Because We Can - Fulltime RV'ing

 

Not Ready for Primetime? Part 1

 

Much of the enjoyment we get from living on the road is the opportunity to expand our experiences in comparison to those of our past Life. It is not out of place to say those experiences included many situations we had no knowledge of before we bought a home with six wheels for its foundation. The obvious readily pops to mind; the different areas of the country, the museums, the people, the very sense of freedom itself. But what strikes me as the most important aspect of all, is the ability to think outside the box, to look at Life from a different perspective than we did before.

One small example is what we are currently engaged in. Notice the use of the pronoun we, meaning not only myself, as I am engaged at this very moment the writing of these words, but also you, because at some later date you are at this very moment engaged in reading those same words. Modern life almost dictates that to be engaged like this, we need to use the Internet to find facts, provide entertainment, increase our knowledge, or perhaps, even help us set our goals in Life. Rather than talk about those subjects, I'd like to take on a more mundane subject, computer operating systems of all things.

Computer operating systems? What in the world is that and why am I writing about that, they or them? Sometimes the people who are fulltimers get things right. Take for example this slightly altered excerpt from the Hitchitch website:

The restless urge to see new territory, to find what is beyond the curve in the road ahead.

People living the dream, exploring this great land in their RVs like pioneers crossing the frontiers of the past in wagon trains.

Now we can follow their travels, learn from them, and find the best trails to our own dreams.

We don't have to wait weeks for the pony express mail to show us the way.

We can follow their adventures as they happen.

Talk about getting to the heart of what this life is all about, that is it and more. I love these three simple words that Ron and Terry make the heart of the fulltime experience, "The restless urge...". Much of my life has been consumed in the quest they speak of, to follow the Beat of a different drum, to take the path not taken, to think outside the box, to create something where there was nothing.

Unfortunately one part of my life was always inside the box, a box similar to one most of you have been trapped in. You pass through the gate, pay your money, and look out through the windows. Windows, the operating system which controls most of the worlds personal computers. Gates, the multi-billionaire founder of that dominating monopoly called Microsoft. Many times I've asked the question, why do I have to pay an exorbitant price for a piece of software that is so easily easily infected by various virus and worms, so that Mr Gates can take the money he has extracted from me without my knowing the amount, and make himself out to be the great philanthropist of the modern era. The Prince of the Poor of the World, dispensing untold amounts of money, some of mine, in his own name. Why can't I keep that extra money I paid and donate it to whichever persons or to whatever cause I choose?

Enter the world of free software, which rests on a foundation with the funny moniker of Linux/GNU. Windows, which rhymes with greed, well maybe it doesn't exactly rhyme with greed, but that is apparently all that drives the people who run that company, is known by everyone, Linux/GNU is known by virtually no one, and to the few who do, it generally goes by the shortened term, Linux.

Currently there is a great deal of buzz surrounding one of the Linux "distros", the one with the funny sounding name, Ubuntu. What you are reading was created on a computer that used a KDE desktop with Ubuntu. The HTML code was written with Quanta, another Linux based program, but even more astounding, the ISP we use to store and transmit these words and photos, the service provider each of us must have to gain access to the Internet, it also runs on Linux. Linux is all around us, it's just that most of us don't know it.

The Windows people will tell you that only "techies" can use Linux. That it isn't ready for primetime, that it will never replace Windows. It's just like history, what version of the facts do you want, our version, their version, a disinterested observers version, or maybe the revisionist version. Take your pick because you can have any opinion, I mean set of facts, you like. What all this is leading up to is a brief series of articles, though there may only be one other article, that will take a look at my adventures in the land of Linux. (In case you were wondering, no Linda does not use Linux, though she does use Opera for her web browsers rather that that next to worthless virus magnet, Windows Internet Explorer).

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