BledsoeTech

This site now lives at http://www.lancebledsoe.com/ .  I’ll forward this domain eventually.

A few days ago I had the opportunity to move one of my Wordpress websites from one hosting company (1and1) to another (HostGator).  You can find a number of “here’s how I did it” descriptions of this process online, most of which differ from each other in small ways.  I found this thread in the wordpress.org support forums to be helpful (particularly the post by rapidtronics about halfway down), but my experience was slightly different so I wanted to post it here in case it might be useful for others.

1. Back up both your site’s database and files. You’ll probably use something like phpMyAdmin to back up your database (as described here); the database backup file will be a collection of SQL commands which will be used to populate your new database.  To back up your site’s files, just use an FTP client to download all your site files to your PC.
2. Set up the website space on your new host. This may involve creating an “add-on” domain in the main domain space of your new host.   Take note of the pathname to your new site’s webspace.
3. Create a MySQL database on your new host, and create a database user that has all access permissions.  Take note of the name of the new database, the new database user and password, and the hostname.
4. Update your wp-config.php file. In a text editor, open up your wp-config.php file (from the site files you just downloaded from your old host) and change the entries for the database name, the database user and password, and the hostname, to reflect the newly created database on your new host.  You can now upload all of your site files (including the now-updated wp-config.php file) to your new webspace.
5. Update the pathname to your webspace in your database. In a text editor, open up your database backup file (the one with all the SQL commands), and do a global search and replace.  You need to change all the instances of the pathname of your old webspace to the pathname of your new webspace.  In my case, the old (1and1) pathname was something like /homepages/2/d3758674/htdocs/mydomain and the new (HostGator) pathname was something like /home/bledsoe/public_html/mydomain.com.  If you skip this step, your new database on your new host will be trying to access files and directories on your old host (and won’t be able to).  You can now import this SQL file to your new database, probably using phpMyAdmin, as described here or here.
6. Change the DNS entries for your domain name. Assuming your old host is still the domain registrar for your domain name, go to the admin panel for your old host, and change the DNS entries for your domain so that they point to the domain servers at your new host.

Special note regarding email addresses associated with the transferred domain: Did you know that when you change the DNS entries for a domain, the MX records (that control where associated emails are sent) get changed automatically to point to the new domain?  Neither did I.  So if you have one or more email addresses associated with the domain whose webspace you’re moving to a new host (e.g., name@mydomain.com), be sure you know where your MX records are pointing so your emails end up at the right place.

I go to a really nice gym.  They have not only a large weight room with a ton of nice equipment, but also two swimming pools, two full-size basketball courts, several racquetball courts, a rock-climbing wall, and two large rooms for aerobics classes and such.  They also have a full-service child-care center, a small cafe, and a place where you can get massages and facials.  (The only reason I get to go there is my wife works at a place that provides a family gym membership to all its employees.)

The locker rooms are really nice, too.  They have both dry-heat and steam saunas, plus they provide towels so you don’t have to bring your own.  Recently, several of these signs were posted in the locker rooms:

“Holy cow,” I thought, “17,000 towels a day, that’s a lot of towels!”  I figured a lot of people must really be wasting towels and that it was a good thing that the gym owners posted those signs so those towel-wasters would wake up and stop wasting so many towels.  I was also feeling pretty pleased with myself, because I only use two towels every time I visit.

But then I got to wondering just how many towels, on average, people were actually using.  It would depend, of course, on how many people came thru the gym on an average day, but I didn’t have that information.  I asked at the front desk if they could tell me, but was told that that information was proprietary and they weren’t allowed to give it out.  (I guess they don’t want potential competitors to know how many people are using their gym?)

So I started thinking about it.  If 1,000 people a day came thru the gym, that would be an average of 17 towels per person, which would be absolutely outrageous; nobody needs to use 17 towels when they go to the gym.  But if, say, 5,000 people a day were coming thru the gym, that would be an average of only 3.4 towels per person; maybe the people who were using 5 or six towels per visit could stand to cut back, but 3.4 towels per person didn’t seem outrageous.  On the other hand, I couldn’t imagine that 5,000 people a day were coming thru the gym; heck, 1,000 people a day sounded high to me.

