You see, awhile back I needed a spell check app. I'd been using the one I got some 5 or 6 years ago bundled with something or other - a copy of "Works". It did it's job in Win 98, SE, ME and W2K.

But then the evil, Black hand of Redmond reached out and bludgeoned it's code to a blur. It simply stopped installing on each of my three boxes as it became time to do complete re-installs!

Redmond in one of the VERY few calls I've ever made there, over a three hour extravaganza, denied everything and there-by convinced me I was probably right, they had up-dated my spell check to death at the Windows Update Site.!

So I bought a new one, being an honest fellow, I deeply, resentfully, bought two copies. On to run on each of my personal computers. Once more my Spell check came bundled into "Works"; A program I personally have not one use for, beyond my stated need.

Much to my horror I had to phone in!!!

Please stop and think about this with me for a moment. I didn't buy an OS...

I bought - "a piece of dummied down, if you don't really need any of these functions, but want to mess about a bit and maybe do some real work at home once in a while with it", - software, with a spell check.

But when I changed my FREAKING RAM and CPU I had to call up Bill in Redmond and make sure that was OK with him. Hey, some folks might resent the idea of buying a copy of EVERYTHING for each PERSONAL computer at home. Bill has to be careful, everyone is always trying to cheat the rich!! Someone might get a word spell checked for FREE here and there!!!

Yet I likie 2000Pro. But even I know W2K is DEAD. Sure, it's a great OS, it will linger, in corporate farms, slowing fading back like a lake drying up. Then like so many OS's before it, be no more.

That leaves me two choices. Put up with having to phone home to assuage the paranoid fears of the world's rich man, or learn to "Hump the Penguin!"**

Dude! I didn't just pack my bags and jump! This is a personal campaign of slow and deliberate transition. I freaking paid for W2K, I guess I'm comfortable using it until all my personal needs are all met by Linux.

I'll be writing something of a journal of my efforts.

My first step was to allow myself to be convinced that Suse was ready.
I am NOT A CODE person. I despise command line, whatever it's in-numerable and necessary virtues, it has NO PLACE upon MY desktop!

I can point, I can click. I can cut and I can paste. Unlike so many of the less fortunate, I need but one finger to type, one finger to hit the "Shift" and "Enter" keys... what more should an OS ask of one man!?

"They said" Suse 9.1 was ready... or would be very soon, even for one of my particular requirements... I help run AOA, I get some mail, I play a game now and again, I post to the front page, not exactly a torture test for Suse...

But wait! We have about a half dozen guys who are starting up Suse with me, a dozen, more or less, who started ahead of us recently, or are as is Kaitain, to be regarded as professional in their understanding.

Four or five, I think there will be a few more of us, wanted to do this right. Why run Suse in 32 bit? Why not run Linux in it's native 64 bit code? Suse comes in a 64 bit flavor. Comes with an impressive array of software. and now comes with AOA Forums support! ":O}

Kaitain has agreed to put together a 64 bit Suse Computer and mentor we fledglings along. Several others who are strong in the ways of the penguin hump,(*See below*) have agreed to help Shepard us along past the edges of the frozen code and to guide us around it's pitfalls. So this is a journal and and invitation to take the voyage!

I'll get back to you soon and let you know how the Install went and went and went...":O}

* *Also known as the Linux learning curve**

We are getting it together here in our Alternative OS Topic and here  our 64 bit Topicas well as in our EPoX Topic as several of use are useing 64 bit EPoX to power our systems.