Earlier this month I managed to get my hands on a copy of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This version was in fact a server edition (or meant to be used as one), but I was not too impressed, I know that Linux is an open source operating system good for hosting servers on, whether that be Intranet, Internet or network and that the user interface depends entirely on the distributable you have chosen.

I installed Red Hat Linux on to an 80 gigabyte hard-drive in the same computer that my Windows operating system runs on. So, it should be quite a fast combination of hardware and software. However, it was slower to start-up, shut-down and open applications than that of my Windows operating system even though the Linux system only had the basic applications to load – I had not even installed the server-side tools and services, so no server was attempting to boot.

It has a lovely layout, graphical user interface and set of basic open source applications, which includes Firefox. But I think it falls down in other aspects, such as basic computing – data handling and saving, installing and processing. The graphical user interface is nicer than Windows XP and looks as if it is written and drawn in Flash (which of course it isn't). It seemed to be more secure than Windows and required me to type in my administrator password at least twice to access the system settings and tools.

So, I can accept that Linux is a lot more reliable and safe although I have had no problems with my current installation of Windows so do not see that as a plus side to using Linux. Maybe if I went for a less server-orientated version I would get better results and response times, but I am not sure.

The first thing I noticed that didn't seem as good as Windows was the file system and hard-drive access. I was not allowed to access every level of the hard-drive, which was a little surprising. When I went to update the Firefox browser to the latest version I couldn't find where to place the files (there were so many folders that I could have tried). In fact, when I tried to 'install' anything I couldn't find the location in which to extract the files too so that they would be classed as applications and could be opened. Maybe I should have followed a few help files, but I didn't think that it was worth it as I knew that I wouldn't be staying with Red Hat Linux due to its speed, unless I purchased or downloaded a Linux distributable for a home system rather than a server.

So the file system meant that I was unable to download and use some of the Linux-only applications that I thought might be worth giving a try. Either way, I don't think that using Red Hat Linux as a home operating system was really such a good idea, simply because it isn't made to be used in this way – I really should have tried downloading a free distributable (such as Mint). I will try something more home-system orientated at later on, but until then my status on Linux as a home system stays as "not the best idea". I do use Linux for all of my websites and servers though and it has been perfect in that respect.