First, let me start off by noting that almost all of the reviewers that gave Red Hat Linux 9 very low marks had mostly hardware incompatibility issues. They bought Red Hat, threw the CD in the CD drive, and hoped for the best, expecting it to be able to successfully detect and configure all of their particular hardware.
While Linux has made tremendous strides in hardware compatibility and usually can work with most hardware right out of the box, it does not have the advantage of market critical mass and monopolistic power that Microsoft has. Thus, all vendors that sell hardware for the home PC provide drivers for Windows, being that Windows has about 95% of that market. That being said, Linux now has made tremdous stides in hardware support. It supports most major hardware products, but lacks in the area of some of the more exotic or bleeding edge graphics cards, sound cards, network cards, and most winmodems. It's getting better all the time (due to open source developers reverse engineering, and many vendors providing drivers), but Linux can't boast the level of hardware support that Windows can, due to market realities.
The people who gave bad reviews attempted to blindly install Red Hat Linux on their machines, without checking for hardware support ahead of time. Thus, due to hardware incompatibility or configuration, they had headaches and wrongly blamed Linux.
My personal experience with Linux in general and Red Hat 9 in particular has been wonderful. I've installed it on an IBM Thinkpad 600E. The installation went smoothly and I only had to manualy choose the correct video driver. It did not detect the Mwave internal winmodem (I expected this) and did not detect the sound card, but I do not need sound on my notebook. Apparently it is possible to configure so that Red Hat can use the sound card, but I don't need it. But Red Hat did seamlessly detect everything else and it all worked beautifully.
I've had a lot of fun with Linux. I'm a programmer and it is chaulk full of development tools (without having to pay mega $ for MS Visual Studio). Linux is a programmers paradise. It also has everything MS Office has (with Open Office and KOffice). It can manipulate graphics with the GIMP, it has tons of games, and endless configuration possibilties. RH Linux loads both the Gnome and KDE desktop environments, and it's fun to play with both, being that they are not exactly alike, and both have different strengths and weeknesses. And both, quite frankly, are much more attractive and fun to use than the Fisher Price interface of Windows XP. They are also far more configurable, with much more eye candy than XP. I've also been able to successfully download and install and use huge software titles like JBuilder 5 and Eclipse (Java Integrated Development Environments).
I've also been completely impressed with the amazing stability and efficiency of Linux. I can crash an application, but it never affects the OS. I just have to kill the app, and everything else goes about it's merry way without a hitch. Contrast that with Windows XP, and all of it's bugs and the slightest application problem can bring it to it's knees (prompting you to send a bug report to MS). Or, of course, the infamous Blue Screen of Death. No BSOD in Linux at all. And finally, there are far fewer virus worries with Linux.
In short, Linux is great. It might be a bit rough around the edges for some newbie/non technical users, but it is very easy to use (just requires a small learning curve, just like anything else new) and can do so many great things, at a small fraction of the cost of MS alternatives.
Those new to Linux should probablly start off with a distribution that runs from a CD, like Knoppix. Knoppix automatically detects and configures your hardware. All you have to do is pop the CD in and reboot. And it is completely risk free because it does not touch your hard drive. Knoppix can give you a taste of how great Linux can be. And if you like what you see, you should first check hardware compatibility at the distros web site, than
probably re-partition your hard drive with Partition magic. And of the distro set up routines will detect the partitions and allow you easily set up a dual boot PC. Alternatively, buy a whole new PC with Linux pre-loaded (ensuring hardware compatibility). You can do that here at Amazon, or Walmart or Lindows.com, or many others. You can get a new PC for as little as $200 (the cost of WinXP by itself).
But do give it a try and be prepared for hardware compatibility and that it is a different OS, so there will be a small learning curve. It's very well worth the effort.
The only reasons I did not give Red Hat Linux 9 the full 5 stars is because Red Hat has ended their retail product, concentrating on the enterprise. Also, Red Hat Linux does not include a disc partitioning tool like Mandrake and SuSE do. But I've loved it. I'm now looking forward to partitioning my eMachines PC with WinXP, and loading a dual boot Linux installation. I just have not decided which distribution it's going to be.
Alvin Browning
MP
James Lydon