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Well, just a quick note – if by Windows 95 era you mean circa 1997-ish or so – i.e., around where my Micron XPE laptop (P-133, 80MB, 6GB) is – it might run a bit slow but it should still be usable. I've had the latest Ultima Linux on there without problems for years, KDE's a bit much (I used WindowMaker on it, Xfce works acceptably as well) but OpenOffice.org, Firefox, etc. work great, although definitely kind of slow.

DISCLAIMER – I'm developer of Ultima Linux... by the way, my current laptop's a P-233/96MB, slightly newer, but still works just fine, this one with KDE.

...for example, Ultima Linux has all the media playback stuff, and it can actually run fast. So the only reason it's really very special is because it's from a larger vendor and not a smaller one.

What you need is Ultima Linux – http://www.ultimalinux.com/

And a release schedule's supposed to be an "innovation"? Yeah, right. Whatever the case though, GP's got a good point. Doubt I'll ever see anything about Ultima Linux on here, but they could at least mention the likes of, say, Symphony OS – the ones that don't just recycle the same desktop concepts, but that come up with something new and innovative, something exciting... just because it's "yet another Linux distribution" doesn't mean it's not worth talking about, it doesn't just need to be announced on more "specialized" sites like DistroWatch. This is something that could eventually wind up changing the whole industry or whatever as we know it, whether it's because of them specifically or else someone taking it even further...

By the way, no, haven't gotten around to trying Symphony yet – and yes, I know it's Debian-based (it is Debian-based, right?) – just mentioned it because it's one of the more innovative systems and the first one to pop into my head...

MadTux.org sells Linux-friendly wireless cards – although not sure if they'd work with Ubuntu, it has horrible wireless support last time I checked. May as well just get a more wireless-friendly Linux, I hear Ultima's pretty good, might be better for you :-P

All my family's just using Ultima Linux (disclaimer, I'm the developer...) – took a while to convince them to switch, but after they saw what it was like they were all impressed – been working beautifully. Most of our machines still have Windows on them and are dual-booting, but it's been several months since anyone ever actually switched back, we just don't have any reason to... as far as games, etc. go, Cedega works beautifully for most of them... got all the printing handled through CUPS and our home network... plus, on the offchance that a problem does occur, all our machines have SSH enabled, so fixing stuff's almost trivially easy, at least as far as I'm concerned.

By the way, in case anyone's wondering, we have seven machines that are more or less always-on, two or three others that are sometimes in use, and then a single Windows laptop that my dad sometimes brings home from work – other than that, most everything's running Linux. As far as printing we have an EPSON all-in-one in my room, a Brother all-in-one in our family room, a Lexmark inkjet that my brother and sister share through the network... three machines hard-wired in, most of the others on wireless... all sorts of different hardware and configurations, and yet it runs just fine... so yeah, I'd say just switch to Linux, guaranteed to solve all your problems in no time :-)

I'm an open-source developer (Ultima Linux, PyWord – just to name a few. And yet I'm living on the east coast of the U.S. In fact, so's Red Hat. Not to mention Slackware, now in Minnesota, or even MySQL, who's all the way over in Sweden. I've also noticed a lot of my users tend to be from European countries – Germany, France, Sweden, England, Ireland... and that's only counting a small handful. Oh, and Linus himself is in Portland, Oregon, which is a bit closer but still not in the valley. So unless I'm missing the point entirely, I'd have to say the article must be completely wrong...

DISCLAIMER: I will admit I haven't read the article yet, so I probably am missing the point, but may as well post anyway, since this is Slashdot ;-)

You can't hack an OS X system in 30 minutes? Granted, they were literally asking for it, but the point remains that it was hacked in a very short period of time, and you kind of have to question the security stuff there.

Personally, I'd say that it would make a lot more sense just to switch to Linux – not only does it work with your existing PC hardware, but it's also usually free or inexpensively-priced. And despite what a lot of people have claimed, it's really not very hard to install or use – as a distribution maintainer myself, I get a lot of e-mails, etc. from users, and most of the time if there are problems, they're usually either really small things after installation, almost never something that would render the whole system entirely unbootable. (A lot of my family and friends are using it now too, without any sort of problems, and considering that they were all Microsoft junkies for years it's not as insignificant as it may seem...) Obviously I may as well promote Ultima Linux here, but there are many others available – I'd stay away from Ubuntu, I've had some bad experiences with it myself*, but the hell with it, you have a choice, so you choose what's best for you.

