Laptops and Linux

So there are some toys out there that are fun when you first get into them, and there are some that remain fun no matter how long you have them. Two such toys are in my possession at this moment. One is a laptop that I have on loan from work for a trip that I will be taking across the country in a couple weeks so that I can keep in touch this time, unlike last year when I was almost completeely incommunicado. The other is a virtual machine running Linux. This laptop, of course, is running Windows XP, but where's the fun in that? No, I got myself a free, open-source virtual machine, and installed a free, low memory usage distro of DSL (damn small linux).

This means I am accomplishing the completely pointless venture of running one operating system on top of another operting system just to surf the internet. Why, oh why, would I do such a thing? In all honesty, there is no reason to do this except that it's fun for me. I could argue the point of near total security of my surfing practices, but I don't go anywhere that is terribly seedy. So there's nothing to hide. I suppose I could be keeping all my passwords and such a secret... I'm sure they're real interested in learning all that. But then, I already visited several sites on the base XP OS anyway, so I would only accomplish visiting said sites...again.

So in the end, the only reason to do it is because I think it's fun. I mean, I'm running Linux on Windows. I have a second machine mounted on the main machine, and it's a machine that, while it uses the memory and hard drive of its host, it's moderately independent of the host and it can be instantly zapped from existence if I screw it up and crash it...not that I will.

I've always been curious about how other OS's work anyway. I mean, I grew up on Microsoft. Really, you'll find a minority who didn't. Sure those Unix and Apple users are out there (and yeah, I spent my time on an Apple IIe as well as a TI99/4A), but for the most part, once we actually started in on the hard core computing, what did we have? MS-DOS and then when the 90's rolled around, we got ourselves the latest and greatest: Windows. But it turns out that while Bill Gates bought everyone's love, the other OS's quietly hung around, buildin their own fan bases.

Besides the Linux I'm running here (there are actually multple distros of Linux, DSL being the smallest of the bunch), there is still Unix, something call Solaris, the Macintosh OS, and apparently more that I've heard even less out of. Microsoft being the big dog on the block, it receives the most flack of them all and really, its size is its greatest weakness.
I cannot admit to being the biggest expert on the matter, but here's what I do know about it.

Microsoft tried to make Windows all things to all people. It has a huge distribution, big demands, and a lot of expectations. This means that the company has to make the OS to ceertain specifications. Not only those of the consumers, but also those of the people who have worked on it before, and the businesses who depend on it. They also have to use and refine what hasa come before so that all the programs and such that were based on the previous versions will still work. So if there wewre bugs in the previous versions due to any number of factors, those bugs have to be corrected and that code revised and updated to a current standard of memory, hardware, security, etc.

Once upon a time, there was an operating system called Unix. It was then and is still known to be incredibly stable. Windows doesn't use Unix. It was based on some other code that Bill Gates got off someone else. Unix remains stable and the amusing thing is that in my company, while Windows is used for nearly everything in the building, several of the servers that handle the important transactions run on Unix because of its stability. Funny, huh?

So Windows is something else. But what about the others. Here's what I do know. You may have heard that MacIntosh's OS is more stable than Windows. Guess what it's based on? Unix. That's right. OSX is a proprietary version of Unix made for Mac. What about Linux. Also based on Unix.

This would be why I'm curious about Linux. And this is why I'm playing with it. I've heard that Linux runs a bit slow on a VM in a Windows box, but ironically, Windows runs better in a VM on a Linux box.

I think I started babbling. Bottom line is that my battery is about to die and then the fun will really be over....