(I am and you?) 
Purpose
This page is dedicated to all persons who want to find alternatives to Microsoft (and we are each days more). Personnaly I now hate Microsoft's politics of innovation, Microsoft's ideas against the open source community, and the way they acquire new technologies with their money: no heart at all. Moreover with my firewall, I discover that a lot of their applications use Internet Explorer to send data on the port 80: Direct X install, MSN Messenger, Internet Explorer, MSinstaller and so on. i already hear some of You saying: "yes We (M$) send data using webservices mainly because We (M$) want to improve your experience with windows XP"
A lot of the alternatives below are now free, thanks to the open source community. If in the past a lot of complains have rised, mainly on usability and graphical user interface of free software, many of them can now compete with M$
Microsoft's main weaknesses? It seems to me that security, stability, and standards compliance are three areas where open source really has the advantage over proprietary software!
- In todays society a new computer is like $600, and windows is $200, You could cut the cost by 25% just by using a open source os. and it would be more secure.
- To mess up a #Linux box, you need to work at it; to mess up your Windows box, you just need to work on it.
- Windows Xp is stable as long as you decide to restart it every day by your own! (try not to do this 1 week long, for example go in sleep mode, you will see how much it is insstable 😦 )
REASONS TO AVOID MICROSOFT http://www.lugod.org/microsoft/
The explanation for what microsoft products improve or are 'good'is very simple. When microsoft has had significant competition it has competed on features, price and quality. As soon as the competition was eliminated all significant improvement stopped. This explains excel (quite good because of lotus), IE (improved until netscape became insignificant) etc…
This is why the MS monopoly has been so damaging it has stagnated development and led to a much lower level of quality than would have been the case without it.
Why are Microsoft so popular, or why have they been so in the past? To me this is not a difficult question to answer.
In the past, (a fair few years ago now) the users of a number of other operating systems/formats (the Amiga and the UNIXes, primarily) believed and made themselves out to be vastly superior to the rest of the human race. Elitism was a real problem. Granted, the UNIXes in particular genuinely were technically a lot better, but the attitude of "If you don't understand it, you don't have the right to use a computer in the first place," did not help expand computer use beyond specialised areas, nor did it help those few hapless individuals back then who were not technically minded or of above-average intelligence, but who were still forced for whatever reason to use a computer.
Enter Microsoft. They were a company with the now oft-quoted philosophy of, "a computer on every desk and in every home." Granted, it may well have been their philosophy mainly for monopolistic reasons, but it was still very different from the exclusive attitudes which prevailed among users of other systems at the time. The major contrast is that UNIX operating systems make the assumption that the person at the keyboard is a) intelligent, b) willing to invest time solving problems, and c) most likely has some degree of technical knowledge already, and proceed on that basis. Windows' philosophy on the other hand is that the person using it either a) is relatively unintelligent, or b) *is* reasonably intelligent, but has no desire to go to the effort of using whatever brains they might have. Windows' subsequent popularity is in my mind direct evidence of the validity of this philosophy.
Windows is the McDonald's of software. It is technologically monumentally inferior to any other operating system in existence, but it is quick to use, convenient, is generally very aesthetically pleasing on a superficial level, and above all is designed with the idea in mind that the person using it has the desire to exert the least possible amount of effort (intellectual or otherwise) in order to accomplish a given task.
Despite how disparaging that assessment of Windows might have sounded, the fact that it gave the layperson the ability to use a computer in earlier years was an extremely positive and important thing. When you have a group of starving children, if easily digestible junk food is the only thing on the menu, it will at least allow the children in question to survive, and is therefore desirable until a more nutritious alternative is available. I believe Microsoft's popularity is now waning, and will continue to wane. The reason for this is that initially, their entire reason for popularity was that they allowed people a way of using computers which was easy but at the same time technically very deficient. At the time, for non-technical people Microsoft were the only alternative, and so Windows' insecurity, instability and unreliability was something that simply had to be endured. Now that other operating systems which are excellent technically are reaching levels where they are also as easy to use as Windows itself, non-technical users no longer need to settle for Microsoft simply because the alternatives are too difficult for them. They can finally have an operating system which is not only easy enough for them to use, but which has a far greater level of stability than anything Microsoft can give them…They have the opportunity to have the best of both worlds.