Of course, if security's the number one priority and absolutely nothing else matters, the only way to go is OpenBSD... it's also pretty damn fast, too, even on a P-133/80MB laptop.

Having said all that, I do have to admit my iPod nano is the best thing since sliced bread...

*Tried it out in my spare time, mostly out of curiosity (I sometimes like playing around with other systems just for the hell of it)... among other things I've noticed: No wireless support, slow as hell, and it uses GNOME, which I can't stand. And don't even get me started on apt-get.

DISCLAIMER: Probably some bias in there, since I'm a distro maintainer myself. Take with a grain of salt...

As a lot of other posters have said, there's not very much software for it other than what they themselves provide, but there's another side of it, too – hardware. If I remember right, last time I saw anything about SkyOS (I will admit it was a while ago) there was very little hardware or software support. Couple that with the high price tag – i.e., any price tag – and lack of publically-available source code, and I honestly just don't see any reason other than the hell of it.

Personally, if there's any "alternative" OS I hope takes off, it would have to be either Linux [insert obligatory reference to Ultima here], or one of my favorite "pet" projects, ReactOS. The nice thing about the latter is that it (will eventually) support the same software running on Windows, so if not the most ideal system – obviously, if it runs the same software, a lot of vendors may not see any reason for an open-source, Linux-compatible, etc. version of their product – at least it (will be) a somewhat practical one than a Linux system. And OpenBSD is totally kick-ass, although honestly I'd say it's probably in exactly the right place right now; those who can understand it can use it, and everyone else can stick with something better suited for them.

DISCLAIMER: I will admit I'm a Linux dev / distro maintainer and there may be some bias here...

Personally, I tend to like just a regular old wiki for documentation – for example, most of the documentation for Ultima Linux is on a MediaWiki site. Although this might not be the best way if you need printed documentation, because of the fundamental differences between a Web site and a wiki. Of course, if the primary method of providing documentation is going to be printed, I'd say learn LaTeX – it's really not very hard at all, and it tends to be very good for technical documentation because it (1) handles all the formatting for you so you just have to do the actual content, (2) has some very, very powerful typesetting capabilities if you need advanced features like tables, mathemetical symbols, etc., and (3) is almost trivially easy to learn, at least as far as I'm concerned.

And a lot of third-party developers using Slack as a base for their own distribution also use the -current tree. I've been doing my own distribution lately (yes, you know, I never shut up about it...) and I just base everything on -current, making a few tweaks and changes as I deem necessary – it really is rather nice and stable, and since it's significantly more up-to-date, I see no reason not to use it. As far as I care, the releases are mostly milestones between updates.

Quick tip to any fellow would-be Slack developers, by the way – keep at least one previous version just to be on the safe side, and "torture test" the current one before you release it. This means updating your dev box, preferrably a couple others as well, using it every day, etc., as well as doing an extensive test of everything (my own procedure if anyone's interested). That way, you know for sure if it works – and if it doesn't, you can just go back to one that does. Simple as that.

By the way, just a personal opinion, but I'd rather trust Slackware's "unstable" -current branch than any Microsoft, Fedora, or Ubuntu release – I've had bad experiences with all three, so I may just be biased, but may as well put in my 2 cents anyway.

Definitely agreed – while I tend to be almost insanely obsessive about using CSS, there are a few things that I've found are just so much easier with tables; as far as I'm concerned, image galleries are "tabular" enough that it's OK to bend the no-tables-for-non-tabular-data rule just a little bit. And complex pages like the Get Ultima! page (for my distribution – not an ad, just what I feel's a good example) would be hard to implement without tables, either. Personally, I honestly couldn't care how the Web site's implemented – the only thing that I consider important for a "proper" Web site design, other than the design itself of course, is whether or not it validates.

By the way, you can even do without <div>'s if you know what you're doing – that same link's also a good example of that. Other than the actual content, everything's implemented using <ul>'s and <h1>, as well as the <body> tab itself. It's a bit broken in IE, but since it is a Linux site most of the people are probably already somewhat into open-source stuff like Firefox anyway, and honestly, I don't even use Microsoft products so I couldn't care less.

Just thought I'd add my two cents.

