One family. FOUR operating systems.

Things have gotten a bit out of hand over the past year or so with regard to the family’s IT infrastructure.
Last year, before leaving AVST, I documented a new upgrade for one of their server-based software products. Linux compatibility was on the list of new features, so I was forced to familiarize myself with Linux.
To say I was stunned would be putting it mildly.
There are several distributions (published editions) of Linux available that are highly usable, refined, attractive, and capable. You can test drive most of them before you install them, and almost all of them are available for free. They’re not completely idiot-proof to install, but no operating system is (in my experience). So after a little bit of comparison shopping, I repartitioned my hard disk and installed Ubuntu. (Oh yeah, I still have a Windows partition. My old film scanner, for some perverse reason, works under Windows 98 Second Edition and Windows NT, ONLY.)
When Kim graduated in June, she decided to buy a laptop computer to use in her classes. Under the expert persuasive ministrations of John Hodgman, she went with a Mac. She now benefits from the Cadillac performance for which Apple is so well known.
Finally, in November, I heard about a special promotion from the One Laptop Per Child project: buy two, sponsor one for a child in a developing country, get one for your own kid. For far less than a retail computer would cost, I could make a charitable donation and give Anya a way to surf, exchange email, and so on. Anya’s little computer (it’s tiny) runs Fedora Linux, but that’s under the hood. Up front is a user interface called Sugar, which is categorically different from anything else out there. There are no files, just “activities,” and the networking manager screen is amazing. Anya is enjoying it greatly so far.
And things are running smoothly for us all. Of course, I haven’t had to set up drive and printer sharing yet ...