Are you tired of paying hundreds or thousands of dollars for your computer's software? Tired of having to buy upgrades, and new hardware to run the upgrades? Tired of crashes, security flaws, cyber-attacks, and worrying if your computer is safe to use? Had enough of license agreements, lock-downs, and restrictions on what you can do with your computer? Worried about your business being sued for making a careless copy?
It doesn't have to be that way. You can live your life free of Microsoft, and free of their thousand and one petty annoyances. And you can save money in the process.
This website is devoted to helping you say Goodbye to Microsoft, and to "Take Back the PC."
This is the first of a series of posts I intend to write about "Frequently Asked Questions." They'll be distinguished by the question-mark icon, and will eventually be collected in one place.
There are a lot of reasons why people choose alternatives to Microsoft. Here are just a few. It's unlikely that all of these will apply to your situation, but if even one fits, shouldn't you be having second thoughts about Microsoft?
Maybe you're a Windows XP user and you've been told your support will soon be cut off. Or you've been shopping for a new computer, and you were told your choice is Vista, Vista, or Vista. Or you bought a new computer a year ago, and you've just learned you have to upgrade again. Or you just spent $700 on a new PC, and now you find you need to spend $100 more for antivirus software, and $300 for an office suite. Or you're running a business, and you've just been told to expect an "audit" of your company's software. Do you ever feel like you're in an abusive relationship, and Microsoft is the abuser?
Maybe it's time to leave that abuser, for good.
The main thrust of this site is how to own and use a computer with no Microsoft products at all. I call this the "decaf" solution -- no Windows, no Office, no Internet Explorer. For some people this might mean buying a Mac, but most people want to keep their existing PCs. For the latter, there are several options, but the best option right now is Linux. So you'll find news and links about Linux; how to get started, where to find applications software, and how to run those last few Windows applications that you just can't live without.
The second theme is what I call the "half-caf" approach. There are lots of computer users who really need to run Windows -- usually because their jobs require them to run some special piece of software that only works under Windows. I understand; I have such software myself. But that doesn't mean you have to buy your other software from Microsoft. Office suites, web browsers, email, database, finance...everything is available from somewhere else: often more reliable, usually more secure, and invariably less expensive (or free). So you'll find more news and links here about "alternatives" for Windows users.
And finally, you'll find a fair bit about how to keep old computers running with new software. Perhaps money is tight, and you can't afford to upgrade your personal or business computer this year. Perhaps you're concerned about the environmental impact of discarding PCs. Or perhaps, like me, you just abhor the thought of throwing away a perfectly good machine. You can extend the life of that old PC.
Life without Microsoft. It's pleasant. It's productive. And it's easier than you think.
The Portable Document Format (PDF), undeniably one of the most commonly used formats for electronic documents, is now accessible as an ISO International Standard - ISO 32000-1. This move follows a decision by Adobe Systems Incorporated, original developer and copyright owner of the format, to relinquish control to ISO, who is now in charge of publishing the specifications for the current version (1.7) and for updating and developing future versions.
If you're at all concerned about sharing or archiving documents, the last thing you want to use is a proprietary, closed, secret, always-changing "standard" whose legacy support is prone to disappear. Like, for instance, Microsoft Word. Adobe has been good about keeping PDF reasonably stable and supported, but this move means that PDF will continue to be supported, by lots of vendors, no matter what.
PDF now joins ODF (Open Document Format) as open, vendor-independent standards. And of course OpenOffice supports both of them, which is yet another good reason to use it instead of Microsoft Office.
A slap of the forehead and a loud "duh"! When I was thinking of software for old '286 and '386 computers, I forgot about MINIX.
MINIX 1 was a Unix-like operating system written by Andrew Tanenbaum for educational purposes. It ran on old PCs (including '286) and other computers (I had a copy for my Atari ST). As an educational system, the source code was published (though not free), and there was no particular attempt to make it usable as a desktop or server environment.
Times change, and MINIX has now evolved into MINIX 3, which is designed for "real-world" use. It's a long way from the level of support you'd find with Linux or BSD Unix, but it will run on a '386 with 16 MB of RAM. (There's even an 8 MB version available.) This includes networking, full development tools (compilers and such), and the X window system. It's designed to be small...and I must say the "microkernel" approach appeals to me.
