Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

permaculture - [permaculture] Linux software

permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: permaculture

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Chad Knepp <pyg@galatea.org>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Linux software
  • Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2005 15:06:26 -0600

I'm going to take a chance at stretching the topic limit here in
agreement with Steve and say that I think choosing Linux is an
important 'political' choice to consider. It represents a step away
from corporate values and towards one of community and cooperation.

In addition, it is truly an excellent operating system with high
stability and great flexibility. Although it has carried a reputation
of being somewhat inaccessible to those less comfortable with
computers, usability and accessibility have become a developmental
focus of a number of recent projects and IMO it is currently no harder
to install or learn than Windows 95 or 98... but how many of us have
had to [re]install our own operating system and how long did it take
to learn the current one? Additionally if your the sort that learns
well by reading things there is a tremendous amount of free
information available to help you install and learn Linux.

I recommend the Ubuntu Linux <http://ubuntulinux.com/> distribution as
it is one of the newer projects focusing on ease of use. It is free
of charge to download and you can create your own cd with a cdwriter.

For those interested in starting out, I recommend finding an older
machine, something like a Pentium 166, 64Meg ram, 1 Gig hard drive.
This sort of machine is found in 'dumb'sters in larger cities and on
e-bay would probably cost more in shipping than bid. Use this machine
to experiment and learn on before setting out to use it as your
primary computing platform. When you're done, help somebody else
learn on your beginner machine by passing it on.

Cheers,
Chad (Linux user for 9+ years)

Keith Johnson writes:
> I know this is off topic so please reply off list.
>
> I was just looking at Linux software at E Bay and, having never used it
> before, I had no idea where to start. Can someone using this OS please
> confer with me to consider the merits and acquisition options available
> to me. Current OS is Win XP which has been working great. Is another OS
> going to require a major learning curve and a huge amount of time
> reloading all my software?




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page