I repartitioned my drive and installed Linux (Mandrake 7.0, from a PC Plus magazine CD) yesterday.
The install went very smoothly, and soon enough I was presented with another OS to boot into at my lesiure, with a very Windows-like
desktop (KDE) and plenty of programs. The Linux desktops (KDE, GNOME) beat windows easily in the category of pre-installed little games to waste
your time. Some are really crappy, like SmileyTetris, and others are very slick (like Reversi, where the program whupped my ass 3 games in a row).
Also, because it’s a new OS, you can spend a lot of time playing at installing stuff and getting it to work. Not much joy there. Mandrake’s hardware
detection doesn’t detect my soundcard, which means that I can’t listen to CDs or MP3s, fiddle with sound software, or hear any of the cool sound effects
that are used in any of the Desktop themes. Nor was I able to set up my Wacom penpartner, which requires changing a configuration file and restarting X.
Setting up the modem was pretty easy though, once I got over the hurdle of finding my provider’s DNS server IP.
But what do I have, when all is said and done? An OS that has less hardware support, less applications and poorer Hebrew support than Windows.
Still, it’s fun if you like fiddling with your OS. Much better than messing around with alternate shells on Windows (like LightStep). And KDE is a very liveable environment.