Open Source: The Personification of Evil?

There seams to be this view from the large majority of computer users both professional and home that Open Source Software is the personification of evil even virus ridden. I suspect I know why these users got this view with the established software companies bad mouthing open source software and association of Open Source with more politically active side of the computer world.

But from personal experience this is far from truth and I have found Open Source software to be of the same standard and even better than the commercially brought software especially over the past decades. While most commercial software has got more bulky with many unwanted features Open Source software functionality and usefulness has grown over the same time.

This to a point now I do not have to buy any commercial software to do what I want on my computer as I will find an Open Source equivalent to do the same job most of the time far better than the commercial equivalent. Even the operating system I use now are Open Source because they are far more stable and usable to the commercial equivalents.

As for the perception that Open Source are virus ridden or has an association with likes of Hackers that is far from the truth. Yes some Open Source software is associated with such groups but the large majority of people who are associated with Open Source have far more noble ideals in so much they want to bring computing and choice to all users.

Biggest irony of all the commercial software creators now use Open Source software to create their products to sell to the public but they are hypercritical as on the same hand they discourage their users to use Open Source software under the pretence it is not as good as their creations and as safe.

In conclusion Open Source software is not evil cousin of the commercial software but a serious contender which is constantly improving and allows people to use their computers more effectively especially those who are short of money like myself.

Let put it this way this is written on a laptop which only has Open Source Software on it and if anything more stable than a laptop with commercial brought software and it did not cost me a penny without a loss of functionality!

Open Source Revolution?

What still amazes me are the amount of people who use computers who still buy and use software from the major corporate software makers rather than use the free open source versions of the said same software!

This considering the brought versions of the software are overpriced and on the while it can be bug ridden with ill thought out front ends which make the software difficult to use. While there are free alternatives which actually do the job with more user friendly front ends available.

I am not saying all brought software is bad or all open source software is good just the fact you don’t have to always pay over inflated prices for software to do the job you actually want which for people like myself who have little money means we can get tools to do what we need for free.

The sad fact is most computer users are far to lazy or simply frightened to try anything different other than what is recommended by the computer manufactures themselves. This not helped by a small band of so called computer experts who claim open source software cannot be good because it is free frankly a silly but effective argument with less informed computer users.

Those of us who are brave enough to use open source software actually find it is actually easy to use and remarkably stable as software goes plus most of all it is easy on the pocket. Myself the only software I now buy are Internet Security and PC Tune up software even on a windows computer as in both cases the brought software is better than most of the open source versions currently.

The following are some of my recommendations of open source software most of which I currently use on my computer:

Audacity – An open source audio editing package.
Clementine – A good open source alternative to iTunes.
Gedit – An open source text editor.
GIMP – A good open source drawing package.
Google Chrome – The fastest and most stable web browser to use.
Inkscape – A good open source vector drawing package.
LibreOffice – An office suite which shoots Microsoft Office products out ofthe water for ease of use.
PeaZip – An open source version of WinZip which unlike WinZip is a full version of the software.
Thunderbird – A good email package though with minor glitch and to.


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