I’m encouraged by Ben Goodger’s post about his experiences with Fedora Linux. Installing and configuring Linux used to be a painful experience. At least now you don’t have to be a technical wizard to get it up and running. The GNOME desktop has come a long way. It doesn’t approach the level of usability and polish that is evident in Mac OS X, but it’s refreshing that one of Ben’s complaints is about the “drab colors” of the login screen and desktop background. A few years ago one of my complaints about Linux was that I needed to recompile the kernel to add features that I expected out-of-the-box.