I'll do that in this installment by answering some questions that I proposed in my first "Penguin Days" column.

It can be pretty easy to install the basic parts of Linux, depending on: the version ("distribution") of Linux that you use; how recent that version is; whether it is a full version of Linux (typically at least 6 or 7 CD-ROMs), or a stripped-down version that fits on 1 or 2 CD-ROMs; and how much of your PC's functionality is built onto the motherboard vs. built onto a generic add-in PC board (such as the sound card, the modem, and the network interface).

The more modern the PC is, the more difficulties you might have, because Linux is, for the most part, supported and advanced by programmers who don't work for the PC manufacturers; those programmers usually don't have access to the technical information needed in order to support the latest whiz-bang PC circuits and gadgets.

However, once you get beyond the basics, you may find that installing Linux so that it supports advanced PC features is not as easy; it may be fairly hard, or even impossible. For example, it was hard to get Linux to work with my PC board's built-in motherboard sound chips, and getting it to support various multimedia file formats was hard. It was very hard to get it to work with a generic serial modem, and it wouldn't support my USB modem at all. Setting up Internet access was tricky, requiring advanced skills and a bit of luck.

Linux also doesn't automatically support my USB tablet/mouse set, and it appears that many other USB devices are unsupported.

While Linux supports my laser and inkjet printers, it doesn't take full advantage of their features, and they run much, much more slowly than under Windows.

So, Linux installation can be short and easy, but it is more likely to take days or longer to figure out how to get all of your PC's features working well; and that might not even be possible. It's certainly not as easy as most Windows installations, by a long, long shot. It is usually quite a bit cheaper than Windows, however; and it can often be free.

It's not hard to install some Linux application software, depending on the kind of "package" (distribution format) that the software comes in; but there are several different, incompatible package formats, and some software doesn't come in easy "packages": it requires expert techniques to install. There are many, many applications available; indeed, one of the big problems is figuring out what software to acquire and install.

Finally, Linux software varies in quality quite widely, and the documentation and help varies even more. Most of the software is freeware or shareware; but even the professionally distributed software that I tried has problems that make me hesitate to recommend it for business use.

The Linux GUIs (there are several main flavors to choose from) can be easy to use, since most of them can be configured to look and feel a lot like Windows.

However, the basic design philosophies of Linux applications (for example, the way you use dialogs to navigate folders and to choose files) are different from Windows, and they can take some getting used to.

But beyond those superficial issues, Linux applications can have real problems working with some of the business-oriented file formats used by commercial Windows application software (e.g., Microsoft office tools like Word and PowerPoint). That can make it hard for a Linux-based business to share files with businesses that use Windows. Since Windows and Windows applications keep evolving, it seems likely that Linux will always be playing "catch up."

Still, if you have managed to install Linux successfully for your PC hardware; if you just need to do basic office applications; and if you can honestly say that you don't need to share files between your Linux PC and any Windows PCs, then you can probably get along just fine in Linux.

There are both freeware/shareware and commercial systems that try to let you use DOS or Windows programs under Linux. The freeware/shareware systems to let you use DOS have plenty of bugs, warnings, and limitations, and have documentation that is not for the neophyte. I tried some, and gave up, and I was discouraged enough that I did not even try the systems for running Windows programs.

I haven't tried the commercial systems. I suspect that it's impossible in practice to really "guarantee" complete compatibility with any significant set of DOS and/or Windows programs; the guts of DOS and Windows are very different from the guts of Linux.

Today, you can go to your local Walmart store and buy a major-name small PC, complete with bundled software, suitable for home or small business use, for well under $1,000. You can pull it out of the cardboard box, plug it in, and start using it in less than one hour. It will be running a recent version of Windows, with Microsoft application software.

You just can't do that with a Linux system. Even if you buy that same PC plus one of the better Linux distributions, you are going to spend a lot of time and effort getting that same hardware to do all the same things under Linux—if you can do it at all, with that modern PC with all of its cost-cutting motherboard chipsets.

And that means that Linux really is not a viable alternative to Windows for most small businesses. I wish it were, I really do; I'm tired of how pushy Microsoft is, and how buggy their software is. I was hoping that I could use Linux instead of Windows; but Linux just isn't the solution for "ordinary" small business activities.

Then there is "farming". Not growing sugar beets or tomatoes, but maintaining huge installations ("farms") of identical PCs, all working together on the same or similar tasks. Those farms love using Linux, because: a) It's free, or nearly free, so they don't have to spend big bucks buying licenses from companies like Microsoft. b) Linux is more stable than Windows, once you get it installed and running properly. c) Programming UNIX/Linux can be a lot less frustrating than programming Windows (this I know from personal experience!).

Companies that host Web pages can have huge "server farms." So can companies that generate ("render") computer graphics special-effects scenes for movies; theirs are called "render farms." Those are big investments; they have thousands of PCs networked together. They are not small businesses in any sense.

Perhaps that's not too surprising; I don't think that there are any magic pills for the problems in the real world.

It's a lesson that I've had to teach to a number of clients over the years. One of my early clients owned a car repair shop in Emeryville, near Berkeley. He kept his receipts and invoices in a desk drawer; at tax time, he would empty the drawer into a shopping bag and bring it to a CPA. He was never able to use the same CPA two years in a row (every CPA refused to work with him after doing it once), and he was running out of local CPAs. In desperation, he bought a small computer, a printer, and a spreadsheet program (this was before the days of shrink-wrapped software like Quicken) to "handle his accounting."

After some time poring over the manuals, he came to me for help. It wasn't easy to teach him that the mere act of buying a computer wouldn't make his business more efficient; the computer wasn't a magic device that would "handle" his accounting, like the shoemaker's elves coming out at night to make shoes in the old fairy tale. In my client's case, learning to use a simple ledger book would have been better than buying all that equipment.

Of course, many small businesses nowadays already use a PC; PCs have become ordinary, and so perhaps fewer business owners look upon them as a magical productivity tool. Still, I do think that most small businesses can benefit from learning how to make better use of their PCs—even if they do have to use Windows! Next month, I'll start showing you some ways to do that.