The evo­lu­tion of Linux has inspired peo­ple like myself to give it a try – and per­haps like a strong nar­cotic – now I’m hooked. Dis­cussing Linux is far more com­pli­cated than many in the com­put­ing world want to rec­og­nize and the rea­son for this com­plex­ity stem from Linux’s her­itage as a secure and sta­ble enter­prise server oper­at­ing sys­tem. The truth is most peo­ple don’t need an enter­prise server oper­at­ing sys­tem and they cer­tainly don’t need the tra­di­tional com­plex­i­ties asso­ci­ated with them. So, when I talk about Linux’ evo­lu­tion I’m talk­ing about it from a gen­eral user stand­point, not a server admin­is­tra­tor want­ing to play with it on my every­day workstation.