So here you are, listening a lot about FOSS, i.e. Free and Open Source Softwares, but the real practical process of going into the skin of this term is really unpleasant, if not impossible, and that too after so much ho-ho about the world being converted into FOSS-friendly. How many of us have ever thought of going
completely independent of those pay-me-to-use-me softwares, which according to RMS (Richard M. Stallman, hey this name won me a prize when i identified his pic in a quiz at my college, thanks buddy!), are freedom-snatching. Personally I was moved by the thought of going free (not just in terms of money, as we, indians do take the term 'free' to mean, more often then never), I, as per my style, started to join this revolution by injecting myself into the bunch of people who are just freaked out by the amount of piracy they see around, and REALLY want to do something about it.I started my journey by myself trying to remove each and every pirated bit around me, and I should admit, it is not yet possible, especially in India, where the comfort of using a software is at the highest amongst priorities, no matter what one has do for it, going for KEYGENs, CRACKs and all of the stuff that invites the machine to get a malware strong enough to overwhelmingly defeat, yet again, the pirated version of the personally favorite antivirus program. Well in the process, i faced a lot of challenges and i now can very comfortably say, it was all fun. Though My machine was crushed by a virus, just a day before I had to show my assignment, allegedly because of not using the antivirus program that was well tested against that particular virus, but at the same time was pirated, with the activation keys bundled in a compressed package along with the setup.
Firstly I removed my favourite Windows XP from my lappy, and started to bear with Vista, which is a pain in itself, just because it came licensed with my laptop. Note here that I dont even give a damn to use of windows, Linux and Solaris are just more that enough for me, rather I needed Windows for my Windows Programming Course. Well, I cant learn Windows programming on Linux... ( I wonder, why so??? There must be some emulator or a WINE like software that may encompass the huge size of Visual Studio!). The second step was removing, again pirated copy of Microsoft Office, ( I sincerely opologize from Microsoft for this all! ), and using a brand new OpenOffice.org, I realized I never lacked in free resources thanks to DIGIT magazine that i subscribe to, and which gives a bunch of free softwares in its DVDs every month.
Even then the jouney till here towards going completely free has not been like eating, I would continue in further posts what are the tools I have now finalized to use in place of the soul-of-computing paid softwares (Will try to give the links also, in case you have a decent internet connection!). Please be with me on this journey, and make your comments and suggestion my companions. Thanks for reading.
Nice Dude gr8 Job!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteBut u know we all r so much in the computer thats being totally free is very difficult to us and the institute itself he he he...
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@Abhi
ReplyDeleteThanks for the appreciation.
Well you just need to have a will, and as I'll show thw world will bow head for you! Cheers.
Well Anik , FOSS is a glorious concept. I had seen people on net for whom FOSS is not only a term , It's a way of life for them those so called geeks. The major problem in India is that the majority of us are easy-going fellas for whom comfort had always mattered more than ethics and we are the witness of the so called behavioural pattern of our society quiet often...isn't it?
ReplyDeleteThe line which differentiate open-source from close-source is not ease of use, comfort ,better products...blah..blah..blahh but it's the 'power to change' , You can play with the source and understand the indepth-working, you can toy with the software customize it according to your will and it gives gratification which is second to none - The true joy of engineering !!
But why will people even bother so much, most of them thinks computer as synonymous to windows(bsod lol). Again I'm not starting bashing MS but competition helps evolution , the greatest example being browser-war. When IE used to dominate we had to bear slow-javascript, loads of windows, a new bug almost weekly and then firefox came and captured a fare share of the market and then people in business get to knew what can be the benefits of browser and later opera,avant,konqueror,chrome followed the legacy and it was beneficial for win users too for they got a better, polished , refined IE.
Ahhh..i see my ranting is making this comment more of an essay..so i should keep my pen down here but it's really good that atleast some of the Elite class [:P] people are getting into the skin of FOSS.
PS. don't just use free s/w but contribute too.
PPS. a joke -> Richard Stallman wrote the compiler God used. The Big Bang was the Universe's first segfault.
Thanks lonwlf! Indeed a support in itself seeing a comment like that. Another point I want to admit here was what you informed me through mail, and thats the size of VS2008 is not only the factor behind its not being used in Wine. One could have gone for some Virtualisation solution if only size was the problem. But still I dont think Windows programming is feasible in Linux.
ReplyDeleteKeep your support with me and one day we will start having a tiny effect on the piracy world.
Thanks again!