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An Alternate Lifestyle – Without Windows!

By: PropellerHed (April 7, 2009)

How many times have you pounded your keyboard at ‘The Blue Screen of Death’? Or wished that you weren’t constantly having to add new hardware or upgrade your computer just to play a new game or use a new application?

Would you believe that my primary computer, the one I use to compose about 99% of my programs, articles, emails etc. is almost 9 years old and runs on a processor that is LESS than 1 Gb in speed? Or that it is durned near as fast as any I have seen in Teeswater?

Owning a computer can feel like a never ending cycle sometimes. We buy that new computer, excited to bring it home and get it all set up. Then we sign up for an Internet plan and away we go, surfing the Net like crazy, sending everyone we know our new email address, maybe even hooking up to an MSN or Facebook account so we can chat at light speed.

About 3 months down the road the novelty starts to wear off and we realize that our new computer is starting to run a bit sluggish or maybe the graphics just don’t seem as snappy as they did when we first hauled it out of the box. So we call up our local computer store or jump onto Google to see if we can find a quick fix. Usually the fix is to add more RAM or upgrade the video card, or perhaps install the newest ‘one application fits all’ Internet security application (firewall, anti-virus, anti-spyware et al). Bottom line is we end up hauling out our wallet and grabbing more of whatever the experts think we need – just to maintain our current computer performance.

Does this sound like you? Do you wish you could break free of this cycle?

To find out what is really happening to your computer you need to make a few fairly obvious assumptions (I hope they are obvious). First the computer industry is a business, a business that needs to keep on growing in order to survive. And that growth hinges directly on you upgrading your computer hardware and software on a regular basis. That doesn’t mean that your computer manufacturer or software developer is providing you with an inferior product just to keep you buying upgrades! On the contrary most, if not all, try to provide you with the best possible product AT THE TIME THEY PROVIDE IT!

But times and your needs change. Consumers are always looking for technology that is faster and easier to use, especially if we have an entire family sharing a single computer! So the chances of breaking free from the computer upgrade cycle are pretty slim, unless you decide to give away or sell your computer and go back to using the telephone and Canada Post.

But you can manage the computer upgrade cycle, contrary to the bazillion ads that regularly blare at you from your computer or TV! And to manage the upgrade cycle you need to take dead aim at the world’s largest computer software company, who are directly responsible for the majority of your upgrades. By this I mean Microsoft  Corporation.

Microsoft’s Windows® operating system ships on the vast majority of computers sold on Earth. That doesn’t mean that Microsoft is an Evil Empire (as some would think) or that Windows is the ONLY choice for your computer operating system. On the contrary Microsoft’s development people work very hard to provide a computer environment that is both leading edge technology and easy to use. That is a tall order for any company, and the fact that Microsoft is Numero Uno is testament to how well they have developed Windows®.®

But the fact is is that Microsoft Windows® NEEDS to be a one size fits all operating system simply so that the thousands of applications available to consumers will have a platform to run on. And that can lead to some MAJOR problems, as we have seen, such as the Sasser Worm, DownAdUp Virus and of course our alltime favourite – The Blue Screen of Death! By the way have you noticed that the BSOD seldom occurs when you are starting up the computer, when only Windows is running?

But are there alternatives to the Windows Operating System®?

Actually there are several, which you may find quite surprising. Obviously you could buy a Mac, with Apple’s OSX® operating system. Or you could investigate one of the Open Source Operating Systems, such as BSD or Gentoo (OSX and BSD share a common heritage by the way…). But while OSX is simple to operate and quite robust you might find yourself locked into buying Apple or Apple certified hardware or applications. And BSD and Gentoo are NOT for the faint of heart when it comes to installation and configuration of your computer.

The alternative operating system route that I took a number of years ago was Linux, a catch-all of Open Source operating systems that comes in a wide variety of distributions, each with their own specialties and ‘ease of use-ness’. Originally developed as a university term project about 16 years ago by Linus Torvalds, Linux is based (sort of) on the UNIX and Minix Operating Systems and is completely Open Source.

Over the years Linux has shown great potential, but as a geeks operating system has had limited consumer impact, mostly because it was a bit tricky to setup and maintain, without many of the built in applications consumers have come to rely on. A few distributions, such as Red Hat and SuSe have enjoyed steady growth, but this is due primarily to being adopted for business and large scale computing environments, where Linux excels. There have also been a few ‘Windows Clone’ variants of Linux, such as Linspire (formerly Lindows), but the ease of use emphasis has impacted on operating system performance.

Enter Mark Shuttleworth. A billionaire technology entrepreneur, Shuttleworth was quite aware of the great technology divide between haves and have-nots in his native Africa. Shuttleworth decided to commit his company, Canonical, to developing an operating system that was easy to use, open source (as in FREE), and full featured, primarily for the African market. The result was a new form of Linux, based on the Debian distribution, that Shuttleworth named ‘Ubuntu‘ – a Swahili word that means “I am what I am because of Who We All Are”.  Simple and to the point.

Since Ubuntu was first released in October 2004 it has become wildly popular with consumers and geeks alike for its robustness, large application base and ease of use. In fact Ubuntu has become the most popular of ALL the Linux distributions! In 2005 Shuttleworth took the extraordinary step of creating The Ubuntu Foundation to ensure that Ubuntu will be FOREVER FREE!

The Ubuntu promise

• Ubuntu will always be free of charge, including enterprise releases and security updates.
• Ubuntu comes with full commercial support from Canonical and hundreds of companies around the world.
• Ubuntu includes the very best translations and accessibility infrastructure that the free software community has to offer.
• Ubuntu CDs contain only free software applications; we encourage you to use free and open source software, improve it and pass it on.

Quite a radical departure from what we have come to expect from proprietary operating system companies! Imagine copying your operating sytem disks and giving them away to all your family (for legal reasons DON’T DO THAT with your Windows® disks)? In fact if you would like a copy of Ubuntu you can either download it from the Ubuntu website or have them send you a copy on CD for FREE!

Well this has been a longer article than I anticipated. Next time we will look at the features in Ubuntu and Linux applications to replace your present Windows® applications…

*****

The Frugal Geek has had his head stuck ‘under the hood’ of computers for more than 30 years, beginning with IBM card readers and mainframe computers in the mid 1970′s, then progressing through a series of UNIX and Windows computers (with several Macs tossed in for good measure) until discovering Linux Slackware in 1993.  While he admits there are still several Windows computers in the house, his corner of indigoblues.ca is dominated by Ubuntu Linux running on an ancient Pentium 933 with 500 Mb of RAM.

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Our resident code jockey is the person responsible for the look / feel / nifty new applications on Teeswater.Ca. Mathan has been a computer nut (one step beyond fanatic) since he built his first analog computer out of bits of wire and spare parts back in 1973 ( Think of Charles Babbage’s Thinking Machine). Since 1976 he has worked on / tinkered with / programmed just about every kind of computer from laptops to mainframes. In 1991 he caught the Internet bug, first running his own 2 line bulletin board system then expanding into Web applications and development, winning numerous industry awards along the way. Currently he can be found in a dark corner of the kitchen muttering about how Windows® is ruining the world and waxing poetic about Linux Mint.

Filed Under: Technology
Tags: Linux, RAM, Ubuntu, UNIX