I tried using red hat a while ago and couldnt get into it. Well i want to try again so i went to the store to buy meself linux only to find lots of different versions. I dont want to know which is best (read the post below0 I just want to know why there are so many different versions. Windows has basically 2 versions 9x/Me for home use and NT for business use. Is this similar to linux ie Mandrake for home, red hat for business or whatever? Also how difficult is it to get connected to the net with linux? Thanks for any help "People spend too much time thinking about the past, whatever else it is, its gone"-Mel Gibson, Man Without A Face

Because Linux is free (relatively) and OpenSource, there are many companies that have their own implementations. Open Source goes completely against Monopolies (hence M$) and so that is where the difference comes in. Advantage of OSOS: Open Source Operating Systems get updates and patches quicker due to tha vast majority of programmers working on a single project.

OSOS is also customisable , so you can reprogram it to suit your needs

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There are many Linuxes since there are more than one company/organization/people working on it.

And dwarfsoft, what do you mean by "relatively"? Linux (the OS) _is_ free, when you buy a distrobution you pay for the manuals, the packaging, the non-free software and so on, but you don't pay for the actual OS or the software that's GPL:ed.

Edited by - Muzzafarath on August 6, 2000 2:10:24 PM

dwarfsoft says:
Open Source goes completely against Monopolies (hence M$) and so that is where the difference comes in

no it doesn''t, open source simply means software with source code available; it has nothing to do with monopolies.what is ''m$''? ''m-string''? 13 dollars? thats the dumbest thing ive ever seen and i would have expected people here to have a little more sense, or originality.get a clue.

It''s unfortunate that microsoft didn''t invent the first pc, then there monopoly would be okay just like every other original hardware vendors monopolies are okay.

Thanks for the info guys

"People spend too much time thinking about the past, whatever else it is, its gone"-Mel Gibson, Man Without A Face