Monday, March 8, 2010

It's nearly lunch time

At the moment I'm hopeful.

A couple of months ago, I started duel booting Ubuntu with Windows XP. After a few weeks, I wiped XP off my computer. Since then, I've started learning more and more about Linux and open source software in general.

Through this learning process, I've gone through periods of rage and joy. If companies want to charge for a piece of software, that's fine. I'll gladly pay for software if I think it's worth it. There is just plenty of free software out there that works just as well or better than something you have to pay for. The rage comes when companies luck Microsoft effectively trick people into think that their software is the only way to go. This practice not only impedes the development of great open source and/or free software, but it costs people money. The joy comes when I know that what is right will win in the end.

A recent experience with my MSI netbook bugger me. I needed to update the bios in order to get it to function properly with Ubuntu 9.10. MSI supplied the bios update on their website. Unfortunately, the simple way of updating was only available using Internet Explorer (while obviously running Windows). There was another option to flash the bios through DOS, which a did, but was a bit tricky. Why Internet Explorer? Does anybody actually use IE?

I suppose a company like MSI could turn around and say they can't make an easily installable update for every operating system. Actually, they can. They make one for Windows, one for Apple, and one that can be run in the terminal of a Linux machine. I bring up Apple because they are shooting themselves in the foot making people think that you can only run a Mac OS on a Mac machine. If they really wanted to take on Microsoft they'd make this more apparent.

But, back to hopeful. Everyday I see that more and more people are using Open Office rather than Microsoft Office. That's a step in the right direction.

1 comment:

  1. Although Mac OS X can technically be run on any machine, it's against their EULA and therefore illegal. Apple doesn't want its OS on non-mac machines, because hardware is where they make most of their profit.

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