LINUX Review by Linux Editor Irhad Topojani

Welcome to my short review and take on Fedora 9 codename Sulphur and others!

I would like to start off by mentioning that I have been a Windows user on and off since Windows 3x through to the current Vista.

After many installs/re-installs of Microsoft Windows due to errors/incompatibilities/viruses and so on I decided to give a Linux based operating system a chance. Note: I have tried Linux in the past back in the Windows 95 SE era, back then it was a more complicated install process, completely new to me. Today Linux is available in many distributions designed/tailored by the community that sticks to a particular distribution.

I have to say I've tried them all, and out of every distribution, Ubuntu and it's derivatives such as Ubuntu Multimedia, Ubuntu Muslim Edition, Kubuntu, Edubuntu etc. I admit all are made for a specific group of people which will find something good about it, I've used it and recommend it for anyone moving away from Microsofts greedy upgrade/activate to 1 PC only or pay cycle.

With Digital Rights Management and other technologies Microsoft intends on incorporating with updates to current and future versions of Windows to prevent you from listening to your own music and watching your own movies without proof of purchase eg. you legally download an mp3 without DRM it won't play without a so called digital signiture, it could be lurking right around the corner. Many users are turning to Linux for these and many other reasons, it is open sourse meaning all the software is free and you are free to change it to your liking eg. modify it, provided you know how.

Now I recently installed Fedora 9 codenamed Sulphur, on a laptop I purchased ( Acer Aspire 4315) installation itself went smoothly, chose some options such as erasing the whole drive as it reduces the need for additional mucking around with settings. After install I booted into a login screen where I clicked my username (created during install) and typed in my password, I was in my new desktop, now it seems nice and stable so I decided to test some applications such as VLC, Yahoo Zimbra Desktop, Nero Linux 3 ( Note: Nero Linux 3 was purchased from nero.com and is not free) which were downloaded and installed by an installer, pretty much any program ending with .rpm will self install (kind of like .exe in Windows).

I tested programs I added, all worked amazingly fast, responsive to the click of a button, stable ( Linux is usually 99% more stable than Windows and rarely lags like Windows, oh did I mention nearly all viruses are made for Windows? Yes, very few are made for Linux, and even if a website contains spyware for Windows, you can look through it without a worry in the world because to Linux it's a foreign language. Linux is built on an interely different code to Windows).

Well I have to say support in Fedora and many distros excludes mp3, mpeg, etc due to licencing issues. They have to be manually added, luckily you will find many sites with tips on how to do so, the easiest for a beginner would be Ubuntu Ultimate Edition 1.9 or later which is all ready to use no need to add any extras, this edition is not made by Cannonical but a community of it's own focused on the user.

I recommend you try various versions of Linux until you find one you are comfortable with, ubuntu or mandriva being first choice for the new user, fedora and openSUSE for people more used to Linux and comfortable with setting it all up from scratch.

Hope this review has been useful, please feel free to add your thoughts on Linux, or comparisons with Windows, and any personal experiences.