Alternative O/S
If you've been a victim of the myriads of viruses, spyware, or malware out there you're probably wondering if there's any sure-fire way to keep them at bay.
There is, and it's easier then you may think:
You've heard about it, you may not know exactly what it is, but if you're really concerned about security, you may want to explore this very good alternative to Windows.
Linux can be obtained in a variety of ways, and where it's fundamentally free, there are some distributions that charge you for support of their product. You're not actually paying for the software, but you're paying for the ability to call someone if/when there's a problem.
Linux is a GUI (graphical user interface) just like Windows. You have icons, windows, programs, folders, all elements that should be familiar to anyone who has used a computer before - PC or Mac.
On the system level the dissimilarities come in to play. Commands in Linux are similar, as is the file system (FAT32, EXT2, EXT3), but start looking at the locations of system files and programs and you'll realize it's a whole new world. However, with many of the new distributions you never see the nitty gritty details that makes Linux inherently different.
That's why you shouldn't be afraid of Linux, and the reasons why you want it?
All the software included with, and created for Linux is Open Source.(minus a few choice commercial applications) That means that you can download a copy for free, you can give a copy to your friends, they can give copies to their friends, and if their friends know how to program, they can customize the program and re-release it Open Source for others!
Essentially it's freedom to use, freedom to share, and freedom from having to worry about some snot-nosed kid downloading a windows script and creating a variant of a very malicious virus that'll erase your work from the past year.
So that's the theory behind it, the actual practicality of it is that it comes with an "Office Suite" - Fedora comes with OpenOffice which is fully compatible with Microsoft. You have an office suite with word processor, spreadsheet, database, and the ability to make a presentation just as easy as M$ without all the extra fluff. There's Gimp an image manipulation program that can use Adobe Photoshop filters, read/write PSD, PNG, and EPS files, and supports layers, transparency, and color profiles as well.
Also included are a multitude of games, carbon copies of many of your favorites from pinball to Space Invaders, Civilization, Astroids, and Breakout just to name a few. Speaking of games, you may be wondering about new games? How about Unreal Tournament 2004, Doom 3, Half-Life 2 -- all have Linux executables and installs.
If you're looking to play games, you'll need support for the latest hardware, 3D accelerators, soundcards, RAID, and gigabit Ethernet adapters, right? Well, they're all here, as well as an x64 version for those of you with an AMD64 system. 64-bit is a major push as we get further down the road with the technology getting cheaper and cheaper. Considering that WinXP-64 is still quite beta, if you're looking for something to test your processor's potential, Linux is about your only option (though there is an evaluation version of WinXP-64 available here). Most of the major companies - ASUS, Creative, nVidia, RealTek, have all released various drivers and hardware information for configuration under Linux. They're for all the major packages, but you may want to check out your hardware manufacturers support site to see what packages they have drivers for.
Unfortunately Linux is not standard enough for these companies to support the Linux drivers and distributions, they release them because people asked, and they figure you know enough to be able to install them or at the very least suck it up when it doesn't quite work the way it's supposed to. Linux is organic, it's growing, and the more acceptance it receives, the more people that use it -- the better chance it has of becoming mainstream. That may not be a good thing for clothing or music, but for computers - it's Shangri-La.
Until you're comfortable enough with Linux to do away with M$ and their security holes all-together, you may want to consider setting up Linux on a secondary machine, or at least a secondary hard drive. If you're looking to set up a dual-boot system, the easiest way is to install Linux first, then Windows, which automatically creates a boot menu with the OS choices for your machine.
Keep in mind that you'll need to format whatever hard drive you're working with. Of course, the newer versions do everything for you, but the basic premise is that you need a boot partition, a swap partition, and your normal data partition. The boot partition holds all your bootup files, and information needed to load the operating system. You should plan on using 200-500mb. The swap partition should be equal or slightly larger then the amount of RAM in the system, and the data partition is normally the rest of the drive. You may also want to create a FAT32 partition so you have an area to store files readable by both Linux and WinXP as Windows won't read EXT3 & Linux won't (isn't supposed to -- but can) read NTFS.
Finally, the easiest way to install Linux is to burn an ISO image. This is an exact image of the install CD or DVD, the biggest difference between the two being the amount of install discs and of course, needing to have a DVD Burner to burn the DVD ISO. With ISO files you can download them, burn them with your favorite program, then restart and boot right from the CD/DVD, making it as painless as possible. You'll find both CD & DVD ISO files for the newest distributions here:
Fedora | Screenshots
- by the makers of Red Hat, one of the first Linux package distributions
FreeBSD
- UNIX-based, not Linux, but along the same lines
GenToo
- for the power user who likes to tweak
Debian | Screenshots
- another mainstream Linux distribution
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