Linus didn’t know what he was unleashing with “an OS you can try to modify to your needs” — yet. But what started as a fun vetting of one *nix became the largest barn-raising in the history of computing.
Linux users come in all flavors. Just as there are Mac fanboys and faithful followers of Microsoft there are folks who will try another OS when you pry their Linux from cold, dead fingers.
I am not such a person. I don’t like Microsofts business practice and some of their products make me sick to my stomach. But I can admit that Excel is a hell of a tool in the right hands and that SQL Server is an easy to use, easy to administer (for what I do) tool.
On the other hand, I will not be spending my own money on anything from Redmond. A few years ago I loaded Ubuntu on a machine and that was that. Not going back.
Linux is a philosophy for me as much as it is any particular product. I have a dozen different distributions at home and have used each of them for at least one task top which it was ideally suited. Rescue disks, reviving old hardware to useful condition, running a half dozen different servers off my modest desktop box.
So today I will pause for a moment and pay homage to Tux and his amazing legacy.
