Back a few years ago, I started fooling around with Linux. It is a free software that you can use in place of Windows (or Mac) on any PC or even Macintosh hardware. I started with a "distribution" called Mandrakelinux. It is now called Mandriva.

Linux is essentially a free operating system that allows you to run thousands of applications that you can download for free. The software is considered open source, which means that nobody owns it and anyone is able to contribute to the functionality and quality of the software code. There are various distributions of Linux. Essentially, a distribution is a collection of tools and software that is bundled together.

In linux you will find that there are the same sort of applications you would run on Windows or Mac. This includes a MS Word compatible word processing program and an MS Excel compatible spreadsheet program. You can also get image editors, music players, media players (that play common windows formats), and games.

Over the Holiday break, I took the step of moving from Mandriva to a different distribution called Kubuntu. Essentially, it is still linux, but with a different collection of tools and applications. I like Kubuntu so far in that it recognized a lot of my Dell Laptop's gadgets automatically without having to tell it what they were. Setup was a breeze. Just pop in a disk and load away. It asks you thinks like "What country are you in?" and so on, but really it took care of things on its own. When I was done, I kept all my data and had a new operating system installed.

I have written more on my blog about Linux. You can find it here:

http://www.chrisshaul.com/category/linux/

If you would like to download and burn your own linux CD that you can try out on your computer without actually doing anything to your hard drive, you can run the Kubuntu "live" cd by downloading it here:

http://kubuntu.org/download.php