Without knowing the actual number of people who came thru the gym, I couldn’t figure out whether we were using too many towels, and the gym owners weren’t telling.  So I did the next best thing: I counted them.

No, I didn’t actually count every single person coming into the gym one day, but I did count every person coming into the gym for 30 minutes one afternoon, roughly between 3:30pm and 4pm.  During that time, 115 people, adults and children, walked thru the doors, which is approximately 230 people an hour.  The gym is open 24 hours a day, though I suspect there are a lot fewer people that come during the late night and early morning hours.  So I figured that between 6am and 9pm, 230 people an hour would come thru, and between 9pm and 6am only about a quarter of that, or 58 people an hour, would come thru.  Thus:

230 ppl/hr x 15 hrs = 3450 people

58 ppl/hr x 9 hrs = 522 people

3450 + 522 = 3972 people per day

17,000/3972 = 4.3 towels per person

One could interpret these numbers different ways.  Since I only use two towels per visit, 4.3 seems a little high as an average, but I typically only go to workout in the weight room and use the steam room and then take a shower.  If someone’s going to spend several hours at the pool, plus maybe play some basketball then take a shower, maybe using five or six towels isn’t so outrageous.

There are other things to take into consideration as well.  It’s not clear from the posted sign whether the 17,000 number refers to full-size towels only, or includes the small hand towels which many people use to wipe sweat from their faces and hands during their workout.  If the 17,000 includes hand towels, the 4.3 average towel number starts to sound even more reasonable.  And of course, my numbers are only an estimate based on a single 30 minute sample on a single weekday afternoon; the number of people coming to use the gym no doubt varies from weekdays to weekends, from one week to another, from one month to another, etc.

The larger point, however, is that being told that this facility provides 17,000 towels per day doesn’t give us enough useful information to determine whether we’re using too many towels or not.  I suspect that it costs a good bit of money to wash and dry all those towels every day, and the owners were hoping to get us to cut back on our towels usage by posting a number that sounds really big, thus generating the kind of “Wow, that’s a lot of towels” reaction that I initially had.

It would be even better, however, to actually know how many towels we’re using on average.  Then we might be able to decide whether we’re really using too many.

Update: Reader Jennifer was somehow able to get the gym staff to give her the information that they made me work for.  (Maybe she said please?)  The official word is that the average person at my gym is using 5 full size towels per visit, and yes, I agree that seems a little high.

For those keeping score at home, if the average person is using 5 towels per visit, and a total of 17,000 towels per day are being used, that means approximately 3,400 people are coming thru the gym every day.

The current national and international concern over the swine flu (aka influenza A, H1N1) outbreaks has created a fair amount of concern among many.  With so many media outlets anxiously reporting on the latest suspected or confirmed cases, or on different people’s or institutions’ reactions to the disease, a little perspective could be helpful.

A recent story on NPR’s Morning Edition reported on the number of young children who are injured or killed each year due to falling furniture, specifically falling TVs.  Researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, analyzed data from the federal Electronic Injury Surveillance System.

…They looked at all emergency room patients under 17 years old who suffered furniture or TV tip-over related injuries from 1990 to 2007.

They estimate a total of 264,200 children and adolescents were treated for such injuries during the 18-year study period. This averages to 14,700 injuries among children every year. Three-hundred died as a result of their injuries during this period.

Thus we have approximately 14,700 US children injured each year, and approximately 17 US children who die each year, as a result of a TV or other piece of heavy furniture falling on them.  As of today (May 4, 2009), there are 253 confirmed cases of swine flu in the US, another 98 suspected cases, and one death.  (Note that the swine flu numbers are counting people of all ages, not just those under 17.)

