LINUX FOR THE REST OF US? Yesterday I loaded the "open circulation" version of Xandros Desktop, a commercial distribution of Debian Linux, on an old P3.

The open circulation package, including a full load of Sun's Open Office suite, is free to download (though it cost me ten bucks to get it from their http site rather than Bit Torrent.) If I'd bought it in shrinkwrap it would have cost me $39. If I'd bought the Deluxe Edition, capable of running MS Office and other Windows programs with CodeWeaver, it would have cost $89. But I was just experimenting, so I used the low-price spread.

The entire loading process took about 45 minutes, most of which was just watching it load. At first Xandros didn't recognize the computer's built-in Intel video adapter (the old Linux video-card bugaboo), so I futzed around for fifteen minutes finding a low-resolution setting to load with. After that, it asked about ten questions and wham, it was off and running. Half an hour later, it was fully installed... and connected to the office Windows 2000 network, the office printer and the Internet. (The video fixed itself.)

So now, for the price of a used P3 plus $10, I have a fully functional, fully licensed networked computer that operates, for most purposes, like it was loaded with Windows and MS Office. It looks like Windows. It responds like Windows. The menus look like Windows menus. It connects painlessly to a Windows network. It reads and writes most of the common Windows file formats, even without CodeWeaver.

Is it a Windows computer? No, of course not. It's a Linux computer, which means fewer freeze-ups, and fewer problems with viruses and spyware. Plus, I just saved at least $300 in software licensing costs.

This feels like a breakthrough to me...