An Operating System for the Future

There is an old, so-far-unfulfilled prophecy about “the Year of the Linux Desktop.” Many have predicted that Linux would eventually replace Windows as the de-facto desktop OS, but so far it hasn’t happened. Might things be changing? Could the long-awaited “Year” finally be here? Linux is not about market share, but just plain sharing. To … Read more

Open Source

Open source is a concept often associated with Linux and free software. Linux is an open source project, which means that its source code is available for anyone to see. That’s different from, say, Microsoft’s development model, which is closed source. Microsoft’s source code is not widely available, and if you’re granted access to it … Read more

The Linux Diaspora

For a Linux newbie, one of the most disorienting aspects is: why are there so many versions? You just want to use Linux, but which one? Linux itself seems to be nowhere—all there are to be found are distributions. That is quite true, but the real question you should be asking yourself is: what do … Read more

RMS on Free Software

Speaking out against the practice of proprietary and closed software was an MIT Lab programmer called Richard Matthew Stallman, or RMS as he prefers to be called. Working at MIT labs, several episodes warned him about how proprietary and closed software was imposing severe limits to their users’ freedoms. He believed that users should be … Read more

Praise for Ubuntu Linux

By now, you know a lot of reasons to begin using Ubuntu Linux. We’ll wrap up the post by highlighting why is wise to stop using Windows and try Ubuntu Linux instead. Many of the topics touched on in this section have already been mentioned; now you have them all together in one place to … Read more