There's an article on here called free versus paid for, it explains how it's possible to replace all the commercial paid for software that you find on your computer with free Open Source equivalents.
For a week now I have been doing just that. Last Saturday I bought a computer off of Wightbay for £90. It's got more ram, more disc space, better sound and graphics cards and a better processor. What it didn't come with was any software, not even an operating system.
On my old PC I spent just over an hour downloading and burning to disc Ubuntu a version of the Linux operating system. It was then just a matter of putting the disc in the drive, answering a few questions and within 10-15 minutes I was up and running.
My old computer was full of run time errors, and because of this it became a bit hit and miss as to whether a program would run or not, and sometimes even when they seemed to be running right the end result was different to what it should have been.
It was this that forced me to act. Over the weekend I videoed The HillTop TrailBlazers' first gig at the Cask & Crispin in Newport. Unfortunately I took it for granted that what looked good on the camera screen would translate the same to a bigger one. Silly Me!!
All footage was as black as your hat and looked as though it had been filmed down a coal mine. I then proceeded to download every free video editor I could find in the hope I could brighten the videos up.
My camera, a Kodak records video to MP4 format. If the videos were alright I could of uploaded them straight to YouTube no worries, but finding a straight forward editor for this format is a nightmare, so I had to convert it to AVI, and then stick it in an editor to sort it out. My poor old computer wouldn't do it. It was a toss up between paying £25 for a XP re-install or find another machine. Luckily I found another machine and as it happens Ubuntu comes with the programs I needed to sort the videos out.
The Gods were smiling upon me. Well until Monday when they deserted me leaving me with the first cough and cold I've had for 5 years. Such is life!!
Watch the video to learn how to pronounce Ubuntu.
Incidently, if you are put off changing to Linux because your favourite programs only run in Windows, then think again. There's a program called Wine for Linux that makes it possible to run Windows based software on a Linux machine, so you get the best of both worlds, you don't have to give up your paid for software and you open your world to thousands of free programs.
