Why We Ought to go Open Source

A couple of weeks ago, I decided I needed to reformat my 5 year old XP system. Everything worked perfectly, all data were backed up, the operating system was up and running, until I was about to install productivity software.

I purchased my notebook from my cousin who arrived from the US. I had no idea that some of the software installed when I got the notebook were not part of the package and did not include their installation discs. To cut it short, I didn't have the most basic of applications: a word processing software. Sure, Windows XP comes with Notepad and Wordpad, but come on!!!

In panic, I surfed the net on how to get my hand on a productivity suite, and that's how I came across Open Office. I had very little knowledge about the whole Open Source community prior to this first-hand encounter, but it didn't take long before I felt misled and deceived by commercial and propriety software – as well as amazed at how something so wonderful could be free.

It only took a couple of days for me to learn the minute difference between Microsoft Office and Open Office. I was up and actually more productive than ever before. This experience led to a quest to know more about what was really happening in the IT field.

“What! There's a free operating system?!?” That was my first reaction upon discovering the existence of Linux. I remember exactly what said to me during my chat sessions to learn more about Linux.

“It's 2007, and you just heard about Linux?”

I was quick to learn the basics of setting up a Linux system, trying out just two of the most popular distributions: OpenSuse and Ubuntu. OpenSuse didn't quite make it based on what I needed (at this time, I am already on the mind set of getting the right distro to suite my needs – and hardware specs) I played around with the desktop environments being offered by Ubuntu, the Gnome based Ubuntu, and the KDE based Kubuntu, but after a couple of re-installations, I decided I was going to settle with Gnome. Now, I have it as a primary desktop system.

It has now become my favorite past time to surf the net and look for excellent applications and utilities that won't charge for anything else but thanks and praise for a programmers job well done. (For information about it, click here)

So the question is why should we be enslaved by commercial products when Open Source and freeware applications are available out there?

One probable answer to that is information. Most people, I would think, are not aware about the existence of such (much like myself) and are only exposed to commercial software products. So there's one concrete suggestion: to disseminate information about free and open source software.

Second is the existence of the myth that open source software, such as Linux, requires much technical knowledge about programming, scripts and the dreaded 'command line'. While the truth only lies in the fact that you indeed have to learn a couple of new commands to get started, it is not so much different, and definitely not as difficult as people might imagine, from the learning process it took people to learn to use commercial products.

Support is another thing that most people would likely consider. Due to the fact that everything is free, people can't really expect to be able to call a hotline and transfer their frustration to a call center agent about the difficulty they're having with a particular program. But try to consider whether Microsoft really has a 24 hours technical support chat dedicated to its customers?

All the problems I have encountered with the opensouce and free applications I have, were easily resolved through a few searches and reading through forums. Now I find it more beneficial to actually find out and learn about the problem that you have, rather than ranting about it and waiting for the solution to be sought by the agent you just got irritated with.

All in all however, I do think that the amount of effort you would be dedicating towards the dreaded shift will be all worth it. After all, you would be gaining knowledge about something new every time, and during those moments, you actually do yourself a favor and exercise that muscle up there, and maybe make a couple of new neural connections.

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