Canonical and IBM have teamed up to offer companies an alternative to Windows 7 and Microsoft’s productivity software. IBM says that customers can save up to 50 percent by adopting its Client for Smart Work and running it on Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux distribution. It will run on older hardware and cheap netbooks, says Big Blue, which means that companies won’t have to contend with high hardware upgrade costs.

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According to Michael Tiemann, business worldwide could save One Trillion Dollars per Year!
Tiemann spells it this out in a fascinating paper [.pdf], entitled “How Open Source Software Can Save the ICT Industry One Trillion Dollars per Year”.

I’m inclined to ask, what the church world-wide could save by moving to Open Source, and how that money could be better used to share the gospel, or help the needy? Worth asking the question though…..

Windows 7 Sins….

August 27, 2009

Thinking about Windows 7 for your church or ministry? Think again!

The new version of Microsoft’s Windows operating system, Windows 7, has the same problem that Vista, XP, and all previous versions have had — it’s proprietary software. Users are not permitted to share or modify the Windows software, or examine how it works inside.

The fact that Windows 7 is proprietary means that Microsoft asserts legal control over its users through a combination of copyrights, contracts, and patents. Microsoft uses this power to abuse computer users. At windows7sins.org, the Free Software Foundation lists seven examples of abuse committed by Microsoft.

Windows 7 Sins

Interesting if you’re a worship leader, or artist …..
Linux Music Workflow: Switching from Mac OS X to Ubuntu

So you have heard of all the advantages and geeky babble about how Linux is better and you have finally decided to try it? Just one thing, you don’t know an awful lot about Linux to get you started. How about some free downloadable ebooks to teach yourself Linux, that you can download today? Would that help?

Free – you ask? Yes, free. Welcome to the world of Linux where things are free both as in free speech and also as in free beer (mostly)!

If you are starting out on your journey towards Linux awesomeness, here are a few free downloadable ebooks to teach yourself Linux that should help you along nicely:

Get deeper, learn more, help more! 5 Download-able ebooks to help you lean Linux!

How to migrate to Linux

July 31, 2009

Tips and ideas for a sucessful migration to Linux

Rentalia.com was a small company when I migrated it to Linux. But it had the typical problems that a small or medium company may have when migrating to Linux. This guide tries to help to avoid these problems, and you can learn how we did it at Rentalia.com.
READ MORE!

Ok guys, & girls, time to jump in here.   As we move forward at Freely we need to be encouraging, teaching,  and leading in the adoption of Linux and open source.   Many of you are much better writers than I,  jump in and help with articles on the why and how.  Feel free to post them here, or on the Facebook Freely Project Group, or you can email them to me and I’ll get them posted.

mrben, if you still have some of the stuff from the original effort, please feel free to pass it on!

Blessings, Tom

Chrome OS from Google

July 8, 2009

Rumored for months, Google announced this morning on their blog that they are entering the operating system arena with Chrome OS.

Read more here….

Computing gets more interesting!

I tend to agree with Stephen J. Vaughn-Nichols view that jobs could be saved with open source software.  And even more could be saved by churches and ministries moving that way, souls.  Being good stewards with open source would release funds going to proprietary software to be used in serving and reaching people for Christ….

Your thoughts?

Organizations Find Switch from Windows Better than Expected

British market researchers took some lessons from a survey of 1,275 Linux migrators in organizations worldwide. Down the whole report here.