14 DAY TRIAL // Friday night, I'm standing in front of my PC surfing the Internet for interesting stuff, I use KDE, so my preferred browser is Konqueror, which is also the default file explorer for my system. I simply love Konqueror, because it makes the Internet surfing a lot easier with his features, and even it is not yet supported by all the websites out there (not Konquerors fault), it's the most powerful browser I have ever had the pleasure to test; did I forget to say how fast it is? While surfing the Internet, I'm listening to some radio station on my Amarok media player, the most full-featured, smart, intelligent audio player out there, while I'm checking the latest news with Akregator, yet another powerful software, a feed aggregator.
A friend just contacted me on Kopete; it's not Yahoo! Messenger, even if the Yahoo! protocol is supported and it also supports all those beautiful emoticons Yahoo! IM has; it's a very smart, multi-protocol instant messenger client that makes the chat hours more than a pleasure, but a hobby. She's sending me a photo to make some modifications, add a little text and reduce some noise, so I fire up Gimp, an image manipulation software, I have all the respect for GIMP, as it makes my life easier everyday, for more than 2 years now, when I first had the pleasure to get in touch with it. With Gimp, I can modify every photo I put my hands on and make any modifications I want to.
All this time, I was downloading a new Linux distribution ISO image with BitTorrent, a torrent downloader client that even if it comes with an old version for my Linux system, I still like it for its simplicity in use and its stability. I've finished the download so now, I will burn the ISO image with my favorite CD/DVD burning application, K3b, an application with which I fell in love at first sight because it can copy CDs and DVDs, burn ISO images, encode and burn audio and video files, create VCDs and SVCDs and even rip Audio CDs, with CDDB support.
Hold on, I've just realized that all this software I use, made by the most talented people around the world, is FREE, it comes to me with no strings attached, so I will take my time to say a big THANK YOU and not take all this for granted, as maybe someday, God I hope not, they will disappear, and I don't want to then realize that I had all that powerful software for FREE and I didn't even care.
The software presented in this article is just a small part of the software that can be used everyday. There are a lot more powerful applications, and a lot more are in the background doing a wonderful job.
Let's have a quick overview at the features that make Linux systems superior to other operating systems:
- Linux systems are FREE. - They are more stable and flexible. - They are virus and spyware free. - Linux systems come with a lot of pre-installed software. - Linux is customizable to infinite.
In conclusion, I want to say to the Open Source Community and to all the Linux programmers out there that make our lives easier each day, THANK YOU for the FREE software!
I've written this article to encourage every Linux user out there and the ones that want to switch to Linux to say a big THANK YOU with me and even make some testimonials of their daily life with Linux.