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Legal Computing June 1, 2006

Posted by Rei Victor dela Cruz in : iSeries , comments closed

Looking back three years ago, I never thought I would be able to it. Microsoft products were an essential part of my software requirements. But of course except for operating system which came with the PC, the MS Office installation was something that I wasn’t really proud of. The same goes for bootleg copies of Photoshop and other software. I had thought of purchasing legit copies but the cost of software would have caused me to declare bankrupcy.

I was already trying out different flavors of Linux even before. The only hindrance was those Linux versions apperently did not support my hardware. My first attempt was using Slackware. It won’t even boot up from the CD, so I junked that attempt. I then tried Mandrake 8.0 but eventually settled for Fedora when I got a new PC. Around that time, OpenOffice.org was becoming popular. With OO’s support for MS Office formats, which is the most important thing, I never looked back. To top it off I discovered GIMP, which is a lot like Photoshop, except that it was free.

Today, I’m using Linux at home most of the time. The only time I boot to Windows is when I need to visit websites that are use Microsoft controls. At the top of the list of such sites is one of the banks I do business with. Printing in color is another reason for me to boot to Windows as HP’s Linux support is still quite limited. But get this, I still use OpenOffice and GIMP even when I’m in Windows, so I can still say that all my software is legal.

On both platforms, the application software installed are a mix of freeware, free for personal use, and open-source.

The bottom line is you can stay legal. There are a lot of free and open-source software out there that you can use. Most of them are at par with their commercial counterparts.

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