This is not an attempt to say that swine flu, or any other type of influenza, may not be a dangerous illness, especially for young children. Approximately 36,000 deaths (children and adults) are associated with influenza each year in the US, roughly the same number of Americans who are killed in automobile accidents each year.  There have also been three “notable” worldwide flu pandemics since 1900, and the World Health Organization “warns that there is a substantial risk of an influenza pandemic within the next few years.”

But it is also good to keep in mind that the biggest threats to our physical safety are usually not something as dramatic as the latest worldwide infectious disease outbreak, but something as mundane as heart disease, an automobile accident, or falling furniture. We live in a world that can be dangerous, but it’s good to keep those dangers in perspective.

A recent post at wral.com, a local news site here in Wake County, NC, is titled, “Wake County could eliminate 100 positions,” a headline which is unfortunately all too common in this time of rising unemployment.  The post goes on to tell us a number of other things, including that the elimination of these positions still has to be approved by the Wake County Board of Commissioners, that the cuts could save $3 million at a time when the county is facing a $20 million budget shortfall due to lower-than-projected tax revenue, and that the commissioners have said that “raising taxes is not an option.”

All of this is useful information, yet the article doesn’t tell us one thing that would help us make more sense out of this “100 positions” number: how many people are employed by Wake County?  If Wake County employs, say, 10,000 people, cutting 100 positions means only 1% of their employees will lose their jobs.  On the other hand, if Wake County employs 500 people, cutting 100 positions means 20% of their employees will lose their jobs.  We need to know how many people work for Wake County in order to know if “100 positions” is a big number or not.

A little bit of googling led me to the wakegov.com website, where I found a pdf of Wake County’s Fiscal Year 2009 Recommended Budget.  The third paragraph on page 15 of the pdf tells me that “Wake County has over 3700 employees.”  (Note that this does not include the approximately 18,000 people employed by the Wake County Public School System.)  With this information, I can see that Wake County is considering the elimination of a little less than 3% of their workforce.

If the intent is to convey meaningful information, it’s not enough to report a number and consider the job finished; one must also provide enough context to make sense of the numbers being reported.  In this case, merely reporting that Wake County plans to cut 100 positions, without also reporting the total number of Wake County employees, is not helpful.  One might just as well say, “Wake County plans to cut some positions.”

Even though I had installed Linux on my home computer a couple of months ago, I hadn’t set up user accounts for my kids yet because I wanted to install internet filtering software, and the process is a little intimidating for newbies.  Once I finally got around to it, however, installation wasn’t that difficult, so I’m posting this in case it might be useful for others.  Note that I’m using Ubuntu, though as far as I know these steps will work for other Linux distros as well.

The steps outlined below are taken from a series of posts to the Ubuntu forums called HOWTO: Install Dansguardian on a single desktop AND for a network, primarily the initial post by tonhou.  (I made a few changes, but about 90% is lifted straight from his post.)  Note that while you will have to use the command line to install and configure the necessary files, it’s really not that complicated.  I futzed around for a long time (without success) trying to find a GUI that would hold my hand thru the process, and when I finally sighed and went with the steps below, it was remarkably painless.

First, a quick overview.  To set up internet filtering on your Linux box, you’re basically going to be installing three separate apps: Dansguardian, Tinyproxy, and FireHOL.  Dansguardian is the primary app and includes a number of config files which you can modify to reflect the types of things you want to filter for your users.  Tinyproxy is a proxy server, an app that sits between your browser and the internet to manage the web page requests going out and the web pages coming in; it essentially evaluates all the requests for web pages based on the Dansguardian filtering rules that you set up.  It’s also small and fast, as compared to other more full-featured proxy servers like Squid.  And FireHOL is firewall software, an app designed to keep your computer safe from any malicious code that might attempt to invade your computer system.  These three apps work together to create the internet content filtering system for Linux.

