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COLTRANE
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Posted: Friday March 4th, 2005 19:43 |
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Tech Beat by Mitch Trachtenberg
Do you still think you need to spend a few hundred bucks to get a good
productivity suite for your computer? Toss another hundred to get a
Photoshop-style image editor? Spend still more to get your other
computer tools?
You don't, you know.
Even if you're not a techno-geek, even if you run Windows, there are
free tools out there to help you "bond" with your computer. You've
just gotta believe.
A great starting point in your search is The Open CD project, on the
web at http://www.theopencd.org A group of volunteers have assembled
the creme de la creme of open source software for Windows. "Open
source" means anyone can look at the programming code behind a
software tool, anyone can copy the program for free, and anyone can
charge whatever they want for copies, as long as they don't prevent
anyone else from giving the program away for free.
You can download the Open CD for free, or buy the CD online from a
variety of vendors for $3 to $5. It includes the Open Office
productivity suite, a highly professional office tool set including
word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation tools. The Open CD also
includes a wide variety of other great software, including:
* GIMP, the fantastic image editor with the awful name;
* DIA, a tool for diagramming things like org charts;
* TuxPaint, a drawing program for kids;
* Firefox, a web browser that beats Internet Explorer -- (more about
Firefox in next week's Tech Beat);
* TightVNC, a program that lets you access your computer desktop from
a web browser in another city
Even if you're happy with the commercial software you're using, you
might want to check out open source. Commercial software companies may
switch to incompatible file formats, forcing you to pay for a software
update just to keep reading your documents. That doesn't happen with
open source -- file formats are public, not proprietary.
Once you've seen the quality of open source software running on
Windows, you may want to try Linux, an open source Windows
replacement.
Linux comes in a variety of flavors. A great version for testing the
Linux waters is "Knoppix," which can be run directly from CD without
your needing to do anything intimidating to your hard disk drive. You
can find information about Knoppix at http://www.knoppix.net
It's true, Linux can have a learning curve, but the investment pays
off in the end. The amount of quality software that runs on Linux is
growing explosively. Particularly if you're responsible for a network
of machines, installing Linux isn't just a cheaper alternative to
commercial networking systems, it's an alternative that runs more
smoothly. Locally, you can get in touch with Linux enthusiasts at the
Humboldt Linux Users Group, on the web at http://www.humlug.org
No introduction to open source software would be complete without a
mention of the philosophy behind "free software." The early software
industry, pre-1980, was largely collegial rather than commercial.
Computers were big, hugely expensive machines; software was often
freely shared, because companies made their money selling machines,
and software made those machines more valuable. In the 1980s, software
began to be commercialized. Richard Stallman, a brilliant and
eccentric MIT student, fought the growing commercialization by
developing free software and writing "The GNU Manifesto" -- a great
read online at http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html
Stallman wrote that free software is just the golden rule in action:
"I cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a
software license agreement."
Stallman developed an alternative software license now nicknamed the
"copyleft" (the opposite of a copyright); a copyleft grants anyone the
right to use and modify a work, as long as the result remains freely
accessible to all.
Increasingly, the "free software" and "open source" models are making
their way into the non-software world. There's the open textbook
project, making books available online for free; the Public Library of
Science at http://plos.org; open source music; sooner or later,
someone's bound to engineer an open source automobile.
The idea is simple: Under the right circumstances, collaboration works
as well as competition; sometimes people do things because they want
to do them, rather than because they want to become gazillionaires.
Whether motivated by pride, by a perceived need, or just by the pure
joy of the creative process, people can do great work without needing
to "own" the results. It's a good thing our founders didn't copyright
the Declaration of Independence, isn't it?
You can find open source enthusiasts (as well as Windows and Mac
users) at meetings of the Redwood Technology Consortium, which meets
monthly. The next meeting will be March 10, they're on the web at
http://www.redwoodtech.org
Mitch Trachtenberg is a Humboldt-based web and software developer and
consultant working primarily with open source software; he also
teaches at College of the Redwoods. Mitch's website is at
http://www.mitchtrachtenberg.com
____________________
“Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.� -Malcolm X
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safetyblitz
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| Joined: | Thursday January 20th, 2005 |
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Posted: Monday March 7th, 2005 20:38 |
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| Everyone who is a person in the technical field should have a knoppix CD. You can boot right off of the CD on many machine and be on the internet in seconds if your OS on the hard drive crashes. The environment boots directly into a windows like environment for the NON-linux users to start using right away after they have figured out where the buttons are. My kids did and they are dedicated XP users. I have used KNoppix for over a year and a half on one machine alone.
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BeaLady
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| Joined: | Tuesday March 8th, 2005 |
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Posted: Tuesday March 8th, 2005 23:13 |
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Thank you for this post. I will check it out. 
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