For twelve years now I’ve used Linux as my primary desktop operating system. I can’t imagine using any other operating system on my computer. Here’s why:
It’s totally free with easy updates via apt-get. Distribution upgrades sometimes requires a bit of tweaking of files but are relatively easy to use. No fancy installers that block what you are doing or lots of windows to click through.
Software all comes through the apt-get mechanism, you don’t have to go to risky websites to download software.
Standard Unix programs and functions are easy to script in bash and pipe their output between processes.
Most things nowadays are done on the web and the Linux web browsers are in most ways the same as the commercial platforms.
OpenOffice is a fully functional and stable office platform for all my office software needs.
QGIS as somebody who enjoys mapping and exploring land has become a killer geographic information system, especially in recent years. It takes full advantage of the GRASS platform and various Unix based GIS software.
Great professional web development tools that are running in their native environment
I am not a fan of overly glossy things, so I use the fast and simple XCFE desktop environment which is great because it never changes. Even Linux itself pretty much stays the same, although little things evolve over the years.
That’s the thing I’ve discovered over the past year observing the housing market and researching what living options are available for me. Houses are expensive but not that expensive and if I wanted to sell some stock, cut a big check, I could buy a house, no mortgage or bank involved.
Yet, every house I’ve looked at really isn’t what I want. Suburban houses and especially houses in the city are so generic. Same vinyl siding, shag carpet, white walls, neighbors near by. Same old natural gas or oil heating system that drinks energy. Vast spaces to heat and cool, rooms to light and appliances to feed their vast amount of energy. Most require an automobile to get to and from, with all the expensive tickets handed out by cops, court appearances, gasoline and insurance that must be burned every week. I could tolerate driving, but not for complete crap plastic suburbanite’s building that I despise.
Truth is that what I want to land, buffer from the neighbors. I want to be able to have fires, burn trash and debris, ride four-wheeler and shoot guns, have smelly livestock like pigs and manure, guts and compost piles without causing a nuisance of having code enforcement and the cops on my ass. I could tolerate driving to work for the good life, especially if we finally moved to a part-time remote like so many other agencies are doing. But it has to be truly rural, in a place I actually love. Not this suburbanite crap, that comes a dime a dozen.
You know that’s a really profound question that I really yet to find the answer to. While I didn’t view my dream of what is a good life – the off-grid homestead – as materialistic now I’m coming to the sad realization that it mostly is. Happiness is ultimately not what you buy – be it a big screen TV, pigs and cattle or a tractor with a manure spreader – but your ability to find Zen and meaning in the now.
For too often I’ve been consumed with the thoughts of tomorrow, planning for that house on the hill with that burn barrel out back and cows mooing in the field with the big jacked up truck and four wheelers in the front yard. Maybe not the glamorous homesteads you see in the magazine but some working land. All the thinking of the accrued benefits of hardwork and saving. I was concerned about the memories of the past. But maybe those things don’t matter as much as I used to think they once did.
There is no time but the present. It’s not to say that the past has no impact on the present or that today’s actions won’t impact tomorrow. But in many ways those things are meaningless as the only thing that exists is the present. That said, I still continue to work for the future even while I try to find more of now.
