"Do you think the slow crawling spider has any chance against the swift fly? Yet, the spider and it's web are a lethal combination, and the spider will always win against the fly." Something like this has been said by Linda Goodman(I don't remember her exact words). She was comparing people of the zodiac of Capricorn with the rest. You will never expect Capricorns to come out tops, and yet, somehow, they always manage to do so.

I believe Linda. I am a Capricornian. And this is why Linda rates high on my crediblity list:

The year is 1995. I am in my second year of Engineering. Computer Science and Engineering is my major. I am getting my feel of computers, getting into the groove , learning how to write programs, how to give commands to that piece of code called the operating system. I have started programming in Pascal and C and the operating System is MS-DOS. What a lousy OS! Says someone working beside me. Work in text all the time, no graphics, type commands and what you are most likely to encounter is the notorious 'Bad command or file name'. Hey, but this is all I got, and I am a learner, a novice aren't I? So how can I complain? The person beside me comments : 'Yeh to kuchh nahi hai, aage jaa ke humko Unix me kaam karna padega, jisme to dimaag hi kharab ho jaayega...' and then a rain of invectives... We'll see, I think to myself.

1996. I am proficient in C. Third year at college. People all around are going goo goo gaga over MS Windows. Great OS! Cool graphics! No need of shell commands! Just click away to glory! My cousin has moved in with me. He is a Scorpio. And he is among those enamoured by Windows.He is a graduate in Computer Science.

Our college(SVREC, Surat) now has an Internet connection! We have a VSAT link to ERNET. A new building has come up on the campus, called Center of Excellence. It is all the state-of the art computing machinery with Ultra Sparcs, Digital Alpha machines, HP machines, and so on, all connected by an ethernet and an earth station having connectivity via sattelite to the Internet. All of this bounces over the top of my head, but I decide to have a look at it anyway(as if I had a choice!). I enter the center apprehensively, expecting gadgetery and wires beyond comprehension. I come accross rows of Computers. Each having a text based user interface, something like dos, but according to a senior, much more powerful. The OS that runs on each one of the machines is Multi user and multi tasking, and can be employed on large servers...

Powerful, stable, secure etc etc, all the buzzwords of the modern computing world.

Well, if it is not DOS it has to be UNIX, I say, because I have heard that UNIX is just like DOS in appearance.....

"No, it looks like Unix, and acts like Unix, but there are differences", says this friend of mine. "For one thing, this operating system is free. Can you imagine that? And it has all the features a Unix workstation has and is equally powerful, stable, secure.... list of buzzwords.... In a nutshell, it is just great, and what's more it thoroughly outperforms MS-Winodws... "

"Really?", I ask, "So what is it?"

"It is Linux."