Anyone who knows much about me knows that I’ve been a strong advocate for alternate energy, and that I’ve put my money where my mouth is by putting solar power projects on my home as well as at Little Chico Creek School in my former role as CUSD Trustee.
Now I’m going to push an alternate way to do home or business computing.
A couple of months ago I wrote about the upcoming release of Windows Vista, and how I was disappointed that this new release from Microsoft and all of its Digital Rights Management (DRM) nonsense made the operating system turn your PC into a version of George Orwell’s Big Brother.
A friend of mine, school Trustee Rick Anderson recently dumped his PC and bought a Mac Mini because he said he was tired of all the viruses, spyware, upgrades and the like. I pointed out that if all he needed to do was do email, web browsing, word processing, some digital picture work and maybe some video editing, then the Mac Mini would be a good choice since it comes with all those things right out of the box.
It’s an important point, because what I described is what the majority of non technical people need in a personal computer. So why go through the expense and hassle that has become Windows? That got me to looking at an operating system that I once only thought of to be the domain of the uber Geeks – Linux.
For those who don’t know about Linux, or have the view that you have to be one of those people that stares at a computer screen until 3AM and then falls asleep on a stack of empty pizza boxes, that used to be the case. But Linux has grown up. While there are still a few distributions aka distros out there that cater to that some new ones have emerged recently that are as easy to use as Windows. They even come with applications like word processors, spread sheets, etc and the best part is they are free or low priced. Some work right out of the box, requiring only a simple install.
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