>From Peter Kilander:
As capitalism continues to commodify -water, healthcare, genes, etc.- is it wrong to say that there's currently an attempt to "decommodify" the computer operating system? Linux has been in the news lately http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/log/1998/09/29log.html (scroll down) There seems to be a question of whether the graphical user interface will be free. I've also read that it won't be a strong competitor until applications are created for it.
-Peter, keeping the powder dry -----------------------------------
This article is okay, but ultimately, it doesn't tell you much. I have been using a PC Unix flavor called FreeBSD. For information, documentation, and complete downloadable packages see:
If you want individual unix applications and manuals see:
http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/Facilities/Software/
For information, documentation, screen shots, and complete downloadable packages and source for X-Windows see:
http://www.rahul.net/kenton/xsites.html
This is the basic GUI under PC versions of unix. The most comprehensive and commercially slick office suite application package is StarOffice:
ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/staroffice/
This leads to SO3.1. I can't find it at the moment but I am using SO4 and SO5 beta just came out. The main US site is:
You have to look around a little to find SO4 but it is out there.
My current hobby project is to find a 486i, keyboard, and monitor for free or under a hundred dollars and load it with FreeBSD. The idea is to demonstrate a fully functional comand line system that could be made available to almost anyone, anywhere there is electricity and a phone, period.
The reason that various flavors of a PC based Unix are very popular internationally is that the character sets, fonts, keyboard layouts support all the Euro non-latin languages as well as many of the Asian languages. Plus of course these and their applications are free.
I have become a fanatic over this issue. The one really big problem with Unix is that there is no getting around the difficultly of learning how to configure and use it. Basically, you have to learn more about computers, computer languages, networks, the internet, and how operating systems work. The actual commands in Unix are not any more obscure than those in DOS. But, here again, there are a lot more commands, a lot more functions, and a lot more things you can to do with the basic system.
X-windows, the basic GUI under Unix works more or less like either a Mac or Win95 GUI, so once that system is installed and configured you are essentially on somewhat familar ground. The real difference is that all the command line functionality is still there in separate windows and runs concurrently with any of the GUI based applications. In other words the mesh between the graphic and command line is much closer.
Another thing not mentioned in the article is that Unix or at least the FreeBSD version is a network system that can be used as a single stand alone system. In other words, the system is the same, you just use different aspects of it.
Under the FreeBSD version, you can maintain, update, fix, or download the whole thing off the FreeBSD site or its mirrors as long as your hardware and the basic kernel are functioning. The level of technical support is pretty awesome, but you have to follow the unix newsgroups and post questions. You get answers within a day or less--real answers not just the shine that is typical of MS technical support. After a few months I have stopped asking questions, because I have learned how to recognize the subject posts that are most likely answer what I am looking for. Now I visit the newsgroups to learn how to do things. The available documentation and suport is so extensive that you really don't want to deal with all of it, just little pieces of it one at a time :).
Chuck Grimes