So if a user is comfortable with windows, why would they want to switch to #Linux?
It's pretty simple: you don't have too. You're free to use whatever you like and you shouldn't be locked down to a specific system or be forced to switch to another one. As long as you know what you are doing, losing or gaining, it's all fine. Read more reasons why you may want to switch to #Linux here
What is GNU/GPL?
The GNU GPL is a license commonly used for many free software projects, such as the #Linux Operating System Kernel. The GPL licenses software free of cost, but requires any redistributor to provide the full source code. To resume, any company in the world can use a GNU/GPL project as a start or integrate it in a commercial product as long as all source code changes is shipped with the product! That is great! why reinvent the wheel?
12.12.2003 I decide to buy Suse 9.0 and switch my 2 PC to linux, and to work actively for the open source community
Microsoft (M$)
/Others |
Alternatives |
Remarqs |
| Internet Explorer |
Opera
www.operasoftware.com
Netscape
Mozilla
Firefox
www.mozilla.org/firefox
|
Internet explorer is maybe now the worst browser on earth..
- It has so many security flaws, that no internet page is ever capable of list them all,
- Is accepting nearly every bad html code, -> in fact it promote bad coding and bad design guidelines on internet
- Is not respecting any W3C standards (internet commission for standards)
- is not portable, no way to run it on linux, mac os, beos
- US-CERT Computer emergency readiness team recomend to avoid IE: http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/713878
-> throw it away. As a bonus, you will have less spyware as most of the malicious javascript/activex code is tuned and is based on design and security flaws of internet explorer…
Opera If you try it you wont go back to IE: Mouse gesture, panel organisation are better. Highly skinnable. Small memory footprint and it is SO fast. Cost 29â?¬ End of year 2003, acquire 1 get 2 licences!!!! If you want to learn more about Opera, first take a look at a wide-ranging examination of its features. Then read this documeent "30 Days to Becoming an Opera7 Lover." And learn how to configure the browser.
Firefox:
Once it is started, it is as fast and rendering page faster than IE
Sick of IE? Scrap It Completely or Beef It Up Mozilla's release of Firefox this month prompts us to reconsider: "Should IE be put out to pasture?"
|
| Media Player |
VLC
www.videolan.org
Winamp 5.0
www.winamp.com
BsPlayer
|
VLC: "The VideoLAN project targets multimedia streaming of MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and DivX files, DVDs, digital satellite channels, digital terrestial television channels and live videos on a high-bandwidth IPv4 or IPv6 network in unicast or multicast under many OSes. VideoLAN also features a cross-platform multimedia player, VLC, which can be used to read the stream from the network or display video read locally on the computer under all GNU/Linux flavours, all BSD flavours, Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS, Solaris, QNX, Familiar #Linux…"
Is getting better with each release. Now a lot of video who do not work on Media Player
are working on VLC. Open source and multi plattform. Free of use.Interface still slow and ugly but latest version now support skinning.
Winamp 5.0: I am using it since 4 weeks now, stable and great quality of output, it outpass the media player in all domains! NEW a part of winamp 5 will be open source!
|
| Windows Firewall |
Kerio personal firewall
www.kerio.com |
Install a firewall and block all Microsoft applications when they try to send packet on port 80 and others. Free for personal use. |
| Office 2003 |
www.openoffice.org |
Free of use. Use virtually any office documents. This tools has never been so atractive as today. Moreover don't let M$ create closed source format as it lead to a monopole. Prefer the XML native format of Open Office. |
MSN Messenger
ICQ
YAHOO Messenger |
Miranda IM
www.miranda-im.org
GAIM (linux/windows others)
www.gaim.org |
All these instant messaging tools are proprietary and full of spy to track your habits. Miranda is free, open source and has a huge number of plugins: 179 as todays, is skinnable
and can use any protocol through plugins. In one interface you have all IM. I use it since 1 months now without any problems 🙂
but it is only working on windows…
GAIM:
|
| Windows XP |
Mandrake 10
www.mandrakestore.com
Suse 9.0
www.suse.com
Zeta
www.yellowtabs.com
Knoppix
www.knoppix.net
Or
Suse live eval. |
You listen mp3, watch DVD, video, browse internet and never play any latest games.
