Monthly Archives: March 2007

I’m in Good Company with My “No More Microsoft OS and Vista” Decision

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My father is converting to Linux. It’s something he’s considered for awhile, but he’s all bent about the new MS Vista release. I told him my concerns about the use of the CPU to be “big brother” to be sure you were doing nothing wrong — and my concerns that my own iTunes and ripped CD content would no longer be playable on Vista (among a plethora of other concerns).

They may have fixed this by now… I’m beyond caring. I quit researching the new Vista OS when I hit “saturation” point on the issues I wasn’t willing to accept. I’ve made my plan to scoot away from Windows-based computing completely. Pops is going to make the OS swap before I am, but I’m well on my way with applications already.

I saw an article today that referenced the fact that the US government is also moving away from the MS model. It quoted, in particular, the FAA and the DOT as they consider a move toward Linux.

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Healthy Food Choices: A Chart from My Mother

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Here’s an informative chart about the value of various wholesome foods, which arrived by email from my mother this week.

Personally, I’d recommend using organic versions of these to boost the value even more. Staying healthy with excellent whole food choices in your diet is one of the best ways to save money and improve overall health.

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Voluntary Simplicity for a Tiny House: Organizing Your Closet

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Some areas are tougher than others when you begin your journey to a simpler existence. These areas of your home will stop your efforts dead, if you are not both diligent and careful.

I offer the following tips for these areas to help you push through the hard spots. The first (and the top offender) in the “collections and stuff I don’t really need” category is the closet.

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Open Source Gems: 2-D Graphics Manipulation and Replacement for Illustrator and Paint Shop Pro

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I’ve been using The Gimp for a couple months now and so far, it’s great. It took a bit of time to learn the new format and to be able to find the functions I wanted or needed, but I think most of the learning curve is behind me now.

It’s a keeper. I’m not a heavy user, but I am a regular user and I find that The Gimp loads much faster than Paint Shop Pro 7.0 and it screams past the molasses-style loading speed of Paint Shop Pro 9.0. I uninstalled 9.0 almost immediately because it loaded so incredibly slowly– on both my machines.

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Open Source Gems: Microsoft Replacements and Others

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I’ve made the choice to start to move away from traditional closed-source software as much as possible in my business. I’m working on adopting the software this year with the idea that in 2008 I will move to Linux.

With all the stuff I use, this is a pretty bold plan. I hope I can make that deadline for the complete switch before the end of 2008. In the meantime, I’m searching for (and finding) a number of fantastic programs. And, over the next few weeks and months, I plan to share my findings in the hope that it makes the transition easier for others.

This means my findings (for the most part) will be limited to those programs that offer both a Linux and a Windows version, unfortunately. As I have it figured, there’s no way I can learn a new operating system, address software/hardware conflict issues, learn new software packages and keep a business going. Thus, I’ll be limited to cross-OS offerings for now. I’m looking for the best reviewed of the options and will pass along my findings as well as my resources for the reviews and the download pages.

Whether you are changing for ethical, moral, technical or financial reasons, I hope my findings will help your own transition.

I’ll keep the header “Open Source Gems” for each find to make it easy to search and I’ll tag them all with “open source” as well.