[Supposedly by someone named "Alexander", surname unstated:] 'Twas the night before christmas in the back of my house my machine was not working, not even the mouse; The computer had hung, I cried out with dispair, "Why, why windows? Who the hell put it there?" The screen was all frozen, the ping response dead, Died once again? Something had to be said, "They still haven't fixed this? I should give Bill a slap, I've lost all my work, I'm fucking sick of this crap!" Restarting the machine, it refused to come up, Non-System disk or disk error, this really does suck. I grabbed my boot floppy, stuck it in with a rattle, I'll yet fix this thing, though it may be a battle. Up came my prompt, see-colon-back-slash, fdisk /mbr, struck enter with a bash. whir-whir-whir done, I hope this is it, This inferior software has given me the shits. I reset the sick beast, waited for it to boot, Windows splash screen came up, then the desktop with a toot. Illegal operation, this program will shut down, "Mother @#%king @&@#( @#&*", the computer powered down. Oh dear oh dear me, what am I to do? >From the corner of my eye I catch sigh of GNU. Well what have we here? A free o/s et al? "Hmmm," I think, "I'll give it a go." And so on an impulse I take up the dare, With an optimistic feeling I load this Slackware. >From fdisk to setup to install to reboot, I quiver from excitement and nervousness too. It looks like it's done and has finished its reboot, What do I do now, and what the hell is this 'root'? I spy on the shelf a helpful little gem, I grab 'Slack for beginners' and rtfm. Tentatively but deftly I tap out commands, Satisfied that it works I denounce microsoft's plan, "You'll never prevail so long as I am around!, You, Mr Gates, are nought but a clown!". Through study and trial, error and progress, I make use of what at first seems such a mess. I work hard and learn how it all fits together, I'm no longer led at the end of my tether! "Now, BitchX! now, Emacs! now, X and Blackbox! On, Eterm! on, Star Office! on, Gimp and Netscape! All hail Linus Torvalds! All hail Larry Wall! Stop what you're doing, just go and install!" Never a bigger evangeliser have you seen, Than the form of myself when I let out this scream, "Don't use that nasty, proprietary shite, it's not yet too late to install Linux tonight!" And so with this tale my experiences I recount, I hope from his story you learn something profound, In Redmond you will find only trouble and dispair, The true answer lies in Open Source Software!