Hi there, and welcome to the wonderful world of Linux =) I ran OS/2 earlier, 
but now I run Linux 100 % of the time.
 NA> - i486DX2/66, 16meg RAM, 250meg HD, 2x CD-ROM, 16-color EGA
 NA> graphics, mouse.
No problems running linux on that machine. The HD might be a bit small, 
especially if you want both OS/2 and Linux on the same machine, but it's 
possible to run Linux on 150 Mb or so. I have a 1.5 Gb partition to run Linux 
on, and I've filled it to 75 %, so, there's certainly no upper limit.. 
 NA> - I'm running a DOS-based BBS, text based. Its very disk-
 NA> intensive. I would
 NA>   like to know all about Linux's file system. HPFS saves wear on
 NA> my poor 'HD.
I also ran a BBS in the good old days =) RA 2.02 in a DOS box was really 
perfect. It's possible to run a DOS based BBS under Linux too, in the DOS 
Emulator, but there are also very good Linux BBS'es, BBBS one of the most 
common I think. Ifcico is another package you need to know about, beeing a 
very good fido mailer.
The filesystem most Linux installations use is ext2, "extended filesystem 2". 
It's really good, supporting long filenames, having almost no fragmentation, 
and wasting no diskspace because of big clusters (you may decide at 
filesystem creation the size of the blocks on your disk). I'd say it's at 
least as good as HPFS.
Linux can read a lot of filesystems, FAT and HPFS being two of them. There's 
also a ext2 driver, so you may read your linux disk from OS/2. I think you 
can even boot OS/2 on a ext2 partition, if you want (but why ! :)  ).
 NA> - I like OS/2 because I can customise what I need to use.
Then you'll really like Linux. There is almost NOTHING you cannot customize. 
The behaviour of almost everything is possible to configure, and if you find 
something that isn't just get the source code and patch it.
 NA> - My part-time business involves me testing all kinds of
 NA> computer hardware.
I think you'll find Linux good for that too.
 NA> - All my apps that I run are text-based, but I like OS/2's WPS
 NA> because its
 NA>   completely object oriented. BUT, I don't want the GUI to hog
 NA> all my
 NA>   resources. I don't want 209302993 megs of GUI if I'm only
 NA> running in EGA!!!
The GUI in Linux, The X window system, takes up some RAM, but not extremely 
much. It's not object oriented as WPS (I missed that in the beginning) but I 
think there is a program that makes it look a bit like WPS. That program, 
though, took a lot of memory =)
I've always done all my file moving/copying/etc with a command prompt...
 NA> - I'm *always* multi-tasking. Not so much threading, though.
Me to, in Linux. It's an extremely good multitasker.
 NA> - I know programming, but don't want to spend my Friday nights
 NA> working on it.
Why not ? :)
 NA> - OS/2 doesn't crash. This is what sold me, and probably will
 NA> with Linux too.
Linux doesn't crash too often, and if it does it's probably hardware 
oriented, or you've done something really stupid. My personal experience is 
that it's more stable than OS/2.
 NA> Anybody have any experiences to share converting from OS/2 to
 NA> Linux? I'd like
 NA> to hear how PRACTICAL and RELIABLE Linux is. If so, hey, maybe
 NA> I'll switch.
I hope you will !
\EF - by the way, check out my W3, it's about (just guess).
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