Hun-Speak

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November 28, 2001 -- The Path to Linux
Part I: Mozilla

This is the first in a series of articles I will be writing on my switch to Linux. I will be listing several advancements that have made my transition from Windows to Linux more smooth. Hopefully I can convince you that you can make the switch too.

The application which probably has made my transition to Linux easier than any other is Mozilla. Mozilla is an open-source web browser project started and guided by Netscape. Back when I first started using Linux, the only real browser was Netscape Communicator 4.7. While it worked, it was a major pain to get it to display websites even vaguely like they were supposed to look. It worked . . . but that was about all you could say for it.

Enter Mozilla. I had been fiddling around with their builds in Windows since the M11 release. While they worked, they weren't ready for primetime yet. The first build that I found I could use on a regular basis was M16. Since the release of M18 in October 2000, I have been using Mozilla as my primary browser in both Windows and Linux.

When I made the big jump to Linux in August of this year, Mozilla was right there with me. It displays websites just as quickly and just as well as its Windows counterpart. It is far more stable in Linux than Netscape and than Internet Explorer was for me in Windows. It natively supports TrueType fonts as well as all the plugins that work with Netscape in Linux. It does it all and does it well.

A web browser might not seem like that big of an item, but try to go for a few weeks without one--or at least without one that works properly. I do some web site designing in my spare time so not having a usable browser is not an option. It's been a long road from Netscape 5 (remember that?) to Mozilla 0.9.6, but it has been well worth the trip. It was one small but very significant step in my transition to a better computing world.