It's worth considering if you have an ancient PC needing software...and you are willing to learn command-line Unix.
Yes, you're at the right web site. We just switched to a new look.
The original "theme" for this web site was an experiment of mine, trying to create a "minimal" e107 theme. I was never particularly happy with the stark appearance, and I always intended to return to the theme and improve it into something more attractive. As soon as I got a round 'tuit, as the saying goes.
So finally I decided to surrender and adopt a "canned" theme from among the many at e107 Themes. I rather liked the look of this one, "oxidation," designed by Free CSS Templates, and ported to e107 by veskoto. I've made a few tweaks, such as changing it from a three-column to a two-column format, but this is basically the design they created. I think they did a nice job.
I'm sure I'll be making a few more tweaks in the next few weeks.
Jack Wallen at TechRepublic reminds us that plenty of financial software is available for Linux. I only knew of three of these ten packages! (But I can take comfort in the fact that he missed four that I had found.)
Oops...I got so wrapped up in testing lightweight distros, that I forgot to mention the official release of OpenSUSE 11.0. Here's the Distrowatch review, and Capn Kirby is teeming with OpenSUSE 11 review articles.
For those of you just arriving from the Windows universe -- welcome! -- you will discover that many of the commercial Linux distributions also have companion projects which are "community supported." Red Hat has Fedora, Linspire has Freespire, and SUSE has OpenSUSE. The big difference, if I may oversimplify a bit, is that the commercial distributions come with documentation and support, and their "free" counterparts do not.
If it's for a personal computer, and you're reasonably comfortable with installing software and going to on-line forums to ask questions, you can probably get along fine with a downloaded CD/DVD. But if you're going to want a lot of help while you get started, or if this is for a business and you need a support contract from a tangible firm, then you'll probably want to opt for a commercial package.
Over the years, I have purchased Xandros 1, 2, 3, and 4; Lindows 3 and 4; VectorLinux 4; and SUSE Linux 9. Currently I use Xandros 4, but I did install SUSE 9 on my laptop and was very impressed with it. It handled everything except the winmodem, and a driver became available later for that. I found SUSE 9 to be complete, capable, and easy to use, and I would expect no less of OpenSUSE 11. However, "11" won't be appearing on my laptop anytime soon, since my laptop has only 256 MB of RAM.
LinuxLinks.com offers a valuable resource for those switching from Windows to Linux: a database of Linux equivalents to Windows software. Unlike other charts we have listed, this is organized by category. For example, selecting "Financial" will display the alternatives for Microsoft Money, Microsoft Project, Quicken, Quick Books, and Windows Calculator...including a few I hadn't heard of before.
I received a query a few days back about what to do with really old computers. Like '286s and '386s.
To the best of my knowledge, no Linux ever ran on a '286 processor. There was a Unix-like operating system for the '286 called Coherent, but that is long unavailable and probably wouldn't be usable for much. For those who might be interested in this software archaeology, there is a Usenet newsgroup comp.os.coherent.
I believe Linux was first run on a '386, but you might find running that early a version a bit challenging. A better choice would be an early version of BSD Unix. Our university ran BSD Unix on '386 PCs with, as I recall, either 4 or 8 MB of RAM...and they ran X Windows, compilers, and development tools. Again, you'll need to find an old version.
I blush to admit that these days, I take even perfectly functional '286s, '386s, and '486s to the local recycling center. I'm getting PCs up to 400 MHz Pentium II given to me in abundance, so there's little point in keeping anything slower. I do keep one or two "classic" machines as representative examples for my collection, and I find it useful to keep a few ISA-bus machines, because I still have hardware that requires that bus.
When I need to run software on the older machines, I run DOS. Preferably DR-DOS -- I've been spurning Microsoft for a very long time, and I've kept my install disks. (I even have an original copy from the brief period it was "Novell DOS.") In my opinion, DR-DOS was technically superior to MS-DOS; the last version even did multitasking on a '386 or better. DR-DOS can still be purchased, and older versions can be found online and have an active Wiki. But for current support, I might be inclined to try the FreeDOS project, which is now up to version 1.0.
Incidentally, it looks like the Arachne web browser for DOS is still available.
