The GNU and the Penguin free software but not as you know it

Perhaps you come home from work and you plug in the PC or it is already on. You want to send a mail or you want to do something and your machine is slow, slower than yesterday, slower than last week, and if compared with your machine when you bought it, it seems to be at a standstill.
Welcome to the world of the PC, with its spy ware, its virus problems, designed by Microsoft, build by Microsoft, and the problems get worse year on year. You are fed up doing a reinstall, your getting good at it, you think "There must be a better way to use your computer, right?". Perhaps there is. There are most certainly alternatives. They don't involve black magic, visiting stores where some one has the answer it is always a new version or something. So you are thinking to yourself "There is something wrong with this model, I don't know what, but this does not feel right."

Well you have options, they are best kept secrets on the Internet but they exist. They are free, while using them you learn enough about your machine that you suddenly are able to do new stuff and it is not a trauma.

These options don't have a need for anti virus or anti spy ware software. They do have a requirement that you are willing to stop existing and start living at the keyboard. This entire blog was written at such a computer. It is not a MAC or some other strange beast. It is actually a PC the difference is that the software that it is running is not windows. It is in fact a form of GNU/Linux.

There are many varieties of this software. There are many versions, so unlike the Model T Ford only in black, there are many names to essentially similar products and most of the skills you learn on any computer can be translated to a GNU/Linux system.

So rather than thinking I want to use "Word" you don't want to use the word, word, you should be thinking I want write a document, or I want to print something.

This I want to use "Product Name" is broken thinking. Think about it, it convinces you there is only one way to do something, a certain fallacy. There is not. It is not something you should be thinking but those nice people in the marketing department have you talking that way. You want do do work with numbers, you want a spreadsheet. There are lots of offerings out there even for Windows, did you know that? Just go to http://www.openoffice.org check it out. Guess what it is free to download, and to use. A full office package. It can open and close .doc format documents, and with some add ins it can even read .docx.

What a digression, now back to the core. You find the application that lets you edit and format documents and you use it. You find the application that lets you edit and format spreadsheets, presentations, it is all in one. Fun!

So what has this to do with GNU/Linux, well imagine you turn on your computer and you want to use the computer. It offers a complete system that you can use from door to door. It looks after all sorts of things, scanners, printers, monitors, mice keyboards. Most any off the shelf equipment will work straight away with GNU/Linux.

Gamers, they have choices but mostly they want to play their games so they have this program called "wine", it provides an environment similar to the environment that windows provides in a native way and allows you to run (most) windows programs.

However to get back the to the core point, what is it about GNU/Linux you want to do. Browse the web, order a book or CD, a flight or holiday, you can do that with your system. You can send email.

What might startle you to know is that most spam comes from virus software that takes over computers and makes them part of a weapon on the Internet. While you may get spam, you won't be sending it with GNU/Linux the spammers don't have the tools to make the bot nets [compromised windows machines, sending spam around the planet, if your computer likes being on the Internet is it part of one?], with the different versions. It is kind of like the Model T problem impacts all car owners, but a fault in one car part today will impact maybe one or two models on a couple of ranges at most.

So apart from removing spam from the Internet what else is good?
Well people not having problems with their machines getting slower for no apparent reason.

So at this point I tell you about three links you should check out.

http://www.debian.org
(deb ian)

http://www.ubuntu.com
(ooobuntu)

http://www.gnewsense.org
(gnu sense)

The one in the middle is the most popular desktop. The top one is the most popular server, and the one on the bottom is the most radical, it is here more so as a curiosity.

So enough about me, in another post I will tell you how to get support, for these versions of GNU/Linux.

If it all looks a bit daunting I will help people get up and running via some pointers to docs, and with some really simplified help. No substitute for the real thing.