Lets clear up some misconceptions

[Jonathan Hutchins]

One of the great things about Linux is that it is so much better about 
reporting what actually went wrong with the system when it does crash.

Back in about '97 or so there was a series of articles acknowledging something 
that us hardware techs knew - the now that Linux was a significant presence 
and was reporting the actual reasons for crashes we were discovering that it 
wasn't Windows that was responsible for the crashes.  Around the time the 
Pentium 166 came out there was a serious improvement in motherboard 
reliability that, combined with OEMSR2 of Windows 95 made for some 
marvelously stable systems.

Windows 95 is not significantly crash prone.  There is software that will lock 
and crash it, but in itself it is a stable, reliable OS.  One of the most 
reliable ways to get it to perform badly, lock up, and crash is to run Novell 
products on it.

With the exception of crashes caused by Internet Explorer and Outlook 98, I 
have a Win95 system that has not had a "crash" since 1998.

>From 1995 through 1998, I solved problem after problem on Windows 95, 98, and 
NT systems by eliminating Novell traffic from the local network, removing the 
Novell clients, and pithing the Novell servers.  NT servers were consistently 
more reliable on the same hardware.

If you're crashing Windows 95, you're a) running Novell on it, b) running some 
third-party software on it that isn't W95 compatible, or c) running it on bad 
hardware.  Admittedly, without the ability to run third-party software on it 
an OS is pretty pointless, but it remains that it's not W95 that's unstable.

The point is if you have Linux, who needs Novell?