MESSAGE
| DATE | 2004-04-07 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir Secretary NYLXS
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] Move the GNU/Linux Desktop on the rise
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Summary: What's easier? To completely move to a FOSS-compliant OS
immediately, or to start the transition to FOSS world by using their
apps on Windows? Sam Rawlins investigates.
You may want to try the computer buzzword of the decade, Linux, for
yourself, but you may not feel ready to try and back up your computer,
abandon your $200 copy of Windows, and throw on the wild and unfamiliar
Linux. One could compare this to changing cars from an automatic
transmission to a stick shift without learning how to drive a stick
shift. That can be scary. There are other, less potentially-catastophic
alternatives to changing your operating system.
People are looking to move from the "bad" Microsoft and expensive
software. For the average user, however, changing their operating system
from the ever-popular and comfortable Windows to something that appears
Greek is quite daunting. This is a much bigger step than changing office
suites from Corel to Office. And for many people, they would be the
first person they know to use Linux; not a lot of personal support. The
alternatives that I have been trying are: Open Source. And I've never
been happier.
Linux thrives off of Open-Source. So many of its best programs are
Open-Source. Many of these programs, because of this, are available for
both Linux and Windows platforms. Learning these applications before
migrating to Linux can help the transition a lot. It gives Linux a more
comfortable feeling when you recognize the programs and their layouts. My
favorite Open-Source programs, the ones I am about to describe are:
OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, gaim, 7-Zip, and PDFCreator.
When my computer was being eaten alive by a virus, i needed to reboot the
whole thing with a new operating system. I chose Windows, for my family's
sake, and it loads like a charm. One thing that got lost in translation,
however, was the très cher Microsoft Office. This was scary. You often
don't realize how great this suite is compared to say... Notepad. But I
really didn't feel like buying it all over again, so I found an amazing
alternative: OpenOffice.org. There are very, very, very few differences,
besides the key one that OpenOffice.org is free. The suites are almost
identical, except for some details like the lack of the annoying paper
clip in OpenOffice.org, and the ability to save a document as an Adobe
Acrobat file (how incredible!). By the way, OpenOffice.org is very
widely used in Linux these days, next to StarOffice, making it a good
program to use in transition to Linux. Often it is the little things
that make us uncomfortable in new environments, like the how the buttons
look different in a program than in another. The toolbars and functions
are slightly rearranged from Word. Getting used to these things before
transitioning to Linux cand be very helpful.
Next came the browser. I was checking OSNews.com daily (and still
do) around the time that Mozilla 1.0 came out. It made huge news,
so I decided to try it. It is free, amazing, and so much better
than Internet Explorer. There are several articles on OSNews.com and
MozillaZine.org that praise Mozilla (which is actually a browser, mail
manager, and newsgroup manager suite), and its stand-alone browser,
Mozilla FireFox. The biggest features for me are the tabbed browsing
and pop-up blocking. This program is also storming Linux systems with
its beauty. This is one reason it is a good transition program: it
definitely has a different look at feel from Internet Explorer's. Surfing
the Internet in this baby on Linux after you have surfed the Internet
with Mozilla on Windows will be a comfortable, smooth transition.
There are other, smaller Open-Source programs in which I have been
indulging, partly for the price tags, and partly for the fact that they
are often simply better. One such program is gaim, an amazing alternative
to AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, and
IRC, all at the same time. I love it. Also is 7-Zip, an alternative
to WinZip. WinZip just bugged me because it asked me to register every
time it opened, and the website was ugly and never updated. Open-Source
websites always feel more... comfortable. Anyways, 7-Zip can compress in
its own format, with a better compression ratio than WinZip or WinRAR,
but can also compress in those formats as well as others. And the last
of my favorite Open-Source programs is PDFCreator, a brilliant idea for
a program. Once installed, this program acts as a printer. In any program
that prints using Windows printers, you can print to a PDF (Adobe Acrobat)
file for a very professional look. I love this program.
The use of these programs before changing operating systems will certainly
help the transition to Linux. After you have gotten used to interfaces
other than those of Internet Explorer and Microsoft Word, getting
used to a new operating system will not be as mind-blowing. Another
suggestion for getting used to Linux is to try the new LIVE CDs that
certain distrobutions are coming out with. These are operating systems
that can be run from the CD, so you don't need to remove Windows. They
are purely for trial purposes, since you are certainly limited by the
read-only functions of the CD.
The way that I actually migrated to Linux was more of a "flinging
myself head first into Linux's stomach." I kept my current computer,
but for just $200 and a donated monitor, I bought a Walmart Microtel
computer with Lindows 1.0. Lindows wasn't the same system it is today,
and I ditched it pretty quickly for a purchased version of SuSE Linux 8.0,
then a burned copy of Gentoo Linux. Gentoo was my favorite, but with any
of them, I generally just messed around and played with my new toys. The
Windows computer was still my primary computer. This is a pretty safe
(though expensive) way to try Linux also. Any way you do it, a test run
of Linux or Open-Source Software is a great way to transition into a new
operating system. -- __________________________ Brooklyn Linux Solutions
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town that Brooklyn, like
Atlantis, reaches mythological proportions in the mind of the world -
RI Safir 1998
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://fairuse.nylxs.com
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Clients http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive or stories and
articles from around the net http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/downtown.html -
See the New Downtown Brooklyn....
1-718-382-0585
____________________________
NYLXS: New Yorker Free Software Users Scene
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