Over the last year and a half, I've been devoting a good bit of my time to becoming a real "geek."

I loved seeing George Kroner's column about all the different operating sytems, past and present, but I think that Microsoft is often overrated. Never underestimate the power of non-Microsoft applications. Although Microsoft has done a lot to enhance PC technology, especially with Windows 3.1, it has also had its share of problems with other operating systems.

Who remembers Windows 95 First Edition (not to mention every OS before 3.1 and a slew of others)?

Yikes. If you want to be a true geek, go for Linux. It's user base is expanding faster than ever; currently there are a suspected eighteen million users, world-wide. Even more importantly for us as college students, there is now a Linux version of Instant Messenger.

What more could we ask for? Learning Linux can be a struggle (I still don't know what I'm doing sometimes), but it is well worth it given its strong history of stability and reliability.

There are a ton of Linux distributions out there, but for starters, try Red Hat or SUSE. And for you die-hard Microsoft supporters out there, don't get me wrong.

I'll be one of the first in line to get Windows XP upon it's release on October 25.