GENTRY — For a guy who spends lots of time sitting in front of a computer screen at the office, I spend a lot of time in front of the computer screen at home too.
When not writing articles for the paper on a laptop in my easy chair, I sit at my home desk writing and editing a church newsletter, preparing Sunday bulletins, editing digital photos and working on Web logs and other computer-related stuff.
And computers can be such a pain. It seems they have a mind of their own - they do system scans, virus scans and go online all by themselves and find updates to download and install.
Sometimes that can be frustrating. The antivirus programs made my desk-
RANDY MOLL, MANAGING EDITORtop computer run so slow I could run to the kitchen for a snack and sometimes get back in time to see the new page open.
When I finally got a netbook to make it possible to keep working on days off and vacations or in my easy chair - the press deadlines still come - I’d be typing away when a message would pop up saying the computer was about to shut down and restart to implement updates I didn’t even know it had snuck off to get. If I’d tell it no, it would just try again a few minutes later until I finally gave in.
After complaining a lot and sometimes with words preachers probably shouldn’t use, I decided to throw all caution to the wind and change operating systems. My home computers may be of the PC variety but my old operating systems were not my idea.
Well, I did exercise a little caution at first when I installed a Linux-based operating system - Kubuntu - to my desktop computer. My old computer had a second hard drive, so I moved all my stuff and installed Linux there. That way, when my computer boots up, I could choose which operating system I wanted to use. I could have done the same without a second hard drive, because Linux will partition a hard drive to allow for multiple operating systems.
Though I’m not a computer tech and have never tried anything like it before, installing Linux was easy. I just downloaded and burned an ISO image to CD and followed the installation instructions from there. I think I did have to change my computer’s BIOS settings to boot from CD, but that was easy enough to do.
And Kubuntu changed my computing. I haven’t growled at my computer since I installed it. My oldcomputer now does what it’s supposed to do and doesn’t run slow, freeze up or crash. The OpenOffice package works better than what I was using and will export to PDF. GIMP works almost like the expensive program I use here at the office to edit photos but like almost all the Linux programs, it’s free, open-source software. I especially like that part!
After running Linux for a few months, I decided my old operating system - which cost a fair portion of the purchase price of my old PC - was just wasting space I could use for storage. I deleted it all.
I dumped the OS on my netbook, too, and replaced it with Kubuntu. Since my netbook didn’t have a CD drive, I learned how to install from a thumb drive.
Now I don’t have to pay out more money for an antivirus program or purchase a license for the temporary versions of software that came installed on the netbook. My netbook isn’t continually updating and wanting to restart itself. Any programs or applications Ineed are available to use for free, and most work as well or better for my purposes than the ones I would have had to pay to use.
Though I haven’t tried more than a few of them, there are countless other Linux operating systems out there - and did I mention the fact that most are open source and free? I really do like that part!
A couple of them, like Puppy Linux, can give new life to an older computer which can’t handle the new operating systems, And it’s got all the basic applications that most computer users need, like the ability to search the Web, send and receive e-mail, play games and write documents. It can even be run from CD or a thumb drive on computers with another OS still installed - plug it in, boot and work in Linux and when you’re done, you can reboot in your old and more tedious OS. It’s helped even a non-technical guy like me revive a few outdated machines and make them usable again.
As far as I am concerned,I’ve switched to Linux and I’m not going back to using operating systems and programs that are more concerned with keeping someone from stealing or altering them than with how well they work. I may be a PC, but Linux is a my idea of how a computer system should run.
Mrs. Griz is not quite as convinced of all this as I am. She asked me to reinstall a former OS on her computer because - of all things - she likes the version of Solitaire better than the ones on my Linux machines. I gave in.
Letting her go back has a positive side. When she gets frustrated with her machine, how slow it runs and the things her programs won’t do, I sit back and smile because my system works.
Randy Moll is the managing editor of the Decatur Herald and the Gentry Courier-Journal He may be reached by e-mail at rmoll @ nwaonline .com.
Opinions expressed on this page are those of the column and letter writers and are not necessarily those of Northwest Arkansas Newspapers. LLC.
Opinion, Pages 5 on 05/12/2010