn't be used. Why? Because MS-Windows tends to add more and more and older computers just can't sustain that OS anymore. Although Linux can be used that way, you can also make it really lean and run fast. It can take some time to work on that and they've done a good job.

I've been using Linux since 1996, before that I used IRIX. I think Unix is the best system of all. Linux has been ameliorated quite a bit in the last 24 years. It has all the necessary features you could dream of and now we have many different distributions which really give you incredible flexibility.

If you don't anything about Linux and you have an old computer that has become very slow or the hard drive doesn't work anymore, this is a great and cheap solution for you to continue to use the computer. Yes, you can get Linux for free, but it's not going to work that well on older computers without a lot of work on what gets installed.

One way or the other, I hope you soon enjoy Linux if you're not already a fervent user!