It was a sunny, beautiful Saturday. Windows 2000 had ceased to amuse me, and I had some time to kill. I decided to spend a portion of my weekend supporting the open-source movement by installing RedHat Linux as a second operating system on my PC. My motivations were simple. RedHat Linux is free, documented extensively on the Internet, and growing in popularity. It has acquired some very nice features such as an easy-to-use installer and even an open-source Microsoft Office replacement called PerfectOffice.

I had nothing to lose, since I decided to keep Windows intact and place Linux on a secondary hard drive. The victim was my development machine, a 1.4MHz AMD, commissioned by me and assembled by my ex-boyfriend who loved hardware more than... well, never mind. That's a story for another day.

Earlier in the week I had downloaded RedHat 8, and burned it to CDs in preparation for the event. After the install I decided to mount my Windows drive through Linux for access to my MS Office files. It was a perfect plan, but I was soon to learn that there are no perfect plans.

Through the initial RedHat install, my computer hummed happily. RedHat discovered all of the attached hardware, including a zip drive. The zip drive was an unexpected bonus, considering I had completely forgotten it was attached to the computer. For some reason Windows had never bothered to acknowledge the zip drive's existence and in time it faded from my memory as well. Now the green light on the front of the drive was blinking with fresh life. Good work, RedHat, I smiled.

After verifying that Linux had installed successfully, I restarted my PC and booted into Windows. I knew something was up when it took five minutes for Windows to bring up the login box. I typed my password, clicked OK and waited another five minutes for the desktop to finish loading.

Running my office programs worked fine. Trying to interact with Windows through the Start Menu or My Computer or any type of Explorer window would send it back to la la land. My files were intact, but practically inaccessible. I was puzzled, since I hadn't done anything to hurt Windows. Why was it so upset with me? I checked the system logs which yielded little information. I restarted five or six times for good measure, ran through the various permutations of Safe Mode, all to no avail. In a last ditch attempt before reinstalling I decided to tell Windows to stop recognizing the hard drive which now housed RedHat. Suddenly it was business as usual.

The next step on my magical mystery tour was to get back into RedHat and see if I could access my Office files. I proceeded to the RedHat half of my computer and tried to mount my Windows drive. What I expected was a cooperative whirring sound as RedHat found the drive and mapped it to my newly created /win2k directory. What I got was a cooperative whirring sound and the error message "fs type NTFS not supported by kernel." After poking around on Usenet, my tireless companion through most of my computer adventures, I discovered that RedHat did not include default support for the NTFS file system. Apparently there were some rights issues and built-in NTFS support had been yanked from my release of RedHat. Since my Windows drive was NTFS, I would have to recompile the kernel.

I won't go into the details here - those who are interested can type "RedHat, recompile, kernel" into Google and see what that pulls up. The instructions I found were spare but adequate and an hour later I was ready to try mounting my drive. This time life was good. My newly mounted directory was filled with familiar files.

I began to settle into RedHat. The Ximian mail client refused to cooperate, but the KMail program gave me exactly what I was looking for, which was the ability to read my mail and add a signature without too much fuss. RedHat had multiple desktops, which meant less switching between open program windows before finding the one I needed. Clicking a button on the toolbar produced a fresh new desktop, ready to populate with open windows until the RAM gave out. Another click would return to the old desktop with previously opened windows intact. Since my open windows tended to pile on several inches thick, this feature pleased me!

There were many other things which pleased me about RedHat. New hardware was easy to add - recognized as soon as I attached it to the computer. I could print and play music and open my Word, Excel and PowerPoint files using PerfectOffice. At the time, I could not synch my Clie through its USB cradle or find any convenient way to open my MS Access files. Not overly concerned, I decided that given more time, I was sure that I could make RedHat do exactly what I wanted. Maybe even more. For now, I was about to call it a day.

As I got up from my desk, I nudged the mouse with my hand and noticed no corresponding movement on the screen. My computer was well and truly frozen, the keyboard and mouse reduced to art nouveau paperweights. I hit the power button and waited for something to happen. The monitor remained blank as a series of rapid beeps came from the computer. Cautiously, I got on my hands and knees next to the devil machine and sniffed around for smoke. Finding none, I pried open the case and tried tricks such as pulling out the RAM - and restarting, disconnecting the hard drive - and restarting. I restarted with the zeal of ER personnel working over an unconscious patient, hoping that my initial suspicions would be proven wrong. When signs of life failed to return, I carefully undid the metal clip which held my processor to the heat sink and scoped out the damage. Unable to fight the growing heat generated by my experimentation the processor had turned into a dejected puddle of goo on its silicone wafer. I mourned its passing as only someone who would have to shell out seventy bucks for a new processor could mourn.