Love your Linux
My protest against Microsoft and friends
I have been rather disheartened by how much “agency” we have lost because of our excessive reliance on products/services from large corporations/governments. It feels very negative to me because it reminds of my visit to communist East Germany before the Berlin wall fell. At that time everything was uniform and of low quality in the East. Bad beer. Bad sandwhich. Bad housing. But at least it was all cheap. At least the people there were safe [if they accepted the system], had free day care, free medical care, the locally made car was cheap [the Trabant] and a cheap holiday on Black Sea was within their reach. We seem to be worse off than them because we have the same uniformity – ie. Every shopping centre looks the same – but everything is expensive. On the other hand, at that time it felt like every village in West Germany had beer and food and architecture and accents that were different: in other words – it felt human. It felt like there was not total control from large and powerful forces that could squish you like a bug.
So, just like I know that many of the citizens of East Germany were trying to figure out how to protest against the system without going go jail, I feel we in Canada today need to find ways to free ourselves from the shackles of big corporation and big government. No, I am not doing this for political reasons – I am doing this so I want to live at a human scale where individual choices can make a difference.
I want a cure for the passivity of most peoples’ response to the
Climate Catastophe and Ecological/Social collapse.
I want to find simple ways to give people back the “agency” we once had when we could fix our own car and grow our own food and control our local public schools through our local schoolboard.
There are many ways to do this. One of the ways I am doing this is to shop for my food at a non corporate store in Kemptville called B&H. Another way is that I avoid Walmart, COSTCO, Amazon, etc. as much as is possible. I always ask myself when I make a purchase:
“Is this company or this product I approve of? Would I want to work for them? Did this products manufacture allow th workers in the supply chain to earn a decent living?” In other words, my money is an expression of my values and what I believe in. I am not just buying a “thing” – my money is supporting a certain value proposition. In other words, as the book shown above asks:
How can I make my money moral?
The most recent way I have chosen to disengage from the big corporations is to buy a used laptop whose RAM is so small that I must run LINUX for it to work. For those of you who don’t know, LINUX is an open source – ie. Free – replacement for WINDOWS. I have officialy escaped the clutches of a huge company that periodically forces me to upgrade to the next version of their software and now also makes me pay an annual fee to use it rather than a one time purchase. So now I am going to try to sell you on the advantages of LINUX so that you too can make you statement and regain some “agency” in your life.
Why you should switch to LINUX
1. One of the most important aspects of Linux is that the kernel or the heart of the OS, other operating system components, and many user programs are free and open-source, meaning that anyone can look at the source code and make changes. As Richard Stallman says, this software is “free as in speech.” In other words, it’s free!
2. You can use an old computer like mine that has “only” 4 Gigs of RAM and still have a lightning fast computer. Contrast this with the fact the Windows 11 Operating uses 4 GIGs just to run – so you need at least 8 GIGs just to run [most people now need 16 GIGs] So you save a bundle on the computer you buy.
3. Linux has VERY High security
Installing and using Linux on your system is the easiest way to avoid viruses and malware. The security aspect was kept in mind when developing Linux and it is much less vulnerable to viruses compared to Windows. Programs cannot make changes to the system settings and configuration unless the user is logged in as the root (equivalent to the administrator user in Windows) user. Most users do not log in as the root; hence, they cannot do much damage to the system, except to their own files and programs, since the downloaded file/malware will have limited privileges. You can browse the Internet without worrying about your system getting infected.
4. LINUX runs on any hardware
All of us know that with every new release of Windows OS, a huge number of hardware systems become obsolete as their technical specifications are no longer adequate to run the latest Windows OS. Linux makes very efficient use of the system’s resources. Linux installation can be customised for users and for specific hardware requirements. The installation procedure is very flexible, and allows users to choose the modules they want to install. This allows them to install Linux even on old hardware, thus helping in optimal use of all the hardware resources.
5. Ease of maintenance
Maintaining the Linux OS is easy, as the user can centrally update the OS and all software installed very easily. All the variants of Linux have their own central software repository, which is used to update the system and keep it safe. They offer regular updates and the system can be updated without rebooting it.
6. The software equivelant to Word, Excel, etc. Are FREE and compatbile with all the standard software.
So what are you waiting for? Get rid of your Microsoft operating system and Office suite today. It’s only a first step to reducing the power of the corporations but its an important one. Hopefully it will lead you to make other conscious choices with your hard earned money that direct your money where your values lie. And eventually you may feel like a few of us that what we do can make a difference in the world. Eventually you may life simply so that others may simply live. And it can all begin with using LINUX!
References
https://www.opensourceforu.com/2020/03/reasons-to-use-linux/
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56361206-making-money-moral
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