One of the biggest reasons some people may never come over to the Linux side (Debian, Slackware, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc …) is because of this notion that you have to be a huge programmer, do everything from command-line, do everything by hand, and nothing will be the same* Lets face it, people like familiarity. Coming from Windows to any Linux distribution, the first thing one might look for is IE and the ‘Start’ menu.** This can be a huge road block. That shouldn’t be. Let it be known, just because you’re moving from one operating system to the next doesn’t mean you have to learn your “abc’s” all over again. Everything you used to do in Windows can be done in most any Linux distro.*** This guide will take you through a few of the most popular (can’t live without) programs in Windows and put some names to their Linux alternatives.***

My name is Stephen and *sigh* unfortunately … I think I’m a PC.

But it just doesn’t feel right …

“The usual …”

Computers have been around in my life, ” … since before I can remember.” (The earliest memory I have of any computer interaction (nothing deep, just Solitaire *ha*) would date back to … *thinking*, around ‘97-’98. That equates to about 60% ‘Lifetime Computer Saturation’) Back then, the only thing surrounding me was ‘boxes’ called screens brightly glowing with a well known user interface called Windows. At the time, the Windows versions I became familiar with were Windows ‘95 (at home) and maybe whatever the latest and ‘greatest’ was on the elementary school computers. From the prospect of a Linux or Mac user, my future, at this point, might seem to have been doomed from the start. At the end of my 5th grade year, I was home-schooled up through middle school (More Windows). My very first laptop (I think it was a Gateway) was a Windows machine. With this first computer, I developed a liking to computer programming, this is how I found myself growing ever closer to the one they call ‘Microsoft’. As I began to write more than, ‘Hello World’ programs, my computer began to thank me by tremendously slowing down. Then one day, I had my very first ‘Windows error’ (first of many). Not only did it sporadicly refuse to boot, but upon a ’success’ boot, Windows would either: 1)  die and restart 2) die with no GUI (wt*mess*?! no mouse?! what is this … foreign *command* prompt?!)* or 3) die and leave me a non-GUI sub-Windows *something*. It was a very messy and tragic ordeal.

My second machine (a Toshiba laptop) introduced me to the popular Windows term: BSOD or, Bluescreen of Death. This is quite simply an error page displayed when you make your Windows machine do something it can’t do, something it didn’t want to do, or just did something you shouldn’t do. However, BSODs are not always because of user error (MANY of them are not): my third and final Windows machine introduced me to this concept.

And then it happened. My Dad (being the computer Guru he is) at any given point in time had volumes of Cds and Dvds all filled with lots of backups, random data, and lots of programs. One day while casually browsing through a crate of Cds, I found something that only caught my attention because of its name: The Cd was labeled – Knoppix 3.6 and then the caption ‘Linux’. Google search or ask Dad? … Dad is closer. Upon further inquisition, Dad revealed to me, that this Cd was just another operating system. Analogy: Window is just a big program that contains smaller programs, Knoppix (Linux) is/does pretty much the same thing, “… but different. Go look it up. Linux is big.” At this point, my mind was buzzing with more questions than it had answers: how do you fit a whole OS on a Cd? What is Knoppix? What is Linux? If it is this small (< 701mb) could I make/program my own OS???