A news story from the BBC broke today describing Obama’s invitation to Sun Microsystem’s CEO, Scott McNealy. Obama asked McNealy to present a report on the benefits of Open Source software. Already many national and state government entities in the United States and many over-seas governments successfully use Linux and other Open Source software. What do you think? Should the United States government go on a software diet?
Open Source software began soon after computers became main stream in offices and then homes. In a nut shell, Open Source refers to software developed under a set standard of rules that developers agree upon to make the software freely available, no penalties for copying or sharing the programs (in fact, it is encouraged to share the software), the source code (programming) must be made available to anyone, and the software must also have no restrictions on others making variations of the software. You can read an exact definition and read the licensing information at the Open Source Initiative web site here.
Open Source software seems to be gaining more and more traction in the computer world as budgets start to tighten in an uncertain financial climate. This week, OpenOffice.org released the newest version of their Open Source office suite software. I’ve been using the beta version of the software for a couple of months and find it to be quite good. OpenOffice is considered one of the bright lights in the Open Source software world and for good reason. It offers an extremely
If you would like or might even need a new computer, but aren’t crazy about spending $500-1500 in our current financial environment, consider upgrading your computer for free. Yes, I said free. The only investment you will incur is some time. “How”, you ask? By upgrading your computer’s operating system to one of the many Linux options. As many of you know, I started dabbling and learning more about Linux a little more than two years ago. Linux offers a secure, completely functional, modern operating system for free. Linux falls under the guise of Open Source software (available for free and developed by a collaboration of many programmers) and has spawned many different versions to suit all sorts of users.
The most popular version of Linux the past few years, and the one that hooked me, is Ubuntu. Ubuntu has risen to become, arguably, the leader in Linux operating systems. Ubuntu’s popularity stems from the solid community behind the product that supports and develops it, the incredible array of software that comes installed automatically including full Office compatiblity, networking, photo and multimedia tools, and even games. To get the equal functionality that Ubuntu gives users upon installation, a Windows user would have to shell out nearly $1000 for software alone. Ubuntu throws the knockout punch by offering all this for not only free, but also in a package written well enough that it installs in under 20 minutes and runs on hardware that would buckle under the weight of
Today, I helped my customer who I installed Ubuntu for almost four months ago. “It has been working great so far”, he informed me. We mainly worked on fine tuning some aspects of the desktop and panels (Ubuntu toolbars). He also wanted to use a calendar, but didn’t know how to approach the included Evolution program which is similar to Microsoft Outlook. However, as I pointed out last summer during my “14 days with Ubuntu”, I like the direction Evolution is heading, but it is far from polished.
Although Evolution comes with Ubuntu automatically, I still recommend using
I have written much about Ubuntu over the past six months, but today was my first public presentation of this fantastic operating system. Because it is different, many computer users tend to look upon it with eyes of confusion, but after discussing the possibilities and the opportunities with Ubuntu, those confused eyes turn to eyes of intrigue.
Getting people to think about an alternative to Windows and computing as we know it today were My only goals for today’s user group presentation. If you missed it, or you attended, here are some links to Ubuntu articles here at HelpMeRick.com and elsewhere:
In today's meetings, we downloaded, installed, and worked with Open Office. The FREE altnernative to Microsoft Office. To read why the software is free, read this information from their web site .
OpenOffice programs are completely compatible with Microsoft Office programs and allows you to read, edit, and create Office documents without owning the Microsoft Office suite. Here is a list of the programs and their functions in Open Office:
I wanted to give a quick update on a product that we started talking about on the show about four years ago. It's called OpenOffice . OpenOffice is considered an open source project which means that no one entity owns it (although Sun Microsystems pushed it hard in the early going), and anyone can use it for free. OpenOffice, as the name implies, is a productivity software. It contains a Microsoft Office compatible word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager and database. I installed it for my kids almost a year ago and have been rolling it out for more and more clients. I can honestly say that I'm impressed with the product.