Step 1: Use Synaptic to download and install Dansguardian, Tinyproxy, and FireHOL – This is fairly straightforward, assuming you’ve used the Linux package manager Synaptic before.

Step 2: Edit dansguardian.conf and “reconfigure” dansguardian – Open a terminal window and type “sudo gedit /etc/dansguardian/dansguardian.conf” in order to edit the dansguardian configuration file.  The only thing you need to do is comment out the line that reads “# UNCONFIGURED” (that is, delete the “#”).  Then execute the command “sudo dpkg-reconfigure dansguardian”.  (Note: When I executed this  command, I got a warning that “starting dansguardian failed,” but I ignored it and everything turned out fine.)

Step 3: Edit FireHOL.conf – From withing your terminal window, execute the command “sudo gedit /etc/firehol/firehol.conf”

Add all of the following at the start of the document:

iptables -t filter -I OUTPUT -d 127.0.0.1 -p tcp –dport 3128 -m owner ! –uid-owner dansguardian -j DROP

transparent_squid 8080 “root root”

interface any world
policy drop
protection strong
client all accept
server cups accept
#server webcache accept

(Note: You will need to remove “interface any world . . .” further on in the document.)

Note also that if you’re setting up dansguardian on a single computer connected to the internet (which is what I did), you want to be sure and leave the “#” in front of the phrase “server webcache accept”.  If you take out the “#”, you’re leaving your system wide open for anyone on the internet to access.  (I think the only reason you would uncomment this line is if you were configuring a machine to serve as a gateway for an internal network of computers, but that’s a slightly more sophisticated undertaking.)

Step 4: Edit FireHOL – From within your terminal window, execute the command “sudo gedit /etc/default/firehol”

Make sure the file has the following line:

START_FIREHOL=YES

This is to allow restarting of the firewall.

Step 5: Edit Tinyproxy.conf – From within your terminal window, execute the command “sudo gedit /etc/tinyproxy/tinyproxy.conf”

Change/add the following lines (scroll through the document):

User root
Group root
Port 3128
ViaProxyName “tinyproxy”

Step 6: Restart each program – From within your terminal window, execute the following commands, in this order:

sudo /etc/init.d/tinyproxy restart
sudo /etc/init.d/firehol restart
sudo /etc/init.d/dansguardian restart

I got a warning after executing the last command that said one of my FireHOL files was more than 90 days old and I should update it.  I ignored that also.

Step 7: Update the Dansguardian list files – While dansguardian should now be working, you may discover that it’s blocking a lot more websites than you wanted.  (In my case, it was blocking pretty much every site on the internet.)  Now’s the time to check out the different files that dansguardian uses to perform its filtering. You’ll find them in the directory /etc/dansguardian/lists.  In particular, you’ll want to edit the files bannedphraselist and weightedphraselist.  I uncommented all the pornography and adult-related lines and left most of the rest commented out, which seemed to make things work as I had hoped.

I still don’t understand how all of the configuration/list files work, and some of the game sites that my sons visit don’t work as they should, but I was pleased just to get dansguardian up and running.

A couple of months ago I installed Ubuntu on my home desktop PC, configuring it with a dual-boot option so I can either boot my old Windows XP system or my new Ubuntu system.  I was impressed enough with it that I decided I wanted to also install it on my laptop PC, which is my primary work machine.

I have since done so, and Ubuntu is now my primary operating system environment.  I’d say I spend about 95% of my time on Ubuntu, and only about 5% of my time on Windows.  (I’d love to be able to avoid Windows altogether, but so far that’s not possible.)

