THE GOOD:

1) It's stable. Of course, so is my TI-85 calculator. Come to think of it, an abacus is pretty stable. And why are they stable? No cool features causing instabilities, just like Red Hat.

2) It's really cheap. I got mine bundled with a book about learning Linux. For some reason college campuses around the nation are thrusting this terrible, half-written OS on all of their computer science students. I guess it makes the professors feel smart when the students have no idea how to make their operating system work.

3) The penguin icon is kind of cool. I think his name is 'hayseed' or something. You can wear a hat with the penguin emblem and all of the programmers who never leave their basements will think you're one of them! Marvel as they spew a ton of jargon filled jibberish at you . . . just be sure to keep nodding your head knowingly and every now and then shout "Yeah, Microsoft blows!"

THE BAD:

1) You'll find a lot of hardware is not supported by Red Hat Linux. By hardware I mean things like your video cards, SCSI adapters, modem, and all those other really neat devices that aren't a keyboard or a monitor.

2) It might offer a stable network environment, but I'll never know. I personally don't have three years of spare life span to waste on half-written techie docs about how to set a network up. Maybe that's why it's so stable . . . only a handful of people in the U.S. can tolerate learning how to set them up.

3) There were no cool games in this OS. Only lame 'match the colored marbles' type games. Believe me, after struggling with this OS for a few hours, you'll be wishing a copy of Quake3 was included in the OS.

THE UGLY:

1) This is the OS that lets computer guys feel smart again. Windows kind of screwed everything up by making computers easy to understand and manipulate. Luckily LinusTorvalds took the time to write the cryptic little kernal that kicked off this highly user UN-friendly operating system. Now all the computer geeks can feel smart again because their grand parents can't set up an Apache web server. Hoo-rah!

If you actually like using your computer, I'd advise sticking with the Windows OS. If, on the other hand, you want to feel special, and dedicate lots of time to learning an OS with a limited number of uses, GO LINUX!


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