Sun, 23 Jan 2005
Steps to help free software use
Depend on Free Software for daily computer use
The only way you are going to walk the walk is if you become a user.
Gradually began replacing your warez'd copies of commercial software
with Free Software. The next step is crucial to this.
Stop complaining about differences
Linux is not Windows, GNU is not UNIX, The Gimp is not Photoshop,
Macromedia will never be interested in Free Software! Get over it. If
you feel strongly enough about some special feature of a commercial
package, write to the company and ask them to consider releasing their
source code so the community can improve it.
Become part of the community
Accept that you are joining a worldwide community and include yourself
in it. Some examples:
- Join the mailing lists of certian software you like
- Spend time on IRC. irc.freenode.net is a server with thousands of
channels all dedicated to various Open Source and Free Software
projects.
- Learn to identify bugs and learn how to use your distribution's
bug reporting system. If your distribution doesn't have a bug
reporting system, find another distribution.
Remember, you are part of a community. You are not recieving a
commercial package with technical support. You are not allowed to act
like an asshole customer. For example, something like
"Linux sucks,
mine doesn't work!" is very unproductive and will just anger
people who could otherwise help you. Something like
"I'm running
Debian Testing and I'm having trouble with my sound card using the OSS
drivers." is a much better question.
Be humble.
The Free Software community has an incredibly deep history. If you
realize you probably don't know everything about it and that you will be
learning new things at a very fast pace things will go easier.
posted at: 20:40 | path:
/theory |
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