I was talking to my brother the other day and out of the blue he asked me what Linux distribution I’d recommend for casual home use. That was a surprise: the last time I heard him mention Linux was five years ago when he bought me a copy of Running Linux and questioned whether I really wanted to read it. I believe he thought me slightly mad. Heh. I haven’t really been following the Linux distro world closely in recent years, but coincidentally I had just been listening to the distro wars on LugRadio, so with due consideration I said maybe Ubuntu, possibly Red Hat if only because there’s lots of books available, but more than likely Linspire, as they’re targeting people like him.

Turns out that he’d gone to upgrade his computer from Windows 98 recently, didn’t feel like shelling out whatever they were asking for XP, and so on the spot made the switch to Linux. He chose Linspire and seemed happy with the decision.

Cool. When he and his wife got broadband a couple months ago, I shuddered to think what would happen to their poor, unprotected Windows 98 box. Now I’m a bit more comfortable — and very curious to see Linspire in action.

Now my sister writes to say that she’s frustrated that the software that came with their new digital camera won’t run on Windows 95. Oh, the perils of not upgrading every 10 years :) So hmmm…