Yellow Dog Linux transforms fear into love

Nathaniel Creed writes
Im writing to tell you guys a very enlightening experience that I have had. I am a Unix and Linux developer, I work for a company in the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. My wife is a Graphics designer for a Ad agency based in Raleigh NC.

My wife is a Mac zealot and she loves the Mac OS, the problem that we have is that her original iMac was getting outdated and Mac OS 9 had reached the end of its usability life for her. Mac OS X was out of the question on that old iMac, we tried to install it and it was very very slow even after I maxed out the ram in that machine.

I was a user of MKLinux, I had never used YDL, never even heard about it until a friend of mine who is a user told me about it. My wife, Ann, is scared to death of Unix and Linux, the mention of those two words bought immediate panic to her. I was feeling the pressure of having to buy a new iMac for her.

I had discussed MKLinux with her but her response was "How am I going to rip my music, do my work and be able to do half the things with Linux that I do with the Mac OS" and she was right MKLinux doesnt offer her that kind of functionality and I wasnt even about to subject her to the intimacies of MKLinux, and I knew the install process on an x86 machine would scare her even more.

My friend burned me a copy of Yellowdog Linux 2.3, I got home and me and Al talked to her and since he is more of the desktop enthusiast answered all of her questions, on what YDL was, what it wasnt and even gave her names of Applications that she could use to do the things she wanted to do.

We went forward with the install and let her do most of it, your install was friendly and fairly simple and everything such as sound and X11 as well as CDR settings were handled out of box, the only thing that we had a problem with was the modem but I found drivers online for them and they worked. She was impressed with KDE, KOffice and the Gimp, and I was able to set it up to where she wouldn't even see the Command line and she maintained a GUI at all times.

It is set up on her iBook now and since I am a Linux developer we have a OS for both of us, we only take one Laptop on vacation with us now. I have even abandoned MKLinux. She is now a Linux zealot and she is in love with YDL, I do believe that if I had tried any other Linux distribution on her, I would have been forced to buy a new mac.

Being a pro Linux user myself I think that every Linux company should use your engineering of the OS as a guidline. You have truly achieved what others have not, a good, rock solid desktop distribution. Now if I could get her away from Tux racer at night I think I would be able to get some sleep.

Thank you very, very much.

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