Recently, I wrote a series of articles called "The Ultraportable Powerhouse." Part 1 is here. Others will go live on the site over the next couple of weeks.

It was a very organic process borne of my experimentations with Linux distros. I was intrigued by the fact that I could get a full OS for free, and I figured it was something that deserved to be explored.

So it is that I feel compelled to discuss Puppy Linux; bar none, the most usable, simplest and most intuitive Linux distro I have ever checked out. Never mind the cheesy home page; the OS is much more sophisticated than than its online home.

Now, let it be known that I am far from a Linux expert. Quite the opposite, in fact. But that's kind of the point; for Linux and open source OSes to gain traction, they need to be incredibly simple.

It's not enough that they're free; that's not enough to compete with the paid competition. Consider that the price of Windows has never been transparent to consumers when purchasing a new PC. Many users can't conceive purchasing a new computer and not having Windows on it. The price is part of the overall package and so in a round about way, is considered to be free. Now, many of us know better, but "many of us" are still not the biggest market segment.

Puppy Linux is an OS I'm using on an older model laptop (Acer TravelMate 340T) with excellent results; set up was painfully simple. Essentially, I've got the approximate equivalent of an ASUS Eee PC with a slightly slower start-up (about 30 sec) and a somewhat shorter battery life (somehow, the ancient battery still holds a charge for at least a couple of hours, even with a WiFi card running.)

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