Open Source software - free to change, distribute and use - has been gaining momentum steadily over the last few years and now has a very strong following.
At the JALT conference last November I attended a few seminars and workshops that focused on why and how to use only Open Source software. Wanting to learn more about all this, at home at least, I've been using Open Office (a suite of programs that rivals Microsoft Office) since November, Mozilla Firefox (web browser- more secure that Explorer) since last year sometime, and Thunderbird (email program) since January, and other little programs when I find them. I'm also still running Ubuntu (now upgraded to 7.1 - Feisty Fawn!) , a completely open-source Linux operating system - it really give Windows Vista a run for its money.
There are many open source projects under development and the software is continually being improved by a community of developers. If you've got some time and would eventually like to move away from Microsoft, I recommend playing around with some open source software.
Useful Links:
Open Office - http://www.openoffice.org/
Firefox - http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
Thunderbird - http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/
Ubuntu - http://www.ubuntu.com/
2 comments:
One of my favourites for open source is www.portableapps.com which offers fully functional programs that run off of your USB drive. So you can take all the applications you want with you at all times. I only use Portable FireFox and Portable FileZilla. It won't be long before we won't need an OS on the computer we will just boot and run from our USB flash drives.
I can only agree, I use portable Thunderbird to access my private e-mail from computers at clients. It works great and I do not disturb their environment and I'm not restricted to web proxy servers.
K<o>
Busy, supporting non technical users of OpenOffice
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