This wiki describes how to reduce your use of proprietary commercial software on your PC, and move over to Free Open Source Software.

Background

Programs like MS Word, Netscape, MS Internet Explorer and so on are called "applications". They are the things you use to send email, browse the web and so on. Microsoft Windows is an operating system, as is Linux. This means that it sits in the background, letting all your applications 'do stuff' like reading files from the disk, managing your computer's memory and such like.

So you could start off by just using free software applications on your existing MS Windows operating system, or you could switch over to Linux (this doesn't necessarily mean giving up MS Windows straight away!).

For some good reasons on why it's a bad idea to use MS Word, for example, here's a good summary: http://j12.org/sb/nomsword.htm

Applications

To start using free software applications on MS Windows is dead simple, and there is very little danger of losing or making major changes to anything on your computer's existing setup. Part of the reason why free software is such a good thing is that everybody can see what it's doing and make sure it doesn't break anything! So there's much less chance of a free software application breaking stuff than, for example, closed commercial applications like Photoshop, or Real player. You can keep your existing programs, but also have free software things that "do the same stuff".

A great place to start if you want to install some free software programs is the Open CD: http://www.theopencd.org/

Suggested Alternatives

Here are some common commercial programs and their free software equivalents. You can find them on the Open CD or download them for free off the Internet.

• Internet Explorer: Mozilla Firefox (Cross platform) A standards compliant browser, with far fewer security problems and a host of nifty features, such as popup blocking and tabbed browsing, that will leave you wondering how you ever managed without them. http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
• Outlook/Outlook Express: Mozilla Thunderbird (Cross platform) / Evolution (Linux only) Thunderbird is the companion program to Firefox - a neat email and newsgroup reader with built in spam blocking. Linux users also have the choice of Evolution - as well as an email reader Evolution also has a calendar and contacts manager that power users of Outlook will find useful. http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/ | http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/features/evolution.html
• Microsoft Office: OpenOffice.org (Cross Platform) Open Office is a fully featured office suite. It can read and write Microsoft Office file formats so you need not worry about your old files. http://www.openoffice.org/
• Microsoft Word: AbiWord^? (Cross Platform) AbiWord^? is a stand alone word processor that contains everything you need form a word processor. It is quicker and less resource hungry than Open Office so it is well worth considering if a word processor is all you need. It is inter-operable with both Microsoft Word and Open Office. http://www.abisource.com/
• Photoshop: The Gimp (Cross Platform) The Gimp is a fully featured graphics program that can do pretty much everything Photoshop can (and a few things it can't). http://www.gimp.org/
  • iResize (Macintosh): A program for resizing and recompressing images. UkResizeImagesWithFreeware

Changing your operating system

The most popular free (or open source) software operating systems are Linux (also known as GNU/Linux), and FreeBSD.

The most common way that you would get hold of Linux is packaged up with a whole bunch of applications (web browser, word processor, etc.) as a 'distribution', or 'distro'. Popular distros include Fedora, Debian, Mandriva, SuSE and about a multitude of others.

You have several options if you want to switch over to Linux. I've tried to include links to helpful tutorials, but Google will generally fill in any blanks.

• Make your system 'dual boot' (i.e. MS Windows and Linux will run from the same hard drive, and you choose which to run when you start up) from your existing hard drive. Many of the more modern linux distros allow you to do this in a fairly intuitive way, but, because you're using the same hard drive, you are risking losing your existing setup. Make backups! Tutorial here: http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux/grub-w2k-HOWTO.html

• Get hold of a second hard drive, and dual boot between that and the original MS Windows drive. This would be more complex technically, but, because you're not touching your MS Windows hard drive, you'll minimize the chances of loosing any data. http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-9-Manual/install-guide/ch-x86-dualboot.html

• Use a "Live CD", possibly in combination with a USB key to run linux. Your whole linux system is on a cd, your hard drive isn't touched at all, so you can't lose any data. You can get a little USB key if you want to store any settings or documents. You'll find that it's a lot slower than running from your hard drive, but it's a good way to get a flavour of linux before making the switch. It also means that you can use other people's computers as long as you have your cd.
  Live distros to try include:
  • Dyne:bolic http://dynebolic.org (activist multimedia)
  • Knoppix http://www.knoppix.net/ (based on Debian)
  • BSDeviant http://bsdeviant.unixpunx.org/ (punk version of FreeBSD)
  • Mandrake Move http://www.mandrakesoft.com/products/mandrakemove (very 'user friendly')
  • PcLinuxOS http://www.pclinuxonline.com/pclos/ (user friendly, needs high spec computer)
  • Mephis http://www.mepis.org/ (debian based live cd that includes an easy install to hard drive feature)
  • Damn Small Linux http://damnsmalllinux.org (good for low spec old computers)
  • Morphix http://www.morphix.org/ ( Customisable modular live cd that comes in different flavours - light, gamer, gnome, KDE)

Distros to Install:

• • BLAG http://www.blagblagblag.org/ (activist distro, based on Fedora)
  • Debian http://www.debian.org/ (voluntary effort, with a social contract)
  • Ubuntu http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ (based on Debian, but some find more polished)

Further reading on Free Software

• • "Anarchism Triumphant", an essay by Eben Moglen
  • "Free as in Freedom", an online book about Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU Project

---

-- SpanneR posted up a short guide, adapted from an email written by charlie harvey on the features list, thanks charlie! - 18 Sep 2004
-- SpanneR added links to further reading on Free Software and link to SB's piece on MS Word - 18 Sep 2004
-- SpaceBunny - 20 Sep 2004 add more distros, and distrowatch link, moved BLAG out of livecd list as install only.
-- TallPaul - 20 Sep 2004 added to, and expanded distro list. Added Suggested Alternatives
-- CharlieH - 2005-01-11 s/opening MS Windows/managing your computer's memory/ in what an OS is; added links to suggested alternatives; added debian to distros to install; s/by Richard Stallman/about Richard Stallman/ in FAIF link;
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