K-Voltage blog

Simply put, Windows Vista sucks! Not that I have used it or anything but other people’s suffering has made me hate it as much as them. It doesn’t seem to have any helpful new functionality, except for the same XP features re-skinned and with some fancy animations. And apparently a lot of security prompt messages among few of the issues. Not to mention that you practically need a new computer to install it due to the slight 2GB RAM requirement.

I heard many comments, I asked many people (some of them working for Microsoft) and the verdict it’s always the same: Windows Vista Experience it’s a bad f***ing painful experience. So bad that it would even kick your dog while you are not looking.

Now, what I think would be the only salvation for people not interested in upgrading to Windows Vista is just to remain in XP and live happily ever after with occasional upgrades and that’s it, no more worries. But not so fast, apparently XP support by Microsoft will come to an end by 2008 so, if you are not interested in upgrading your XP operating system soon, it will become obsolete.

Now, here’s the most important part of this article, and from this line on, a new paradigm will put Microsoft aside and open a new door of possibilities for everyone. This new paradigm is called Open Source

Browsing on the net I came across several Open Source options that might be of people’s interest if not of my personal interest at least. For instance, I came across Ubuntu , which is a community developed, linux-based Operating System that has pretty much all the features you might find useful for your computer daily tasks, such as a web browser, presentation, document and spreadsheet software, instant messaging, and more. This OS is free, and the installation process it’s easier now than it was years ago.

You have also Solaris which Sun Microsystems recently open-sourced. It is a industry strength OS for servers. It has a more specific audience but many major companies are using it and again, it offer several options for free.

Leaving aside the Operating Systems options for the moment, there are many other choices when it comes to productivity applications. Let’s say you need MS Office like utilities and applications. It’s worthy of mention at this point, that Google Apps are a very powerful and convenient set of web tools that you don’t even need to install on your computer, they run on your web browser. But let’s say you are the kind of person that likes to have things installed on your desktop, you can use Open Office, which is a very robust Office suite and it has pretty much the same features as MS Office does. And again, you can download it and install it for free.

If you are more into the graphic design and web design fields, you also have a set of applications with an Open Source flavor. For instance, I came across GIMP which is an image manipulation program with features very similar to Adobe Photoshop and Fireworks. Let’s say that you are into manipulating and creating vector graphics, you have your open source flavor with Inkscape which is as versatile as Illustrator or Corel Draw. Do you want to create 3D graphics and animations? Well for that you have Blender that is not as huge as Maya or Cinema 4D, but enough to get you started on 3D development, and if you get a good grip on the program, it might end up being THE tool. It worked for these guys.

In conclusion, it’s not only the fact that you can do and get much more from open source applications and the fact they are free. The main point of Open Source is that it will always be there as long as there are developers to support it and maintain it. Instead of greedy corporations feeding off your pockets that only care about keeping you tied to their under performing products (guess which one for example?, you’ve got it!).

I hope I’ve given an overview of the possibilities we have regarding software and OS. Even though I might have not explore them in detail, I’ll open my paths of exploration to this new possibilities and try to comeback with more details. If anyone knows of other open source projects, please post those links on the comments or email me, I would be very interested to learn more as I’m only mentioning the ones I came across and that some people told me. I’m sure there are several other.

‘Till next time.