When you, Joe or Mary user, buy a computer at Best Buy or Computer Village or order a computer from Dell or Gateway, you get a computer with a system already installed. Do you think they had any trouble installing that system on that computer?

The thing is - they are mostly right. I'm a Linux user, but would I buy a machine with it pre-installed? Hell no! Every machine I've been sent that has "Linux" installed is using a distribution that is either crippled, or not what I want to use.

A good backup system can help you recover from a lot of different kinds of situations: a botched upgrade (requiring re-installation), a hard drive crash, or even thumb-fingered users deleting the wrong file. In practice, though I've experienced all of these, it's the last sort of problem that causes me the most pain. Sometimes you just wish you could go back a few days in time and grab that file.

I recently installed Linux (Ubuntu 9.04 “Jaunty Jackalope” to be exact) on my not-so-old pentium 4 HT machine, the very same computer where different Linux distros have been installed over the course of two years. What struck me most after this very latest installation is how Linux has evolved and has become a more than capable desktop operating system.

One of the arguments I often hear from people who are trying to use linux for the first time is that they are not sure if they can switch back to their original choice of OS (usually windows), if they are not satisfied with their experience with linux.

How many times have you installed Linux only to have something happen which required a re-install? Or you get a machine up and running the way you want it and then you want to re-create the system on another machine? In either of these situations, the last thing you want to do is to have to remember all of the applications you installed and then spend the time installing them all again.

As of December 25, 2008 it has been a year since I first installed a Linux distro on my home computer. With the help of my brother, I installed Debian based sidux and I have to say, I have been very pleased with the results. You can read about my first impressions of sidux here and here. I thought I would share a few of my thoughts about my first full year of using Linux.

Many months ago, some very non-tech savvy friends where having trouble with their computer. Being someone that does ‘IT stuff’ meant I got called to help out their failing machine.

"So, where do I get my pre-installed Linux machine? Well, in New Zealand and Australia the answer seems to be NOWHERE."