While my laptop is in the shop, I’ve been running to the computer labs between classes to avoid going into ‘net withdrawal. This has meant unfortunately long log-on times. For some reason, the Windows machines on the university network take 45-60 seconds of work to log on. The Macs take about a normal amount of time.

But just now, I ducked into the lab here in the Comp Sci building which has computers running a university-specific Red Hat derivative. From hitting enter to having a fully-functional GNOME desktop, perhaps a second elapsed. As far as I can tell, I have access to all the same network shares and all the same applications like Maple and MATLAB, for a tiny fraction of the time. I am told that Linux “rox”, but this is just outstanding.