In case you missed it, I gave a short presentation at One State Street Toastmasters on Feb. 3rd that was meant to be more attention grabbing than informative. When speaking to an audience of diverse professionals with a wide spectrum of computing experience, it is challenging to strike the right balance without boring anyone. It had to be more like an infomercial – a blend of information and intrigue to whet your appetite and compel you to buy. In my case, my aim was to get you to try Linux. For some, the presentation may have been too technical and, at the same time, not technical enough for others. So, no need to fret if you missed it because, while the spoken word may call you to action, the written word is better to guide you to your destination. This blog is where the real journey begins.
My mission is to guide you through a “new” computing experience with Linux. I wrote “new” because Linux is not new in that it’s been around for many years, but it’s new to many who have not tried it before and especially those who have never even heard of it. (Don’t worry if you don’t know what Linux is, you don’t need to yet. Just bear with me while I take a moment to explain the Why’s first, and I will discuss the What’s and How’s more at length in subsequent posts.)
Why am I doing this? I am doing this because I think it will make the world a better place. It may sound melodramatic, but isn’t making the world a better place usually the aim of any initiative taken to help anyone other than yourself? Whether or not more people using Linux would actually make the world a better place is probably more of a subject for debate, and we could spend lots of time on such speculation and possibly never arrive at a determination. In the mean time, how about seeing if it would make your world a better place? That’s the easiest place to start, and it’s really only from there that you can determine what will or will not make the world better anyway.
If you knew of something that could save your friends money, free them from constraints of knowing only one way to live, and open the to a whole other world run not so much by corporations but by their fellow men and women who would like to see the world be a better place too, wouldn’t you want to share that? I do. Sure, that still may be overly dramatic, but it’s just to make a point. I would not say Linux is for everyone, should take over the world, or that there is no place for Microsoft or Apple, but I would like to see more awareness and understanding. Because it is through awareness and the spread of knowledge and understanding that we remove barriers to making informed decisions about our world, and this initiative can make that happen on possibly several levels.
I brought up the Wikipedia article on the One Laptop Per Child program in my presentation because that is an example of what I am talking about. The aim of OLPC is to bring low-cost laptops to children in developing countries to enrich their education by making available to them all of the same Internet resources we have at our fingertips. Linux was initially a primary factor in keeping the cost of producing the laptops for OLPC very low because it is free. And although Microsoft has since started offering a version of Windows that is almost free as an option for educational purposes like OLPC, it is not something that is available to everyone the way Linux is. The OLPC project focuses on children and their education, but what about everyone else?
Microsoft did a great job making personal computers nearly ubiquitous in our lives, bringing computers into our homes and workplaces by making them easy to work with, but the cost of a Windows license makes it unavailable to some. If we are going to bring all of that technology – we often take for granted – to the rest of the world, to make it less of a privilege that only first-world countries can enjoy; then we have to go beyond OLPC and find a way to do the same for everyone else. That is, do for everyone else something like what OLPC is trying to do for children. Since Microsoft and Apple are not likely to start offering up Windows and Mac OS X to everyone for free, that’s where Linux comes in.
You may be wondering why I would start with introduction Linux to just a few people I know if I have such big aspirations. Well, I have a few reasons.
First, I certainly don’t have the resources or influence for a far-reaching campaign, and that change begins within the sphere of your own influence. The more people who know about it, understand it, and get comfortable with it, the more likely it is to spread as it becomes an option in decision making more often.
Second, and more importantly, it can benefit you. There are many ways giving it a try can help and not just financially. Trying something new alone can be a good thing even if it doesn’t amount to anything long-term for you. If nothing else, the process of learning new systems and applications that do the same things as the ones you are already accustomed to can give you a better understanding of both, and that can make it a lot easier to troubleshoot problems and adapt to changes more readily because you won’t be just following the steps you know by rote anymore – you’ll be able to look at interfaces and know how to find what you want no matter where it is or gets moved to in the next version. And beyond that, it’ll give you experience that many others do not yet have. If you like it, you may share it with others, and in doing so and helping, you can also learn through teaching and experience the rewards of those successes. Everyone uses computers a little differently, and I’ve always found that learning how to help someone with something that I don’t normally do myself helps me as well.
For the financial benefits, there is more than just saving on license costs. You’ve already paid for the licenses on the computers you have, so you’ll mainly only be saving on that going forward on upgrades and new computers. But what do you do with your old computer when you get a new one? Eventually, new versions of Windows won’t be able to run on it, but Linux can work with very old computers. And rather than disposing of an old PC, you could install Linux on it and get more mileage out of it – keep it as a back-up, set it up for kids to bang around on, or give it to someone who can’t afford a new one. I’ll write more about how you can do that later on.
Do you need any more reasons? I am ready to get started if you are!
As I post articles, I will try to categorize them both by content and experience levels (such as Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced) in order to allow you to focus on reading just what you need to know and choose what suits your needs the best. For now, I will plan to post something here at least weekly depending on the demands my time and the interest and questions I receive.
