Few days back I got a call from a friend of mine that he is facing numerous problems with his laptop like disappearing of desktop icons, frequent interrupts in online activities etc. I asked him if he was using a pirated copy of Window operating system. His quick reply was, “I don’t know, I had paid Rs.500 to get everything installed on my system at Nehru Place.” Without waiting for my response he continued, “Hey do you have latest version of MS Office, mine is older one and doesn’t open even docx file?” Finally he allowed me to answer to his queries. “Why don’t you use Linux operating system, OpenOffice.org and other GPL software?” I offered him a panacea for his all problems. I helped him install Fedora (a Linux based OS) and other free open source software. Today he called me early in the morning to thank me for everything especially for in-built torrent client in the Linux for downloading movies.
I would like to request everyone to switch to open-source technologies. Once you use them you will forget cheeky Windows and other Microsoft-based software forever. If you can’t live without Windows then at least you can install Linux OS(Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Mandrake or any other Linux based OS) in addition to existing Windows on your system. And please don’t go for MS office, asp, .Net and blah blah.., go for OpenOffice.org, Java, PHP, MySQL and other open source software and say with your proud head up- I don’t use pirated software because I use open-source software. People related to Computer Sc field like students, professionals and academicians may contribute their expertise to the open-source community that is open to the whole world. Source code of all open source software is available on the internet; you may edit, modify, play and create a new open-source clone. The whole world would be proud of you if you do something useful. Today ninety-nine percent of online banking sites use Java and Linux for their robustness and plethora of features. One of the busiest websites in the world, our own irctc-website, uses open-source software (Java based software). But I feel shame to visit the website of AICTE, the apex body of India for technical education, which is designed in asp.
Well, before I press the submit button to post this blog, I will recommend you to watch the movie –Antitrust (2001 movie based on open source and proprietary software). You may write to me if you need any kind of help regarding open source software. I will be more than happy to help you if I am able to do so. 🙂