MEETING DATE: Fri March 17, 2006 

On March 17, Dick Maybach and Bruce Fowler will discuss Linux for the home user. Linux, a generic version of Unix, is a community effort with development contributions from thousands of individuals and hundreds of organizations. It is much more widespread than most people realize, powering everything from Internet Web sites to the small routers that many of us use. It has been a multi-user operating system from early in its life and is much more secure than Windows, which only recently has migrated from a single-user, single-computer system. One of the results of this is that Linux is much less vulnerable to computer viruses and other hazards than is Windows.

Linux is evolving rapidly, with complete new releases appearing about every six months and new applications almost daily. Traditionally, Linux has been more difficult to install than Windows and has had fewer applications, and this is still true, but the gap is closing rapidly.   Easy-to-use programs with graphical user interfaces are available for all the needs of most home users, such as word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, photo editing, checkbook management, Web browsing, e-mail, and gaming. Dick and Bruce will demonstrate many of these.

It is now easy to test-drive Linux. Several distributions are available that run directly from a CD-ROM or DVD without installing. Some of these are included with an introductory book to help you get started. These come with the most popular applications, so you can gain a good idea of what a complete Linux environment offers.

At a recent Hardware SIG, we built three PCs for $250 each. This seems like quite a bargain until you find that purchasing Windows and its applications more than doubles the cost. Linux provides a reasonable and legal solution to the conflict between ever-decreasing hardware costs and ever-increasing software ones.