Old computers good as new in Linux labs

The Honolulu Advertiser - Hawaii.: "Although the open-source programs are free, technical support is not, Moriyama pointed out, so the DOE would have to pay if there were problems with the software. 'There's actually no incentive for us to do it,' he said."

What this doesn't tell you of course is that when you ring technical support for proprietary software you get people from who knows where in the world who you can't understand who you are unsure whether they understand you. Their task is to take so many calls an hour and so they may not be that helpful, and in any case it's really hard to do a lot of stuff on a graphical interface verbally [I know I have to say to people I help with computing; "let me have a look 'cos I don't process this stuff in the verbal bit of my mind"]. So much so that most of us end up asking a friend to come in and so it or call in some local computer repair bod who charges us £50 call-out plus ... So you may as well get in touch with the linux people who are wll knowon for being community minded and helpful. DOes that negate the issue?

Anyway take note if you ever have a budget and want to do basic computing with people; linux save you money [$3k vs $30k? -you could put $10 in tha bank for support and still come out way ahead and some linux distros will give you the support if you buy from them -Suse, Red Hat for two].

How easy is it; well I'm sitting in front of a linux running machine now and most of my skills honed using M$Windoze are perfectly transferable; there's even some nice extras like having four [or I could vary the number] desktops available to me for different kinds of work. I have an internet desktop, a writing desktop, a file and other stuff desktop and one for games ... all accessible at the click of a mouse without cluttering my workspace or task bars.