Breaking Out of the Prison


Sometimes we become so used to some things that we fail to see how they imprison us. By imprison, I mean how they restrict our choices to only those that they present to us. This is not to say that these things us shackle us in abject misery and slavery, at least not the kind that you can readily see or feel. What is important, however, is that the bondage is there and that we readily embrace it without realising that there are other ways of doing things: other options that are no longer open to us because we have opted to stay shackled to one way of seeing the world.
This is not always a bad thing. With religion, it is a good thing to have faith in you beliefs, else you could be heading to someplace that you would really not want to go. There is this snippet of a song that keeps playing on television recently, it was used for for some promotional piece. The snippet goes something like, “They told me to go into rehab but I said, 'No! No! No!”. I commented once that if she had gone into rehab like 'they' told her to, she might still be alive today.
I am not however talking about such major things, rather I wish to relate something much more mundane but no less important, in my mind, the issue of computer operating systems.
Long long ago, when I first encountered computers, I was introduced to something called BBC Micro which ran on an operating system called BASIC. At the same time there were other computer centers on campus that ran on UNIX but the engineering guys tended to hog these so I stuck to the BBC Micro machines which were closer to my dorm anyway.
It was fun but in those days, we sort of learnt it for the novelty of it without really making much of the machines.
Then came the Sinclair machines, first the ZX80 then the ZX Spectrum. These machines were much more fun but they were still very cumbersome by today's standards even compared to the slowest smart phones. The Sinclair was cool because you kept your operating system and data on microcasettes. The cassette players could be linked so that they ran in a series.
There were also other computers whose names I have forgotten. They used regular cassettes back then and they were plugged into the television set. So, you plug it in, turn it on, put in the systems cassette and went to the kitchen to put the kettle on. By the time your coffee is ready the system had loaded and you now put another cassette in, your data, and its time to check your mail at the front door – the mailman would push your mail through the slot in your front door. Only then can you get to work. I was told that in some labs, they used a plastic disk about the size of a regular LP. But I never got to use these. Then came the 5 inch floppy disks and soon in became fashionable to walk around with a dick box. I, of course, had one too. By the time I graduated, these floppies were replaced with smaller 3 inch ones which could hold about 1.44 megabytes. That was a lot of space back then.
Soon after I graduated, I bought myself a computer. It ran at 12 megahertz and it had 5 inch floppies. These were then replaced with the 3 inch reader and it had a hard disk which held 125 megabytes of memory which was massive. By this time the prison doors had closed for many Malaysians: we were ensnared by the Microsoft's Windows operating system.
By then, practically every other computer in Malaysia was an IBM clone running on Windows. There were a few Apple Mackintoshes around but they were rare and used for specialized purposes. The real reason was simple, Apples were exorbitantly expensive compared to the IBM clones. They are still expensive but today the price difference has become more tolerable.
The problem back then was a simple one: the files were incompatible. Your Windows machine could not read Mac disks but Macs could read Windows disks, the files that you started on Windows you could still work on when you get to a Mac machine not vice versa. To make things worse, if you put your Windows disk into a Mac machine and worked on the file, you may not be able to even read your disk when you bring it back to your Windows machine.
Some time in the 90s, there was a moment of respite when Apple came up with the Power-PCs. These were Apple computers that ran an emulation of Windows alongside the Mac operating system. This allowed you to switch between the operating systems on one machine. This also means that you could transfer the files to and fro. There were even clones available but the machine did not last long. By the time I had gathered enough money to buy one, they were no longer available.
Windows even back then was actual quite easy to use so we did not feel any specific dissatisfactions with except when it became corrupted for some reason. You could not get Windows on disk or Internet like we do now and even the disks that the Windows program came in sometimes became corrupted and this happened more often that I would care to remember because there were already quite a lot of viruses around then but the anti-virus programmes were expensive. Many of us had to resort to pirated operating systems and programs. I experimented with Linux at around this time but it was a traumatic experience because there was just too much to learn to get it to work. So, I made my way back to Windows.
Thus I languished in the shackles of the Windows operating system. I have been hearing a lot about the new generation of Linux operating systems from a few of my colleagues, particularly the guys from the technological faculties: Red Hat and Ubuntu particularly but lately I had not heard the name Red Hat anymore. I, however, was still blissfully ignorant.
My chance came when I took back my old computer from my kids. I got them new computers after the computer I got them began to crash often. I replaced the batteries and installed Ubuntu. Then I read about Linux Lite 2 and I installed it but I was not satisfied with it so I went back to Ubuntu the switching to and fro only took a few minutes, that's how easy it was.
I've been tinkering on and working with Ubuntu for a couple of weeks now, and I am happy with it. Just for the heck of it, I installed the Cairo interface (easily downloaded from the Ubuntu store for free) and now my screen looks like a Apple Screen.
Having worked on the Ubuntu system for a couple of weeks now, I conclude that the Ubuntu – Linux operating system is definitely worth a try and it is certainly lovable. Does it do everything that a Windows system does? As far as I have experienced so far, Yes.
Is it difficult to learn to use? Well, started to use it for work five minutes after it was installed and I am still using it without any problems.
Its rather refreshing to be out of the Windows compound, actually. It is also a weird because things are different enough to be refreshing but similar enough to require the most minimal relearning.
I think the problem here is that Linux systems are not getting enough exposure to the general user. For most non-computer geeks the word Linux takes them back to Unix and then nightmares. Should they ever receive the attention they deserve, I think Windows will really have to run for their money.

If you have an old computer that is still running but the Windows is really acting up. Click on the links below to see you options for free operating systems. Try it. You will be amazed but do back up all of your important files first.
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