• Free - you can likely get the OS and almost all of the applications you could need without paying a cent.
• Easy to customise - open source helps a lot here. I'm not a religious zealot about this, I just like the practical aspect. I have actually modified a few Linux applications when they were broken or didn't have a feature I wanted - I could never have done this with the majority of Windows applications because the source code is not available. If you want to write your own applications, there's a wealth of source code available to use as a reference or even to directly base your applications on. Releasing the source for an application you're developing may make it easier for others to contribute, too.
• Transparent - if something goes wrong, you can often find out what the problem is much more easily than under Windows, by checking the output of the program or looking in the logs.
• Stable - in that applications almost never bring down the entire OS, and if they do, 90% of the time it's because there's some sort of hardware issue.
• Supported - in many cases it's actually easier to find support for Linux applications. There are lots of mailing lists, newsgroups, IRC channels etc. where people will be able to help you with any problems, and usually fairly quickly, as long as you read the documentation first and provide full details when you ask a question. You can actually talk to the developers for many applications - for large Windows apps this is rarely possible.

It would not be right for me to present only half the story, however. The hurdles generally come down to the following:

• A fair amount of manual configuration is required if you want to do unusual stuff. Many newer distributions have nice graphical tools to set things up, however.
• Applications aren't always available or don't have all the features you want (improving every day though)
• Some hardware/hardware features not yet supported, mainly with newer hardware (also improving, and Linux actually has wider range of hardware support than other OSes, but it's best to investigate before purchasing the hardware or moving to Linux)
• Applications are frequently not visually consistent with other applications. As GNOME/GTK and KDE evolve, this is improving. (This is not really relevant to the eBox project anyway.)

Linux may not be the best choice for you if you're not keen to do a bit of experimenting. Some of the things I am doing with the eBox are cutting edge under Linux at this time, and not fully polished. You don't have to be a programmer though, and with the instructions and information I have provided here it should take the load off. If you do choose to try Linux, then building an eBox-type machine will certainly teach you a lot. I learned a fair amount, and I thought I knew a lot about Linux before I started.

Getting Started with Linux

More information on Linux is available at linux.org and linuxnewbie.org, among many other places.

If you want to try Linux for the first time I'd suggest you get a copy of Mandrake, or better still Knoppix (which doesn't require you to even install it - the CD boots right into a Linux desktop.) Both are available either for purchase on their respective websites or at your local computer store, or free download (you'll need a fast connection). As it is quite legal to redistribute Linux, there may also be companies or individuals in your area who sell copies of these on CD for a cheap price.

There are many, many other "distributions" of course (a distribution being the Linux kernel plus tools, applications, documentation etc.), but these two are the easiest to get into without hiding too much of the customisability. For pure desktop use, you might also want to check out Lycoris Desktop/LX, which is very impressive. Personally, I use Gentoo Linux for my home machines and Fedora (basically the community version of Red Hat) at work.

Tips

Troubleshooting

If you're having a problem:

• Read the documentation (help file available inside the application, on the author's homepage, or in the case of shell commands, type man command where command is replaced with the command you're interested in).
• If the problem doesn't result in any visible error messages, try looking in the file /var/log/messages. This is a global log file and sometimes when an application fails it puts some useful information here. Other applications may have their own logs which will be in /var/log. Some applications don't write to log files though.
• Do a google search on the web and newsgroups. Try searching for keywords from error messages you received, if any.
• That said, beware of old documentation and instructions when you're searching. The HOWTO archive at the Linux Documentation Project has some very useful documentation on various practical Linux-related topics, but a fair amount of it is outdated - check the dates and double-check the information if it looks old. This isn't the ideal situation, and things are improving. These days most Linux applications come with documentation.
• If you can't find what you're looking for, then ask a question on the mailing list for the application, if there is one, or if not as a last resort try emailing the author. When asking a question on a mailing list or via email, provide full details of your problem, and be polite. On mailing lists, don't expect people to email you directly - they will usually reply to the list, so subscribe to the mailing list before posting.
• Use the latest versions of applications, and if you're still having trouble with the latest downloadable version you might want to try checking the absolute latest version from CVS if it is available. (See below).

Kernel

Despite what you may have been hearing, in Linux you don't really need to recompile your kernel just for the sake of it, unless the one you are using a kernel that doesn't support a feature you want. Most distributions include a fairly well-built kernel with modules built for any special stuff you might need. However, if you want to get the most out of your machine it can be worth doing.

Compiling from source

Linux applications can be installed from packages (RPMs, DEBs etc.), or may already be included with your distribution, but sometimes if you choose to, or you want the absolute latest version, you will have to compile an application yourself (usually if it comes in a tar.gz or tar.bz2 file - these are known as tarballs). Compiling applications from source is pretty easy, it's usually as simple as extracting the tarball (type tar zxfv filename if its a tar.gz file, or tar jxfv filename if it's a tar.bz2), cd into the directory that just got created, then run the following:

./configure
make
make install

You can pretty much ignore all of the output, including any warnings, but if you get an error (usually includes the word "error", or make says something ending in the word "stop") then there's a problem - look for a file called README, INSTALL, or a docs directory or similar. Note that if you have checked the project out of CVS (described below) then you may have to run another command first, something like ./autogen.sh or ./cvscompile.

If you want to try out the latest things the developers are working on, you will probably need to use CVS. CVS is a system that helps programmers to manage source code and other project files, but can also be used by users - one or two commands are usually sufficient to begin downloading the project you're after. Most application projects that use CVS provide instructions on their webpages describing how to get access, and if you're lucky they may provide "snapshots" automatically built daily from CVS that you can download instead to save time.