1991- Linux is born. Users-one, Linus Torvalds.

1999-Linux stands for the biggest movement in the post-modern era, its popularity among users unparalleled. User count-millions.

When the beer-guzzling young Finn studying at Helsinki University, Linus Torvalds started working on his own adaptation of UNIX way back in 1991, when Michael Stich won Wimbledon and Ayrton Senna still ruled the racetrack, he probably would never have imagined that his baby would develop into the masthead of a guerilla movement against the depressing state of affairs in the software world. The situation then was- shell out wads of money on commercial software or pirate it and get arrested. Now, in 2000, when Pete Sampras has won his sixth Wimbledon and Michael Schumacher and Mika Hakkinen fight it out for the top honours, there is a third alternative. Linux is free. It doesn’t crash (honestly, I've tried!). It networks like a dream, and most importantly, it provides maybe the best programming environment around. In fact, you can also play Quake III and Doom on Linux, and they will actually run faster than on an identical Windows machine, and that’s the trump card.

So why would you want to switch to Linux? For one thing, you won’t lose all your data due to some mysterious “invalid page fault in GDI.EXE” that Windows always seems to throw at you. Besides, there is as yet no virus that will bring you to your knees that runs on the Linux platform. You don’t have to spend over fifty grand on a C compiler; gcc(GNU C Compiler) with Vi or Emacs will do just as well-manna for the programmer. You can browse the net, send your mail and chat online. In fact you can even play music, manipulate images, edit videos and create movies. (The special effects in TITANIC were done on a Linux-based network, which should be enough advertisement for its capabilities, really).

So what’s the catch?

Microsoft supporters (yes, they exist) would say Linux takes too long to get used to, and installation is a sure shot recipe for disaster. Actually it isn’t if you know what you are doing. The important thing is to know about the hardware in your machine. If you have all the original manuals, installation should be a breeze. It never takes more than 45 minutes on a Pentium machine (Win 98 generally goes to an hour). Partitioning of the hard disk is the most crucial part of the installation, so back up ALL your data before proceeding.

Which distribution of Linux you choose is entirely upto you. RedHat, Caldera, SUSE, Slackware and Debian all offer their own versions, but RedHat and Debian outscore the others.

Once you have installed the OS, you have to choose which Window manager you want to use. KDE (www.kde.org for more info) is the commonest and probably the best of all, but GNOME/Enlightenment (www.gnome.org) offers features that are really interesting. Try using both and take your choice.

An important thing about Linux is it’s insistence on passwords. Every person who uses the machine should have his own user account and password. This feature is really useful, because if your pesky kid brother doesn’t know your password (that’s your responsibility) there’s no way he’s going to delete the project report that you typed so painfully the previous night. There is a strict file permission system here, a result of the UNIX framework around which it was built.

Your Linux machine is perfectly capable of running a web server as well! Most distributions come with Apache, the free Web Server software that runs about 58% of all Websites on the net. So if you can get your Domain name registered and your Website hosted on the Net, you can easily become an Internet Presence Provider and earn plenty of moolah.

If you are running an office and want to set up an Intranet, but can’t afford ScoUnix, or don’t want to use WindowsNT(a desktop PC crashing is bad enough, but the whole Intranet? An expensive proposition) then Linux is your first choice. It is almost as stable as high-end UNIX systems, doesn’t cost anything, is very security conscious, and can run on most platforms from Intel to SunSPARC.

But this article is really aimed at the home user so I shall now answer the million dollar question,

Can a Windows user switch completely to Linux?

The answer, as of today, is yes in most cases.

Corel Corp. has brought out WordPerfect 8, a wordprocessor that matches MSWord in most aspects and has an even better Spellchecker, which is free for home use and runs on the Linux platform. Netscape’s browser too has a Linux version which is perfectly identical to it’s Windows Version, so that’s not a problem. The DOSemu program lets you use Dos applications in Linux. The GIMP (GNU Image Manipulator Program) offers functions similar to Photo-paint and Photoshop. X11amp is a mp3 player identical to WinAmp, so you music freaks shouldn’t have any problems adjusting. You can play WAV files, midis, and even movies.

Power users would be interested to know that all the best database software are available for Linux, including Oracle 8i, the latest offering from Oracle. Microsoft SQL server is not yet available on this platform, but then would you really expect it to be? Free databases like MySQL among others are also available which are very comfortable to work with. The best Office suite on the Linux platform is StarOffice, which can be purchased for under 40 dollars(dirt cheap, believe me) and is actually available free for home users. It resembles Office97 to some extent but is even more stylish, though the spellcheck is not too special. This software bundles a wordprocessor(on which this article has been made), a spreadsheet program, an image editor, HTML editor, a vector drawing tool, and a presentation software which (in my opinion at least) outdoes Powerpoint. The commercial version even has a database, scheduler, e-mail client and a news reader. What’s more Lotus is likely to extend support to Linux as well, so the development over the next few months will be interesting.

Gamers would be thrilled to know that Doom, Quake and other games are already available on Linux and Gaming giants like Loki and Id have promised to port more games onto the Linux platform.

As for you programmers, rejoice. You can compile programs on Linux very easily. There are a numbers of free and commercially available C compilers. The commonly used ones are gcc(C) and g++(C++). The editors that are commonly used, Vi and Emacs bestride the world of C editing like a pair of dinosaurs. “It really doesn’t get much better than this” is the phrase that one can rightfully apply to both these programmes. Most importantly, a programme developed in C can easily be run on a Windows platform if required.

But for the musicians, there’s a little bad news. There isn’t any software as yet that can work as well as CakeWalk or DOP, but wait, their turn may come too.

All in all, Linux is probably the best operating system around when you consider the cost benefit ratio. Using it is a learning experience and everyday you learn something more. But the best thing about it is functionality. It is a very simple pure, sort of OS, uncomplicated, unpretentious. So do you want to have the Linux penguin on your desktop? Consider it. Once you're started, it could be a bumpy ride, but believe me, it’s worth it.

(More about Linux at www.linux-india.org.)