How myJournal was built: Part 1
These next few posts may only be of interest to the three other people worldwide as geeky as me, but I’m going to write them anyway as maybe they will serve as a warning to everyone of what will happen if you spend too long on a computer!
Part 1: My Computer and Free Software
Firstly I’m going to talk about my trusty steed, a dual-core AMD Athlon machine with 2 gigabytes of RAM (soon to be upgraded to 4 I think). It has a fairly standard graphics card, but a quite nice sound card (for the rare occasions when I have chance to do some music recording). The stand-out thing about it is I’m running a version of Linux called Ubuntu.
The vast majority of people will be used to using Microsoft Windows. Perhaps you’re aware of another type of computer called a Mac (made by Apple, who do iPods and iPhones). The problem with both Microsoft and Apple is they charge money. Call me a skin-flint, but I want something for nothing. When it comes to a computer there are two main bits you need: firstly a box of electronics, and secondly some software called an operating system which allows you to do things with your box of electronics. Windows is an operating system, but you have to pay for it.
With Linux, which is a free operating system, you don’t have to pay for it. That’s because rather than a company paying several roomfuls of people to make it, like Microsoft and Apple do, Linux is made by people who donate their time. They are just nice people doing something they enjoy for the good of all. Very egalitarian.
And because Linux has no single company forcing it to be what they want it to be, lots of different versions of Linux are available – just like in Starbucks you can make your own coffee, Linux allows you to pick and mix the bits of an operating system you want. A great place to start, however, is Ubuntu.
Ubuntu is free to download (they’ll even send you CDs for free) and contains not just an operating system which allows you to get on the Internet, but loads of other great software – all free! – as well. Things like the wonderful Open Office suite (fully compatible with Microsoft Word and Excel) and the GIMP graphics editor, plus some other things you may have heard of like Skype, Firefox and Tetris.
I actually use a modified version of Ubuntu called Ubuntu Studio which is tweaked specially for music and graphic production. It looks pretty cool, as you can see.
If you’re interested in trying out Ubuntu then just follow the instructions on their website. You can even use Ubuntu and Windows together (without messing up either) in case you can’t give up Windows completely. There are more great reasons for using Ubuntu here.
Next time I’ll talk about the specific pieces of software I’ve used to write myJournal.
