Last week was the first gathering for the Open Source community in Kuwait. I was kind of hesitating to go, as usual, but being an open source believer I gave it a shot. Two things really caught my eyes. The guy from KuwaitNet talked about the company experience, and how they completely have taken Windows out of the picture. Even the secretaries use Linux, I’d love to see that. Firefox and Thunderbird for browsing and email client. OpenOffice for office applications, though I wasn’t very impressed with it when I tried it. By doing this however, the guy demonstrated how the managed to cut down costs by thousands of dollars. Something really worth looking into isn’t it?

But isn’t Linux that old scary black screen with small text, and can only understand command lines from users. You need to do mounting for everything you attach, and complex procedure just to plug a USB device? Well this was the second BIG surprise. Ubuntu is the release of Linux that will change your whole idea about it. It has features that I don’t even recall from Mac nor Vista. Maybe they exist, I am not sure. But to see it in Linux is a big jump. I found this video link while browsing some blogs today. Watch it on YouTube and tell me what you think. Now ofcourse this is not everything. One has to consider stability and availability of softwares on it. I should give it a shot and see. Maybe it can run my PC better than Windows, who knows.

UPDATE: Just as I posted this article, I came across this site. The site is an Open Source contest, hosted by Sheikh Ali Jaber Al-Sabah. The content is about creating the best project using OpenOffice, and Open Source tools. It’s a nice step to encourage and educate the public about the open options they have. Registration is open for all, no location or nationality restriction. Registration is open until 15th May this year.

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