First Hit at Linux

It took two hours to install SuSE Linux 9.1 Professional, but the wait was worth it. Even from boot up, things are different. After POST (power on self test), I see the boot loader Grub (not sure of what it stands for), where I am presented with options for booting into Linux, from a floppy or my Windows partition; but after 7 seconds, it boots into Linux by default. Once Linux starts, the boot screen is way different from Windows. It has a blue background with overlapping square and the SuSE logo. Pressing the F2 button will reveal what it’s doing, loading services and mounting file systems, and configuring g-d knows what. After the long and slightly boring booting process, you are presented with the login screen, which compared to Windows 98, is pretty nice looking. Each user has an image, and clicking your username on the list on the left fills in the name in the box on the right; also, you can choose what type of session (for different desktop environments like KDE or GNOME) and there is and analog clock (you don’t get that even in Windows XP).
Once I log in to a KDE session, I am shown a nice looking desktop (with big glowing icons, a very versatile taskbar, and a beautiful, tranquil background). Whenever I install a program (from one of the thousands included on one of five CDs), there should be a listing in the K menu (aka Start Menu), but not always, so I scratch my head and go digging in the bin folder, the Program Files of Linux. I have gotton used to working in the shell (aka command prompt), although I don’t know nerely as many commands as I should. It’s going to be a long journey in Linux, but I feel that it’s worth it.