Honestly. I didn't start out with Linux with any sort of training or anything – I just got a copy of Linux for Dummies with a free Red Hat 8.0 CD included, stayed with it not because of technical reasons but because it looked pretty – and now where am I? I'm running my own distribution (Slackware-based, if you're wondering), writing complex shell scripts and even the odd full-blown program, learning all sorts of new and creative programming languages – the only thing keeping me from doing it as a full-time job is the fact that I'm still a high school junior and have to spend as much time slaving over endless amounts of work for IB as I do staring at a glowing screen all day.

And really, the hardest part isn't starting, it's finding when to stop. Of course, you probably would have to keep an open mind and all, but hell – sounds like you're more or less willing to learn, so you should be fine. And if not, we're more than happy to help you join the ranks of the evil penguins in our conspiracy for world domination :-)

I'd have to say I recommend AVG from what little experience I've had working with Windows lately (a couple years ago I ditched my last Windows 98 install for Linux, and haven't had anything Microsoft branded on any of my own machines ever since). Not only is it a very high-quality free virus scanner, it's also got probably the most colorful interface I've ever seen – if you've seen all their Easter Island-ish clipart images, you'll know what I mean. Highly recommended.

Although if you get tired of Windows, I know this great little Linux distribution that's got your name written all over it... well, maybe not, but it has my name everywhere ;-)

I may be completely wrong here, because my newest laptop is from around 1998, but I don't really think that a brand-new machine should pose much of a problem for Linux. I've got a couple laptops, both running Linux, and most of the difficult setup work was mostly because of older ISA sound cards (probably nonexistent in modern machines).

Few quick tips from someone who's been there, done that:

• I'm not too sure about built-in wireless, but if you have an external adapter I find that NETGEAR makes pretty good ones. I just use the NdisWrapper module, too lazy to switch to anything else.
• The video card is likely to be the trickiest thing on newer machines. Try finding one with either an ATI or nVidia chipset, because they tend to be the best-supported on Linux; if the open-source drivers don't work, they have their own proprietary ones that will likely work.
• Sound shouldn't be too difficult; ALSA should have no problem.
• If the machine has a built-in Ethernet port, it should be fine, but beware of modems. Most of the modems sold these days are really cheap ones designed to work with Windows only, so I'd say try finding an older PCMCIA modem if your machine still has the slot. I recommend a Motorola Montana, my own 33.6k one is more than enough for when I'm traveling away from a wireless network.

You may want to try a few LiveCD's out on your machine; some distributions may work better than others – I recommend Ultima Linux, mostly because it's my distro, but others are good too. May also be worth checking out EmperorLinux, they sell laptops pre-loaded with Linux so they're practically guaranteed to work.

Personally, I think the hardest thing with new machines isn't the software, it's just re-adjusting to where everything is. I tend to like having the CD drive on the front, one of the "full-size"-ish keyboards that keeps that little block above the arrow keys intact, and the PCMCIA slot on the left hand side, but maybe that's just me.

Hope you find a machine you like :-)

Let's see... been programming ever since I got my first copy of HTML for Dummies when I was eight, and now I'm fifteen, and what have I written? To name just a few:

• PyWord, a text editor coded in Python
  (Used to be my most popular, I even had a guy in the Bereau of Labor and Statistics e-mail me once to say he liked it enough that he wanted to use it in his own program!)

• pyprime, a program to find prime numbers
  I actually came up with the entire algorithm for it during theatre class in eighth grade. I've also ported it to my TI-83

• Überpage, a PHP-based Web site engine
  Among other features, it uses a MySQL backend, generates completely valid XHTML 1.1, and if you're wondering, yes, I even designed the CSS theme myself

These days, though, I tend to spend most of my time developing Ultima Linux, which has become – I may as well brag – a very popular distribution. Most of that stuff isn't so much writing programs as compiling them, although I frequently do have to make some major changes to shell scripts, etc., which I've also become somewhat good at.

I've also become fairly decent at writing sed scripts, the occassional bit of JavaScript, and now I'm gradually trying to teach myself C. (Although with all the other stuff, and not to mention my actual life, I never have the time...) And then I also tend to like playing with CSS designs – I've got a Slashdot design I did, as well as a CSS Zen Garden entry and my hand-coded WordPress theme, which I'm rather proud of.

I used to waste endless hours with QBASIC, and then later Visual Basic. I've never really forgiven myself for it until now, but I no longer remember a single line of it so I guess I've repented enough :-)