handyfloss

Today I’ve overheard a short conversation two workmates have had in front of me. One of them told the other: “Can you get me a [pirated] copy of Windows, plus Nero, plus OpenOffice…? I need them because this weekend I’m going to some friends’ and they want me to install Windows on their laptop.”

This made me wonder… Isn’t Windows for dummies? Isn’t it straightforward? Isn’t it easy to find, cheap to pay for and fool-proof to install? What the hell do my workmate’s friends need her for? Ahhh!, now I get it: Windows is easy because there’s always someone who will install/fix/troubleshoot it for you. My workmate could install Linux for them just as well!

Second thought: Windows has a lot of software available… yeah, right! But you need third party software like Nero or OpenOffice (BTW, at least my workmate didn’t ask for MS Office), often times pirated. Hell!, with Linux (e.g. Debian) you download a complete OS, hassle-free and legally, you burn it into a CD, and you have burning software to substitute Nero (e.g. K3B), e-mail client to substitute Outlook (e.g. Thunderbird, KMail), ofimatic soft to substitute MS Office (e.g. OpenOffice, KOffice, Abiword, Gnumeric)… everything. And installable with a click.

Linux is EASIER.

I am trying to learn PHP by myself, and so far I have realized that it is Perl in disguise! Variables, control sequences… everything is the same, even comments with “#” and line terminations through “;”.

Just wanted to share my joy, since I have a quite a bit of experience with Perl, and therefore my PHP learning will take off much faster!

I just set up Apache2 in my computer! Just one hour ago I knew nothing about web servers, and now I have one running! I am so excited… and it was sooo easy.

I reckon there must be a whole lot to learn, but the bare basics are almost trivial, at least under Debian. I don’t plan to use this computer as web server, since there’s no way I’m opening access to port 80 in the computer I work on… but at least I’ll be able to learn PHP using it locally.

Now I’ll go home and watch CSI…