Linux has come a very long way since Linus Torvalds posted the first beta kernel to Usenet in the early 1990's. Back then, no one dreamed, not even Linus himself, that this kernel would ever become the basis of something so great; he just wanted to improve Minix (the student version of Unix that runs on x286 processors) to exploit the new protected mode capabilities of the then-new x386 Intel processor.

Now, five years later, Linux is an industry. Nearly 57,000 people have registered with the Linux Counter Project. This project currently estimates that between 0.2 and 5% of all Linux users have registered with the Linux counter project. That means there could possibly be as many as 29 Million Linux users currently. This would be anyone that's ever bought a book with a Linux CD in it, anyone that ever tried to install it but gave up, and anyone who uses Linux occasionally. That's a LOT of users. A conservative estimate is that there are probably 5 and 10 Million Linux users of any serious level. (See http://counter.li.org:29659/linuxcounter_eng.html for more information.) Estimating actual users is difficult, but the Linux Counter Project offers some interesting perspectives on approaching the task.

Since much of academia has embraced Linux, many exciting and profound research projects have employed it in interesting ways. Projects range from distributed processing and parallel processing to the ELK project, which ports Linux to palmtop computers and even old i8086 type processors. (You can take that old XT out of mothballs and use it for your kid's workstation!)

The Beowulf project (See http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/beowulf/beowulf.html) has spawned a number of impressive uses at other organizations. The Beowulf project is a distributed processing paradigm that runs one operating system across 16-32 processors in a virtual super-computer. Various similar projects have built network clusters using off-the-shelf PC hardware with high-speed internal networks to build low-cost, high-performance super-computers for use in industry as well as research.

The performance of these virtual super-computers is impressive, and when compared to the cost of such a machine, it's astonishing. Instead of paying in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for a Thinking Machines CM-5 or an IBM SP-2, or a Cray T3-D, you could spend about $50,000 for 16 Pentium computers with the necessary networking hardware and build your own supercomputer. The performance is comparable:

Machine      Processors      GFLOPS       MFLOPS/second 
=======      ==========      ======       =============
TMC CM-5     512             14.06        27.5  
IBM SP-2     128             9.52         74.4
Cray T-3D    256             7.94         31.0
Loki         16              1.28         80.0

The January issue of Linux Journal explores parallel computing in general and two projects in particular: The Loki and Hyglac clusters at Los Alamos and Caltech respectively.

Makers of the recent hit movie Titanic used Linux for much of the amazing digital imaging that you saw from what appeared to be a helocopter's eye-view of the great ship. You were actually watching a digital image prepared by 105 DEC Alphas running Linux on a high-speed clustered network. Digital Domain chose Linux for image rendering after an exhaustive comparison of other available operating systems. (See http://www.ssc.com/lj/issue46/2494.html for more details.)

Parallel processing is also available to the home user with several computers in his or her home network. A free software application called PVM enables you to turn TCP/IP connected computers into a single virtual machine, ideal for experimenting with parallel programming on your own. See the article, ``Parallel Processing using PVM'' in Linux Journal, January 1998.

Mind you, these achievements I've mentioned only have to do with parallel processing. Many other projects exist, and you should check http://www.linux.org/projects for more links. And even this list is not complete! Further resources are www.linuxhq.com, and www.linux.org.uk (home of the famous Alan Cox!). Look at other sites such as http://www.lcs.mit.edu for more information about computing in general, and many of these projects will be using Linux in some way or another.

Of course, ``selling'' is not the best choice of words. Linux is ``free'' in the sense that it is distributed through the GNU public license. GNU stands for ``GNU's not Unix''; it's a circular definition that the Free Software Foundation seems fond of. This license says, basically, that you may freely copy and distribute all binary and source files, but if you do you must attribute the original authors and you may not re-copyright any material simply because you have added a few improvements. Every author's work is his or her own and may itself only be redistributed under the GNU public license. This prevents people from ``hijacking'' other people's code, and it helps keep quality software in the public domain.

The curious thing about GNU software is that even though it's not supposed to be Unix, in is Unix in everything but price. Yes, technical support must be purchased separately; there are many Linux consultants available, and more and more distributors are selling support contracts as part of their corporate package. But the performance and the environment are definitely Unix. Even if the kernel's code base is not traditional (in most respects it's much better), it looks like Unix, it acts like Unix, and it ``ACK's'' better than Unix. (Pardon my sense of humor, but you Unix geezers will know what I'm talking about.)

Curiously, Microsoft NT attempts to make price a big selling point in trying to lure Unix users and administrators toward NT. This might make sense for some expensive commercial Unices such as Ultrix, AIX or HP-UX, or even Sun Solaris, because they can get pretty expensive. However, Linux has been shown to run faster as a server than most all of these, and on much more modest hardware. What could cost you $5,000 with Microsoft NT (after obtaining your email server, development and database tools) costs $50 or less with Linux. By the time you obtain all the servers and licenses necessary for the Microsoft option, you could be looking at $10,000 or more per box.

In the distant past, it's been an ordeal buying new hardware, because it's taken so much time for Linux developers to build in support for that hardware. Nowadays, the waiting period is much shorter. This is because more and more developers are making Linux their platform of choice. With so many developers working with Linux, new drivers and applications simply become available faster. It only takes one programmer to build a driver, usually, and all he or she needs is Linux, the hardware in question, and the time to do the job. You can visit the Applications and Utilities homepage to get an idea of what's available for Linux (http://s9412a.steinan.ntnu.no/~teg/linuxlist/ and also http://www.xnet.com/~blatura/linapps.shtml), but I warn you there's actually more out there than you see listed. Before you decide your hardware or peripheral is not supported, ask on a large Linux newsgroup or mailing list, write the maintainer of the Linux Hardware HOWTO, and talk to your nearest Linux network admin whom you know personally. (Try your local Linux User Groups! In San Diego, see http://www.kernel-panic.com.) Chances are someone's already done the work you're looking for.

Nearly as soon as something new comes out, if it's good, Linux support appears for it. The USR Palm Pilot now may be used with Linux for example: see http://www.scsn.net/users/mcduffie/pilot/pilot-linux.html.

Why not? Even if you're a newbie to computers in general and are starting from scratch, you'd have to learn Windows 95 or something anyway. So you'd be pestering your friends who know something about that platform. At least with Linux, you stand a better chance of talking with an experienced computer user who can really help you instead of further botching your system despite his best intentions. Further, Linux is more stable than Windows; you reboot for upgrades, not just for fun. So you'll probably have fewer debacles that will cost you hours on hold for ``tech'' support.

Linux can be just as easy to use as any other operating system, once you get familiar with it. If you can go through life without ever having to go broke dealing with Microsoft, what is so bad about that?