I love computers and have sat in front of it for hours and probably days at a time forgetting food, bath. Even today I took a bath at 6 PM, its a custom in India that one must take a bath at dawn, well I forgot and somehow remembered!
I like to teach art of computing to others. Its an obedient machine and does what you tell it to do. There was passion, and spark what lacked was tons of money. I have to settle in for shoe string budget to open my own training center. I had no choice and hence in came free software.
I assembled 4 computers with a help of my trusted friend. I installed Ubuntu in it. This roughly cost me around $2500 (Rs 1 lakh plus). Then the other expenses cost me the other half ($2500). I was lucky that my garage did turn out to be a excellent place for my new business. Without free software this task would have been impossible.
All who learn computers in my garage really do like GNU/Linux. I haven't heard a single complaint from them that its tough and not Windowish. Unlike windows, programs are arranged neatly in menus like Accessories, Internet etc. I find students learn very easily.
Before this venture, I served as a consultant to a Computer Academy, there everything that was not windows was a sin. All their computers had viruses in them, if a heavy Java program like NetBeans ran on them, they would crash. I had hell of a time calling the AMC (Annual Maintenance Contract) guys n fixing it and it did cost a lot. They would accuse us and we would accuse them. Some how Microsoft got away and never did get a blame. My repeated cries to switch to GNU Linux will fall into deaf years.
With Linux things are lot simpler. There are no virus, malware, worms, trojans. I can breathe easy when students bring in their thumb drives and open it on my machine. There are many choices of programming environment, pupils are getting very rich experience about what computer is. There is no need to install a virus scanner and extra security software that will cost more. All updates are zero cost and free!
I write this article in a hope that one or two who does read it will be fortunate enough to try out GNU Linux and use it and find out how easy it is.
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