Linux....who will win? Results Show.

I lost. There, that saved you 2 hours of watching rehashed clips and manufactured ire. (You want that, you'll need to see Survivor: China. Next season is "Survivor: survivor, where the producers compete to see who can keep the show on the air)

BG: I was trying to install linux on an aging HP laptop (Pavilion N2415, AMD Duron, 256MB, 10Gb)

How I lost: First, I tried to partition space and create a dual boot system. Really hard. Then I gave up and tried a clean install of Ubuntu. Didn't work because Ubuntu installs off a "live CD" -- which it a CD that actually boots a full version of Linux. Once you are running it off the CD you can use it to install the OS to the hard drive. That's great if you have the processor for it and 1Gb of Ram. I did not.

So, I was using a clean install of Fedora. That worked - though it was not much faster than XP. That would have been fine, except for the fact that I needed (a) a wireless card and (b) Citrix.

Wireless: If you have a newer machine and a newer card, someone might have written a Linux driver for you. Celebrate. If not, you need an NDIS wrapper which simulates how Windows treats the card. You install that, and then you install the driver for the wireless card. Yeah. Right. Not happening.

Citrix: I skipped the wireless fight to see if I could get Citrix running to log into my office account. Without this, the whole experiment would be useless. I needed Open Motif installed to use Citrix, so I tried installing it. Again and again and again, using every permutation I could imagine (or find online). Nothing worked. That is, I could install Open Motif, but Citrix would not install because it claimed it could not find it. This is apparently a known issue that others have overcome. I was vanquished.

What I learned: (Licking wounds)

1. Linux is a lot more powerful and user friendly than I remember from earlier versions. I can see installing it really really easily on a desktop. The Live CD is a god-send because you don't need to use the command line to install it.

2. www.ubuntu.com rocks. People love it-count me in. It comes with everything you need.

3. Mandriva (www.mandriva.com) also rocks. It is a Mandrake Linux derivative. It's main selling point is that the company makes a bootable USB version for about $60. It's a 4GB drive with a full install of linux. With this, you can pretty much hijack any machine for your own nefarious purposes.

4. I am happy with robust OS's. I know Windows. I am gaining expertise on a Mac. Of course, you don't need that - Macs just work. Linux? That's staying on the back burner for now.