"The Linux Rainbow"
By: Paul Panks (dunric@yahoo.com)

(Phoenix, Arizona)

It's a little past 3 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, but
I'm still wide awake (thanks to a cup of Orange
Cappuccino). As the hot, misty drink invigorates me,
my mind begins pondering the state of Linux
as both an operating system and desktop environment
for modern day computers.

Linux took the world by storm sometime in the late
1990's. Of that, I am vaguely aware. And because I
didn't officially migrate to Linux from Windows until
2003, you must excuse me for lacking a bit in
history.

Although Microsoft practically brainwashed me into
buying a copy of Windows 95, during my early college
years I was still keenly aware of Unix (System V, to
be exact). I knew about "pine", "elm", "tin", "pico",
"chmod" and a host of other Unix commands and
applications. In fact, I wrote my first ever homepage
using the "vi" text editor from a Unix shell prompt. I
found it easy to use, feature rich and highly
dependable.

In researching an article about computer storage
called "Digital Rainbows," I began looking into the
various differences between a modern Windows system
and Linux. What shocked me, however, was how
intelligent Linux was designed in relationship to
Windows. XP broke almost daily, while my Fedora Core 3
installation seldom had so much as a digital hiccup.

With GNOME 2.10 on the horizon, I anxiously awaited
Fedora Core 4 Test 3, which I plan to install this
week (prior to installing Ubuntu 5.10 as a second
Linux distribution on my hard drive). I fully expect
Fedora Core 4 to set a solid standard for modern
Linux desktop systems, one which will rival or even
surpass my current Windows XP computer in both
performance and security.

With regards to market share, any number can be thrown
out and looked at, but all the number-crunching in the
world won't save Microsoft from continually losing
market share to Linux. Windows is bloated, inefficient
and terribly insecure as an operating system. Even the
Windows XP Service Pack 2 firewall is filled with
security holes. Norton Personal Firewall was an
obvious solution, but what about the malware mess
that is Internet Explorer?

The still new Firefox browser came to the rescue yet
again, installed on both my Windows and Fedora Core
partitions. Release 1.0.4 of Firefox is the most
secure version of the up-and-coming web browser yet.
And Internet Explorer 7 won't be ready for awhile, but
that's no big news where Microsoft is concerned.

The clear benefits of Linux as both a desktop
environment and operating system become immediately
clear when one examines GNOME/KDE compared to Windows
XP. XP, while functional, is a mishmash of cobbled
parts thrown together in a seemingly arcane method of
integration and haphazard functionality.

Linux, as early as Kernel 2.4, achieved remarkable
stability and customization on both GNOME and KDE
desktop environments, something millions of Microsoft
Windows users are still clamoring for. Yet this
expression of widespread discontent has become a
hallmark of what I refer to as the "Micro Sloth" -- an
arboreal mammal content on bloated products and
equally fat coffers.

When Windows dominated the desktop market for several
years in the 1990s, no one ever envisioned an open
source, highly customizable operating system such as
Linux stealing the thunder from the "Digital Zombies"
of Redmond, Washington. And yet, many moons later,
we are witnessing an explosion of Linux adoption, from
governments and educational institutions, to entire
corporations and software teams. And let's not forget
about the individual user, either: Linux is being
downloaded and installed at a solar express clip.

There will come a day, very soon in fact, when
Microsoft finally realizes the importance of Linux to
the entire computing world. Unfortunately for them,
Linux will be standing first in line in virtually
every statistical category, including the most
important line of all: consumers. Linux is akin to a
digital rainbow, providing every possible hue and
color of customization to a growing range of curious
consumers. Microsoft, however, is not even a hue on a
much larger rainbow. It's a forced system of adoption,
slithered into by snake-like politics and company
greed.

Linux is a digital rainbow for the new horizon of
computing. With consumers as a priority, Linux-driven
computing will provide them with highly customizable,
open source software at a fraction of the cost of
Windows XP. Windows is a digital dinosaur, awakening
to the reality of a new Paleolithic Era, fully digital
and fully secure.

And that is why Linux will ultimately succeed. People
need computers, but they need Linux even more.

(end of article)