Comparing Linux & Windows

There are many reviews out there comparing different operating systems. Unfortunately my all-time favorite is fell by the way side. OS/2 was started as a joint project between Microsoft and IBM. After time went on Microsoft dropped out and left to pursue Windows leaving IBM on their own, but eventually even IBM abandoned the project. The slow death of OS/2 prompted me to start looking for a good alternative, so I started looking into Linux. Part of what I liked about OS/2 was that it was more flexible then Windows and more stable. Linux had a reputation for being both of those, and so began my adventure into Linux.

Over the years I have tried Linux repeatedly with varying degrees of success. My first endeavor was with Slackware 1.x, for the most part I found this version to be a more complex version of DOS. I did learn about two different graphical user interface (GUI for short) programs, KDE and gnome, both of which are still around today and each have their own distinctions. A problem that I found that each of these GUIs was that in the early days there where very few GUI programs that came precompiled and the ones that where there divided between the two interfaces, for the most part this is still true, however a few providers have decided to support both.

My next endeavor in the world of Linux came in the former of a short lived flavor from Corel Software. I started using the free version that was available for download, but later purchased the deluxe version as it came with a special version of Corel's WordPerfect Office suite. This experiment with Linux was decidedly more productive than the previous as several years had passed and found much more software available that worked with the custom KDE version installed on Corel Linux. With the office equipment suite and the same Web browser I used in Windows (Netscape) I was able to make the system do about a third to almost half of what I was doing in Windows. That being said I still preferred using my...