Most of you reading this will be running some version of Windows or perhaps Apple. A few of you, like myself, are running some sort of open source platform. I'm using Ubuntu Studio 11.04. Ubuntu is a distro of GNU Linux of the Debian. Open Source means that the source code for the program is openly available and can be altered and shared freely. Because of this there many different "flavors" of Linux... many many flavors. All of this created maintained and changed by a dedicated community of users, different camps have formed creating different OS's based off of the same source code, each making changes to make the program fit their needs. This requires an active community willing to give input, their time, their knowledge. Because of this one wishing to use Linux must learn more about how their computer works than a Windows or Apple user. The community helps those who help themselves, most problems a new user encounters have been vetted out on the forums. After a fair amount of trouble shooting you can post on the forums with the information you have gathered and most of the time you will receive a timely and helpful response.
Linux encourages users to use open source alternatives to programs produced by large patent gobbling corporations. Here are just a few sites that I have picked out, doing a simple search will turn up pages and pages of results.
Osalt lists several commercial and open source programs. Why pay for Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop or Norton Antivirus when there are perfectly good free alternatives.
Sourceforge is a hub for open source programs.
FOSS Wiki for Free Open Source Software
No comments:
Post a Comment