To the Editor:

I must admit to being confused by Barrett Williams’ comment in the column “Apple wins operating system battle” (11/7), that hardware compatibility and application installation cause the removal of Linux from consideration as an operating system.

When I installed Ubuntu 7.10, a common distribution of Linux, last Wednesday, I had to download exactly one driver. If I had installed Windows XP or Vista, I would have found it necessary to download many more. If I had installed Mac OS X, and violated the license to do so as Barrett seems to have done, I might have gotten it to work as well with rather a lot of effort, but quite possibly not.

For application installation ‘difficulty,’ I have approximately 22,837 pieces of software any of which I could install with about six mouse clicks and six inches or so of mouse movement. The only way I can see for it to be difficult is in making the choice as to which pieces of software to install.

The visual effects, accessed by typing “Compiz” into Google, speak for themselves — Linux is much further ahead.

Vista and OS X are infinitely more expensive than Linux. Linux is Free and Open Source Software. Just burn yourself a CD, or ask me and I’ll do it for you.

Christian Csar

Nov. 8

Csar is a sophomore in Silliman College.