I’ve been following the Triple Crown since I was a tot,
but my first real memory of this biggest event in horse
racing was of Secretariat in The Run for the Roses, hurtling
toward the finish line, so far ahead of the rest of the field,
they may as well have not bothered to run. I have a scrapbook
filled with newspaper clippings of Secretariat (the first
and, so far, only sub-2:00 minute Derby winner in history), and
of that decade’s next two Triple Crown winners, Seattle Slew and Affirmed,
as well as Alydar, who back in ‘78 came so close in each race to beating
his archrival Affirmed. Heady stuff for a
young kid, I fully expected there’d be Triple Crown
winners at least every couple of years after that.
So you can imagine I am becoming pretty impatient more than
25 years later, waiting for the next superhorse to emerge.
It may not have quite the same thrilling finish, but at least
you need wait no longer for our Linux Triple Crown winners–we’ve
just published the third jewel in the crown: What Is a Linux Distribution, which followed earlier publications this month:
a Linux Desktop, respectively. Each article strives to introduce your friends, family members, and co-workers to the world you know so well, and maybe to enlighten you in some untold way as well.
Ellen Siever’s “What Is Linux” debunks the myth that Linux is
just for geeks, while answering for the masses the question of
what exactly Linux is. She also covers getting and installing
the OS, and finding support, so if your Mom has
suddenly expressed interest in running Linux, tell her to start here.
(Incidentally, Ellen is a coauthor of
5th Edition, which like many of O’Reilly’s Linux books, depicts a
horse on its cover…)
In Jono Bacon’s “What Is a Linux Desktop”, he steers clear of
saying this is the “year of Linux on the desktop”, instead
focusing the development of the Linux desktop, from its roots
to the many niches it fits into to its future prospects.
And Edd Dumbill completes the trifecta with the just-published
“What Is a Linux Distribution”, where he serves up overviews of
the major Linux distributions as well as the specialist distros,
and for who (or what) each distro is best suited.
Hope you’ll take a look, or send your Mom over for a look.
Meanwhile, I await the first Saturday in May, 2006, and hope…
Any topics you’d like to see us cover as part of our ongoing “What Is XYZ” series of articles?