For those who might be considering such a move themselves, here’s a brief rundown of the steps I went thru, including the few minor problems I encountered and how I solved them:

1. Get a bootable Ubuntu DVD (a Live DVD) and try it out – This allows you to test drive Ubuntu on your current machine without installing it.  If you decide you don’t like it, your hard drive hasn’t been touched and you can just continue using your current OS as before.  (You can get Live DVDs of Ubuntu in a number of Linux magazines or books.)
2. Defrag and backup your hard drive -  I didn’t have to worry about this step when I installed Ubuntu on my home machine, as it had a separate physical hard drive onto which I installed Ubuntu, but since creating a dual-boot system on a machine with a single physical drive requires creating a separate hard drive partition for Ubuntu, it’s a good idea to do a defrag and backup before you start the installation process.  (You can find the Windows XP defrag tool by right-clicking on My Computer and selecting Properties -> Tools.)
3. Install Ubuntu, selecting the dual boot option – Your Ubuntu Live DVD will walk you thru the installation steps.  You’ll have the option of transferring some of your Windows files and settings to Ubuntu.  I selected the following: Firefox, My Documents, My Music, and My Pictures.  It flawlessly transferred all my docs, music files, and pictures, but for some reason it didn’t transfer any of my Firefox bookmarks or settings.  Though slightly annoying, this was a fairly minor issue as Firefox has an export/import option that is easy to use.  First export your browser settings in your Windows Firefox (Bookmarks -> Organize Bookmarks -> Import and Backup).  This creates a .json file which you import into your Ubuntu Firefox (File -> Import).
4. Install Thunderbird – Ubuntu comes with a default email client, but I had started using Thunderbird a few years ago and wanted to keep it.  (Since Tbird has a Linux version, you just have to download and install it.)  The process of moving your Windows Thunderbird profile (including all your folders and saved emails) to Ubuntu is a little more involved than the simple export/import for Firefox, but once you figure it out, it’s not hard.

• Find your Windows Thunderbird profile.  (It’ll be in a folder with a funny name like asdf345jkl.default.)
• Copy and move this folder to the .mozilla-thunderbird folder in Ubuntu.
• Edit your Ubuntu Thunderbird’s profile.ini file to use this profile folder.  All your old emails and email folders should now appear in your Ubuntu Thunderbird installation.
• Configure your email account settings so you can send and receive email using your new Ubuntu Thunderbird client.
• Go back to Windows and turn off any automatic email download settings in your Windows Thunderbird.  (This isn’t required, but it makes me feel better.)

Once my email client was configured, my new Ubuntu system was complete enough for me to start using it regularly.  I still had to install and configure a number of other apps (Tweetdeck, Skype, Filezilla, and a replacement for iTunes were the main ones) but I got that done with minimal hassle over the next few days.

BTW, for a good beginner book on Ubuntu, I recommend Ubuntu for Non-Geeks, by Rickford Grant.  Lots of really good info for Ubuntu newbies, along with a bunch of neat “projects” that help you learn your way around.  Includes a Live DVD of the latest version of Ubuntu.

I’ve had a Skype account for a few years now, but I’ve only recently begun to use it on a pretty regular basis.  The event that kicked off my increased use of the service was when my wife signed up for a Skype account about a year ago; since both of us spend a good bit of our workdays online, this meant that the two of us could talk to each other during work hours using Skype.  (Of course, we could also talk to each other during work hours using a regular telephone, but the sound quality with Skype was truly amazing, and Skype had a certain cool factor that couldn’t be matched by a regular telephone.)

Not long after that, my wife and I both purchased webcams for our respective computers, and were thus able to take advantage of Skype’s (free) video-calling features.  Not only was the sound quality excellent, but so was the video, and this was with a relatively inexpensive web cam.

I knew that Skype had even more features, including the ability to use Skype to make and receive phone calls from a “normal” telephone, but I had always found them a bit confusing.

