Free software, or just go online?

Following some of the points made on my post about Kubuntu and Linux yesterday, I’ve been wondering a bit more about free software and how it might help people make the most of their equipment.

After all, software is expensive stuff. One of the great things about Kubuntu is that if I want a piece of software to a job, say editing graphics, all I have to do is call up the application manager, type in ‘graphics’ and it comes  up with a list of applications I can download and use straight away.

Things aren’t quite so easy with the Mac, of course, but at least that comes preloaded with the iLife suite, which means you can pretty much get on with most things out of the box.

Poor old Windows users are of course left behind in this. They don’t have any decent software pre-installed, by and large, and nor do they have access to a great open source application manager like Kubuntu comes with.

Having said that, an awful lot of the best open source apps are available for Windows users as well as Linux. But they are spread about on their own websites – though many are downloadable from sites like SourceForge – and how is the average user supposed to know they are there? If I want to create a podcast on my PC and need an audio editor, how do I know that Audacity is the package I want?

A great way of tackling this would be to create a simple CD, with all the main open source packages that people might want to use on a regular basis. You could burn and print a load to give away, and maybe make the ISO downloadable from a website.

Some of the software I would include on such a CD would be:

All of which are freely available (and more importantly, distributable) for Windows users.

But then… is this really the right way to go? In the age of Web 2.0, cloud computing, Google Docs and Zoho, do we really want to encourage people to be installing loads of desktop software? Or should we just point them to where they can download FireFox, and then giving them a list of bookmarks?

Maybe it depends on things like web connection speeds. Perhaps desktop software works better for some people than others

I’d be interested to hear what others think. Would a CD with preselected, quality open source software really make a difference to the way people use their PCs? Or should we be encouraging folk to use online tools, and to compute in the cloud?

Windowless

KubuntuFor the first time in maybe more than ten years, I don’t have a machine running Windows in my possession. Last week, my Vista-running Acer laptop stopped working. Windows just wouldn’t load. It gave me a load of options to restore things to a previous state of affairs, only, because it couldn’t find the driver for my C: drive, there was no previous state of affairs. And there wasn’t any option to restore the machine back to factory settings, no restore CD, no Vista install CD, nothing.

So I did the only logical thing I could do to make this machine useful again. I put Linux on it. Kubuntu to be precise, and it works very nicely. A sticky start, because I couldn’t find FireFox (it wasn’t installed straight away), and things like Flash player had to be installed too. Also, certain file formats (like MP3!) aren’t supported immediately either. But after an hour or so’s fiddling, I have things working very nicely. It certainly isn’t as eeeasy to get into as a certain Asus machine, but it isn’t half bad. It’s quicker and more stable than Vista ever was.

My Macbook is still my main machine, and I can’t see that changing. The quality of the open source software available on the Linux platform is astonishing, given that it’s mostly free of charge, but for certain applications – like those dealing with media (photos, video etc) – the Mac clearly has the edge. For doing stuff on the web, though, Firefox can be running in anything that doesn’t crash every five minutes or which operates at a reasonable speed. And Linux beats Vista hands down on that score.

A Catalyst for social innovation?

The UK Catalyst Awards are BERR and NESTA sponsored initiative which aims to:

recognise everyday heroes who use technology to make a positive impact on the world around them. What’s more, you could get support to take your idea further and help more people.

Sounds like a good deal to me! They are being organised by Dan McQuillan, an all-round online social change good egg. David Wilcox attended the launch at the beginning of May, and caught up with Phil Hope MP – who is Minister for the Third Sector – as well as Dan, and in his inimitable social reporter style, managed to shoot some video:

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You can still put forward your projects for the awards – and I believe they don’t have to be underway at this stage – good ideas might be enough. It’s a chance to try and drum up some support, get connected with other interested folk and maybe snaffle a bit of funding. And why not?

In other news, Channel 4 have revealed that there will be some funding via their 4IP fund at the 2gether festival in July 2008. It will be interesting to see how these two initiatives work together.

More on 2gether to come, by the way.

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