Walter Hutchens’ Blog

This week I have installed the Linux operating system on my desktop computer at work, pushing me into the community of “open source” software users.

I’ve been drawn into the open source computing “movement” gradually, in keeping with my proclivities as a second-wave adopter.

First I installed the Firefox web browser from Mozilla. It’s now been downloaded more than 50 million times, so Firefox has gone mainstream. It is really eating into the Microsoft hegemony in the browser space.

Next I got Thunderbird, an email program that also comes from Mozilla.

Then I tried OpenOffice, a substitute for Microsoft Office, the collection that includes MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Then I started using WordPress for my blog. Through it, I have also begun to discover the elegance and utility of software that is open to third-party plug-ins.

I really like all these programs. Each of them is functional, stable, easy to use and of course free. Though they all come from different sources (different volunteer “projects”), my good experience with the collection gave me more confidence in the open source “brand.” But until this week I was still using all these tools only in a Windows environment.

As a former Mac user (and Apple employee), I was no great fan of Microsoft. I used the Apple Macintosh operating system from my first experience using a computer in college until my graduation from law school in 2000. I reluctantly bought my first Win-tel PC because I’d joined a large law firm with no Macs. I expected to be there a while and wanted to become more proficient with the planet’s dominant computing platform. So when my daughter was born and I was buying my first digital camera I decided it was also time to get a Win-tel box. I bought a small Sony laptop. It came with Windows 98 installed.

My sense is that Windows was dramatically inferior to the Mac OS until at least Windows 95 and probably until Windows 98, but versions since then including the current XP iteration are pretty good products (not perfect of course, but quite usable). I may buy another Mac one day, but I haven’t felt any compulsion to go back.

My decision to embrace open source computing now is is not really motivated by financial considerations. Internet Explorer and various email programs I could use are free. As a faculty member at the University of Maryland, I am able to buy copies of MS Office for personal use for a nominal fee (they charge just enough to cover some of the expense of burning and distributing the CDs). Plus, after using versions of MS Word for nearly 20 years (even on the Mac, Microsoft dominates), I felt no compulsion to learn a new word processor.

But a few things helped me decide to take the plunge. First, using those open source applications in Windows got me more comfortable with the whole open source notion. Instead of it seeming like a “movement” of disgruntled geeks, I learned first hand that the products are stable and easy to use. Second, I knew that Linux was gaining critical mass; I sensed using it now wouldn’t put me on the “bleeding edge” with those who code their own drivers when a ready-made one cannot be found. Third, I admit there is a certain attractive mystique to Linux, what I’ve called a “geek chic.” Also, with blogging through WordPress, the main software I use is on a server anyway. Then finally I had problems with Windows. It was misbehaving on my office desktop, often being oddly slow to respond to commands and not doing what I expected. It felt like a good time for a change. My original plan was to experiment with Linux by putting it on my Sony PictureBook. But I had problems doing that, so I decided to take the plunge at work. I wiped Windows from my hard drive, not even installing Linux in a way that would let me choose whether to boot in Linux or Windows–it is now purely a Linux machine.

As I wrote, the installation process was amazingly smooth. Seems to me Linux is ready for the mainstream.