Color me surprised!
With bold strong strokes my face is covered in deep tones of surprise. Ask me not what color I speak of.
The cause of this surprise, “This copy of windows is not genuine” popping up on the screens of majority of computers in a widely acclaimed institution of tertiary education. Most amazing is that, this institution is at the forefront of ICT education in the sub region. Which region you may ask? Surely I have left very little to your imagination.
I ask myself, is it actually the absence of knowledge concerning open sourced applications and Operating Systems or its the blatant backward absolute stubborn mindset ,i.e change resistance, to go FOSS.
Either way is no excuse,for a country and people that still do believe in free lunch, I wonder why no effort is made to widely accept and jump unto the free bandwagon.
There are many reasons to go FOSS , but the most popular ,especially with Operating Systems that fall under the free and open category is the absence of viruses. This institution I made mentioned of is riddled with a plethora of viruses, ones that their IT support services lab cannot get rid of, only option which they usually prescribe to such cases- format!
Now can you imagine,a modern day computer/network setup without the use of any Linux distributions?
Any person in the right frame, would see why or at least ask why?
All I am saying here, is that why go through with the time wasting charade of installing pirated/cracked version of windows or even spend huge amounts to buy licenses for original copies whiles there is a free, stronger,stable alternative, to top it all ,that also comes with 24/7 support albeit from its ever growing community.
Yes, there is a learning curve,a steep one at that.
That is why there is Ubuntu, Canonical and the communities and distros grown around the idea of FOSS and Ubuntu is there to help. I am not saying here that Ubuntu is for the weak.
Some really mean s**t can and is done with Ubuntu,but Ubuntu has been designed to target the average,untech-savvy user,thus reducing the learning curve.
Indeed one can use Ubuntu straight out if the box and not even have to fire up the terminal.
Talk about applications, there is a variety to choose from for every windows application
.
Let me say that, a few applications cannot match up to the standards windows spews from its sweat shops and legacy developers. That said, I believe Linux applications are built usually with a lot of whistles and bells, most of which the normal user would not and might not ever use or customize. This is where developers for the opponent do well, but hey, who pays FOSS developers.
So back to the issue, I see of no reason why,the (*)Education Service would not design our ICT education curriculum to include lessons on open source operating systems and software, yet every computer including the one used to design the curriculum has VLC installed.
Kinda backward.
Long live FOSS, long live Linux, long live Ubuntu.
I believe this is my longest rant yet.
Yours truly, am out.
- = name of country.