Are sick of updating your system all the time with windows update?  maybe it is time to go to linux. It has been never as attractive as today. Mandrake 10 and suse 9.1 are really user friendly and look even better than windows XP with KDE 3.2. Wine, a windows wrapper/emulator, is working correctly with all windows apps without installing any M$ code..
Zeta, if they can migrate a JDK 1.4 and Mono (open source .NET), it may be a good choice, stable, fast and the multimedia API's of the future.
"From zero to GNU #Linux in 5 minutes" Want to try a linux installation without any modifications to your configuration? It is time to use a live evaluation CD like: Knoppix www.knoppix.org or Suse 9.0 live eval. They do not write on your disk, and are extract everything to RAM. You can also use these system, to access to any damaged hard disk: The power of linux on one CD.
"KNOPPIX is a bootable CD with a collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. KNOPPIX can be used as a #Linux demo, educational CD, rescue system, or adapted and used as a platform for commercial software product demos. It is not necessary to install anything on a hard disk. Due to on-the-fly decompression, the CD can have up to 2 GB of executable software installed on it." from www.knoppix.net
|
| Paint Shop Pro |
GIMP
www.gimp.org |
GNU Image Manipulation Program, run on Unix and on Windows. Great tool which is compatible with adobe photoshop plugin. |
| |
VirtualDub
http://www.virtualdub.org |
GNU editing tools, open source Simply the best video editor available. |
| eMule |
Xmule, aMule
 |
eMule under linux |
| |
Spybot |
The ultimative free anti spyware tool |
| mp3 |
Ogg Vorbis |
"Ogg Vorbis is a completely open, patent-free, professional audio encoding and streaming technology with all the benefits of Open Source."
Only drawback: you may not always find a portable ogg vorbis player. |
| DIVX |
XVID |
Review here: http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/codecs-203-1.htm
Xvid is open source, no licence, and has better performance than Divx, and no restrictions on video size
|
| Download manager |
Downloader for X 2.5.0rc2
http://www.krasu.ru/soft/chuchelo/
http://prozilla.genesys.ro/ |
There are several download managers that enable you to resume downloading after an interruption.
"Downloader for X is a #Linux/Unix userfriendly program with nice X interface to download files from the Internet. It suppotrs both FTP and HTTP protocols, supports resuming (of course if server side supports it) and makes downloading files from internet easy. Downloader for X is an analogue for #Linux/Unix of such famous applications for Windows as ReGet, Go!Zilla and GetRight."
"ProZilla is a download accelerator for #Linux which gives you a 200% to 300% improvement in your file downloading speeds." |
Email Reader:
outlook express |
FoxMail
http://foxmail.free.fr/www/home.php (french)
http://fox.foxmail.com.cn/english/index.htm
(English) |
"Foxmail is one of the most popular Internet email client, especially in China, more than 3 million people are using Foxmail to handle their email everyday, and the English version is also widely used in more than 20 countries.
Foxmail is rated as 5 STAR software by ZDNet." |
After using all these tools, you will notice that you are no more using closed source commercial tools, next step would be to replace windows!
Se faire rembourser les logiciels fournis avec son ordinateur: c'est possible!
– HP rembourse 261â?¬ a un utilisateur Windows qui n'en voulait pas… Lire ICI Par Christophe Guillemin , ZDNet France
– DELL rembourse aussi! http://wiki.aful.org/Reussie2
To be continued…
Cédric Walter Blog 