Love's Linux Lost

By JOSHUA QUITTNER

For years I've wanted to put the operating system known as Linux on my PC. Why? Because I love the idea of it. Linux, which was first released in 1991, is an alternative to Windows and Apple's Mac operating system--though it will run on virtually any PC and most Macs. Supposedly 15 million people use it worldwide. (Since it's available free, no one knows how many copies have actually been passed around.) It's also the poster child of the so-called open-source movement. Unlike Microsoft Windows or the Mac OS, Linux and many of the programs that work with it are built and maintained by volunteers scattered all over the Net. The source code, the usually secret "recipe" that determines how the software works, is published online for anyone to read and improve on. As a result, Linux is amazingly stable. There are stories aplenty of Linux PCs that have been running crash-free for years, without ever being rebooted. Best of all, you can load Linux on an outdated PC or Mac with minimal RAM, and your old machine will zip along like a young jaguar, multiprocessing with the best of them. If you're looking for a cheap way to run your own Web server at home, Linux may be the way to go.

But I'm 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 by...)

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 Inc. and set to work partitioning my hard drive so that I could keep Windows on one portion and install Linux on the other. This was grim work, but with Thor on the phone calling the shots, I was able to install Red Hat in about 90 minutes. I rebooted my machine.

Suddenly a new world unfolded before me. Where once was the boringly familiar Windows desktop, now was something that looked like the footprint of a four-toed gnome. Where does the footprint lead? What are the pitfalls ahead? I'll let you know when I find out.

Want to try Linux? Visit timedigital.com for a list of distribution sites. Questions for Quittner? Send e-mail to jquit@well.com