Here’s a list of the things you can do with Skype, in rough order from simplest (and cheapest) to most ambitious (and expensive):

• Make computer-to-computer phone calls (free)
• Send computer-to-computer instant messages (free)
• Make computer-to-computer video phone calls (free)
• Call regular telephones from your computer (about 2 cents a minute in the US)
• Receive calls to your computer from regular telephones ($30 a year to purchase a Skype phone number)
• Additional features like voicemail, international calling, SMS messaging, etc. (rates differ, but these features are most easily accessed via a $3 a month “subscription”)

And just to elaborate a little on each of these features:

Make computer-to-computer phone calls (free)

This is Skype at its most basic.  All you need is a computer, a broadband connection, a Skype account, and a USB headset.  (The person you’re talking to has to have all of these things as well.)  Unlike “music headphones,” which just let you listen, your Skype  USB headset will have both an earpiece and a mouthpiece, so you can talk as well as listen, and it plugs into a USB port on your computer.

Send computer-to-computer instant messages (free)

Like most IM services, as long as you and your IM partner both have Skype accounts, you’re ready to go.

Make computer-to-computer video phone calls (free)

To do this you need a webcam (which are remarkably inexpensive, I got mine for about $70).  Once you plug it in, whoever you’re talking to will be able to see a streamed video of you in a little window in their computer.  If they have a webcam, you’ll be able to see them as well.  Your webcam will have a built-in microphone so you don’t need to use the headset while you’re making Skype calls with your webcam, though some people still do just because they like the sound quality better.

Call regular telephones from your computer (about 2 cents a minute in the US)

This feature is called SkypeOut (as in, using Skype to go outside the Skype system into the regular phone system), and I confess I have never used this specific Skype feature, preferring to skip directly to the next feature:

Receive calls to your computer from regular telephones ($30 a year to purchase a Skype phone number)

In order for people with regular phones to call you on Skype, you have to have a Skype phone number, which costs $30 a year. Technically, it costs $60 a year, but they give you a 50% discount if you also purchase a “subscription,” which costs $3 a month and allows you to make unlimited local and long distance calls to any phone number in the US.  Without a subscription, you have to purchase Skype credit, and pay a few cents a minute for every outgoing call you make (incoming calls are free).

I didn’t really have much interest in calling regular phones from my computer using Skype, but I was VERY interested in using Skype to make phone calls from a “regular” phone in my house to someone else’s phone.  To do this, you need, in addition to a Skype phone number and a subscription, a Skype telephone.  This is a special cordless telephone that has a base station that plugs into your home router.  The base station performs the special “computer” tasks that your PC would normally perform in order for you to use Skype.  Once it’s all hooked up, your Skype phone functions like a regular cordless phone.

Additional features like voicemail, international calling, SMS messaging, etc.

If you’re calling someone in another country and it’s a Skype-to-Skype call, it will always be free; if the person on the other end isn’t on Skype, however, there is a per minute charge, which is different for different countries.  You can purchase voicemail separately for $20 a year, or just get it free with the $3 a month subscription.  SMS messaging (sending text messages to mobile phones) is always free with the $3 a month subscription.

Journalist Michael Kinsley recently wrote an article for Time magazine in which he criticizes the Social Security system for providing “entitlement” income for those who don’t really need it.  The starting point for his critique is a number he got from a Federal Reserve report that says the average net worth of American families whose head of household is between 65 and 74 years of age, is $690,900 (in 2004 dollars).  Kinsley argues that with this kind of net worth, the typical American family is not in nearly the dire financial straits that are often depicted by the media.

On the face of it, this looks like a reasonable argument.  The problem with it is that the number that he’s using to describe the “average” net worth (the arithmetic mean) is a lousy measure to use when describing net worth.  A much better measure, and the one used almost universally by those who want to describe things like the average income or net worth of a large group of people, is the median.

A typical way to explain the difference in these two measures is to think of five people in a bar.  Let’s say the net worth of each of the five people in the bar is $100K, $150K, $175K, $200K, and $225K.  The mean net worth of the people in the bar is $170K (add the five numbers and divide by five), and the median is $175K (the “middle” number if we line the five numbers up from smallest to largest).  Since the five values are relatively close together, the value of the mean and the value of the median are also relatively close.

