A few years ago--I'll say somewhere around 1998/99/2000--I made the mistake of spending my hard earned funds for Linux. I needed an operating system and I tried to save a few bucks by purchasing Caldera Systems Open Linux 2.2, on sale at Best Buy at the time. Big mistake. Very big mistake. I fought with Linux until I finally got fed up and purchased Windows 98. Yeah, Windows had bugs, but nowhere near as many bugs as Linux had. Besides, Windows would at least boot into a GUI, even if the best drivers available failed to load. I can't say the same for Linux. In fact, the "safe boot mode" offered by most of the versions of Linux I've tried is a joke. It certainly can't do what old dependable F8 does for Windows.

Over the years, I've downloaded different versions of Linux to try on various computers I've had. And Linux doesn't seem to have improved much--or at least not to the extent Windows has.

Well, the Windows Vista on my new laptop has me trying out Linux again. And I've haven't found one version of Linux that would come close to XP. Furthermore, Windows 2000 was an even quicker (less bloated) version than XP. In fact, XP was built on the old tried and proven Windows 2000 kernel. But unfortunately Windows 2000 didn't recognize much hardware out of the box. Whereas XP was much better in that area.

Windows 2000 will run on just about anything. And as far as XP is concerned, I haven't found a computer with 96+ MB of RAM and at least a 300 MHz processor that I couldn't load XP on. Try the same with Linux. Sure, you may find a machine or two that a number of Linux distros will load on; but most of the time you'll be staring at a black or squiggly screen or a command prompt. And some silly nitwits think that I'm supposed to learn to program computers in Linux just so I can use that undependable operating system. And I guess I would have to, if I wanted to get Linux running and keep it that way.

And why are most Linux programs written to set the screen resolutions so small that you need a microscope to read the screen? One of my computers has a twenty-inch Gateway CRT monitor. But every Linux I've loaded using that monitor makes the desktop and fonts so tiny I have to slide with my nose against the screen and my bifocals on.

The fact is, I've began to suspect that Linux is a capitalist conspiracy. Think about this. AntiX is a version of MEPIS that is suppose to run on older desktops. And to me a Pentium 4, 1.5 GHz or a 1 GHz should be plenty for any operating system. They durn sure are plenty of machine for Windows 2000 or XP. But when I can't get MEPIS to install (which is one of the more dependable versions of Linux I've tried) and I take the time and trouble to download and install AntiX. Then what happens when I try to reboot or shut down? The only option available is to log off. And when I log off, I'm dropped to the login GUI, with no option to restart the computer or reboot. I don't even have a command prompt. Windows may be bad, but not near as bad as Linux. Get the public fed up with dealing with Linux and they'll go running back to the big corporations every time. Yeah, I suspect capitalist saboteurs are "helping" out in the Linux community.

Back in DOS days, I used to write simple text files and give them the extension bat. With those files I could list every available (or at least practical) application on the computer. But I've never seen the same done in Linux. Isn't Linux capable of doing what DOS could do twenty years ago? Why am I always dumped to a command prompt without at least some sort of menu of commands available.

Take for example Midnight Commander. MC is an excellent file manager that can be ran at the command prompt in Linux--sometimes that is. At times the mc command gets an "unknown syntax" reply. You never know what is available to you in the version of Linux you are running. You never know what the drives are going to be labeled or how to mount them (something totally unnecessary in DOS and Windows) because not all Linux distributions are the same.

I have gotten so carried away expressing my frustrations that I nearly forgot to mention Puppy LInux. Puppy is perfectly amazing. Thus far I haven't found a computer that Puppy wouldn't run on. And it is so tiny and so fast. Sure it is limited on what it can do. But for how small it is, the OS is really amazing. I am presently running Puppy version 3.01. And I can read and write to NTFS, partition a disk, or connect to the Internet and download using a bit-torrent file. The Linux community needs to take lessons from Puppy Linux. Puppy has made me more of a dog lover than I already was.

Windows XP was based on the Windows 2000 kernel. Windows Vista is based on the XP kernel, which means that Vista is based on the Windows 2000 kernel. Now, as I said, Windows 2000 was an excellent OS. But you can only fatten up something just so much before it starts staggering under the burden. And Vista is the straw that broke the back of Windows 2000.

Oh, and get this: Micro$oft has found a way to blame the computer because they made a overburdened operating system. Yeah, thats right. They call it the "Windows Experience Index." And the score is determined by the lowest rating of the computer's processor, memory (RAM), graphics, gaming graphics, and primary hard disk data transfer. Needless to say, a laptop isn't going to have a heat-radiating and power hungry graphics card in it; so the  score of my laptop was determined by the lowest rating of the aforementioned items, which was the graphics card in the case of my laptop. Oh gee, I guess I need to throw away this new but worthless 1.9 GHz dual-core Pentium with 2 GB of DDR2 RAM and go buy a super-computing laptop to increase my Windows Experience Index.

When I got fed up with Vista on my new laptop, I turned to the Linux community. I've downloaded over 20 of the top distros to try on various computers I have and I've been highly disappointed. But I reckon you can tell that fact by the opinions (frustrations) I've expressed herein.

I wish I could get the drivers for my Acer laptop to install the Windows 2000 I have setting on the shelf. I guess I'm forced to use  Vista,  but  I'll keep Puppy on a partition of my Acer for when Vista starts dragging its fat ass or being insubordinate.

I gave Damn Small Linux a damn small donation for their efforts. I made a donation to Puppy too. I plan on making more, especially if Puppy doesn't let me (as a typical consumer) down like the rest of the Linux community seemed to have done.