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Introduction by Dr. Raj Mehta
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Linux FAQ
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Installing Linux on Your Machine
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Software For Linux
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Configuring PPP connection for Linux for connect to Internet via dialup connection

Related Links

1.
10 Questions About Linux -A Good Overview of Linux
2.
Linux Site - The main Linux site Online
3.
Linux Documentation - Complete Documentation
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Linux Documentation - Alternative link for Linux Documentation
5.
Linux Applications - Applications available for Linux
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Linux Headquarters - A Popular Linux site
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Alternatives to MS Windows Operating System
- A authoritative guide to other Operating Systems.
8.
Unix vs. NT - Extremely detailed report!
9.
Linux in News - Different IT industry learders are porting it on their machines.

Linux a Viable Alternative to Windows 95/98/NT: Switch over to Linux Now!
by Rajarshi Bandyopadhyay

Introduction

During the past couple of years an alternative to most the popular operating system(OS) with users, Windows 95/98/NT, have emerged and is championed by some of the giants of IT industry. The alternative OS which is starting to give Microsoft a bit of jitters is Linux, a child of Internet. Linux is being now championed by Intel, Sun, IBM, Oracle, Corel to name a few.

The reasons for switch over for an user are many. One being that Linux is totally free OS and most of the applications are free. Techies, among you, should know that it a UNIX variant and based on open standard POSIX. It has all of the features you would expect of a modern, fully-fledged Unix: true multitasking, virtual memory, shared libraries, demand loading, shared, copy-on-write executables, proper memory management, and TCP/IP networking. It also has stability, reliability and multi user capability of UNIX.

You can practically get same functionality out it as you have with windows 95/98/NT. Ease of use is about as good as windows and support for the hardware is improving day by day. Of course we don't think of the software cost factor in India. Cost for the software with windows is very high. Most of it is the manina generated by marketing for having the latest version of the software even though we use the new features or not.

For me, personally the Prime reason for considering the switch over is the fact that I have not been happy with the performance of Windows. Over past several years, since the advent of windows 3.1 I have been using it, and it served me. It was never satisfactory.

The are many reasons for my considering giving up windows. Main being an alternative is now available. Others of them are frequent unexplained crashes, loss of data when applications crashed, frequent reboots. My windows 98, which is factory loaded on Dell Inspiron 3200, a premium hardware, crashes at least once a day. After several hours of continuous use, it goes unstable and the only alternative is to reboot the system, for no reason at all an application starts to misbehave and does not do what it was doing before. Of course the major reason being that hackers have played a havoc with Windows OS. Someone like me, who is on the net majority of waking hours is open to a compromise of the computer system and loss of data.

On a lighter note: At my Alma Mater--Stanford University, California, USA, students demonstrated against Microsoft Windows at Microsoft's job booth, and handed out the flyers encouraging people to switch over to Linux. Check this out just for fun, What Stanford University students think of MS Windows vs. Linux.

I would urge the adventurous amongst you to give LINUX a try.

Dr. Raj Mehta



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