If Bill Gates walks into the bar, however, with his net worth of roughly $58 billion, the mean net worth of the bar patrons suddenly becomes roughly $9.7 billion, while the median becomes $187.5K (the midpoint between the two middle values $175K and $200K).  This is why the median is a much better way to describe the average net worth of a group of people: a single outlier can make it look like the people in the group are a lot wealthier than they really are.

In the case of the Time magazine article, Kinsley could have easily used the median net worth number, because it was in the same table where he found the mean value (page A8 in the Federal Reserve report, for those following along at home).  The median value is $190,100 and maybe this explains why Kinsley didn’t use this number, even though it’s a more accurate way to describe the average net worth of a large group of people: it doesn’t really support his argument that the “average” American family doesn’t need the Social Security safety net.

(Thanks to Dean Baker for turning me on to the Kinsley article.)

As someone who has often been frustrated by the MS Windows virtual monopoly on PC operating systems, I’ve been wanting to try out Linux for a while and have finally gotten around to it. Linux is a free, open source operating system for PCs which first came on the scene back in 1991. It was the brainchild of Finnish software developer Linus Torvalds and is one of the most well-known and widely used examples of open source software.

Other than being free, Linux has quite a few qualities that make it appealing:

It’s remarkably easy to try out on your own computer, without uninstalling Windows – This was what finally got me to try it out.  I had wanted to try Linux for a while, but I wasn’t ready to dump Windows, along with all my Windows software and related files.  I happened to see a special edition of Linux Pro Magazine at a bookstore, and the magazine was all about a version of Linux called Ubuntu, a variation of Linux that’s specifically targeted at the “average” (i.e., non-techie) user, and how to get started with it.  The magazine came with a bootable DVD which allowed me to run Ubuntu from my own computer without making any changes to my current system.  Even better, it showed me how to set up my computer with a “dual boot” option, which allows me to choose either Ubuntu or my regular Windows system whenever I turn on the computer.

After trying Ubuntu from the DVD and finding it impressively easy to use, I installed it on my computer alongside my Windows XP OS and now when I turn on my computer, it asks me which OS I want to use.  So now I have the best of both worlds: my current system remains as it always was, plus I have Ubuntu installed and can play with it as much as I like.

Linux has been around long enough to establish a reputation as a quality OS – While there are no doubt many who are only comfortable with OS software that they purchase from a traditional software company, many others are impressed not only with the reputation of Linux and its development community, but with the open source approach to software development in general.  There are a number of books and articles that describe and analyze the open source software development process (including the famous and highly readable essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar) and it’s not at all clear that the traditional approach is superior to the open source approach when it comes to designing software, even highly complex and technical software like operating systems.

The software options available with Linux are actually pretty good – It used to be that running a non-Windows OS meant being cut off from most of the rest of the computer world because most computer users, and almost all business computer users, used MS Word and Excel and you had to be able to read and create Word and Excel files.  Since Microsoft only had versions of its MS Office software for Windows and Macs, those were pretty much your only choices.

Now there’s a collection of office software called OpenOffice.  It’s open source (i.e., free), is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, is remarkably powerful and easy to use, and best of all, it can read files created by MS Word and Excel, as well as save files in Word or Excel format.  (It also has a presentation program similar to MS Powerpoint and a database management program similar to MS Access.)  With the minimal testing I’ve done so far, I’ve confirmed that docs I’ve created with OpenOffice are in fact readable by Word and Excel, and vice versa; not all of the formatting translated perfectly, but it was pretty close.

There’s also a version of the open source Firefox browser that runs on Linux, as well as email programs, photo editing programs, DVD player software, and pretty much every other PC software application you can think of, all open-source and free.  Plus, with so many computer applications now online rather than on your computer (e.g., Google docs, Facebook, games, etc.), just having a browser and internet access diminishes the need for any one particular OS.

While I have no doubt I will encounter annoyances and irritations with my new Ubuntu Linux system, and while I am not at all certain that I will abandon Windows for Linux, it’s reassuring to have options for my computer system(s) that don’t involve depending on a single software company.