Falling in love with open source
“In real open source, you have the right to control your own destiny.” - Linus Torvalds
Taking control: Linux
The personal computing space is ever evolving and with the continuous improvement comes new threats and exploits that harm our systems and also violates our privacy. The recent Facebook fiasco proves that privacy is no longer a given. In the sixties people were afraid that a government would wiretap their house but in 2018 we are asking our “wiretaps” to play us some music or to find us a recipe for a fancy dish we want to try out.
Linux focuses on freedom and empowering the user with choice and complete transparency. The source code of the underlying core system is completely open for anyone to view and change to their heats content. This makes it near impossible for developers to hide malware and other questionable practices from the user.
A huge open-source community consisting of thousands of contributors work to roll out fixes and improvements to the Linux kernel and the different flavours of Linux called distros. The benefit of this freedom is that you are not confined to the walled garden of proprietary software, nothing is behind a pay wall and you have full control of what your operating system should look like, what it should do and to what data it should have access to.
My first foray into Linux was at my previous job as a technician. I installed Ubuntu 10.04 on our test bench to play around with it. At first I was a bit lost but quickly learned how to move around the system and access the applications I required. To be honest all I ever used it for was to remove malware from removable drives by formatting with the disk utility without infecting another Windows machine.
When starting my second year of studies we had a subject introducing Linux as a desktop operating system using Fedora 23. I installed Fedora and started to learn how the file system works as well as how to move around and administer the system using bash. This added a whole new dimension because every little thing I did made me feel like a genius even if it was just creating a directory with some files and then editing those same files all from the terminal.
I then started to learn more about the development world and everything web development related seemed geared towards Linux especially seeing that the new job I started use the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack for development. I installed openSUSE Leap on my work machine and forced myself to leave the Windows crutches behind and use Linux as my main operating system.
That was all I needed to push me towards Linux and learning more about the open source movement. For the last few months I have been using using Fedora 27 on my notebook and all the tools I need to be productive are available free of charge and easily obtainable with the most already pre-installed on a clean Fedora installation.
The operating system just gets out of the way and lets me get to work without interrupting my work flow and is extremely secure while respecting my privacy.
I moved to Fedora because in my studies we are using Fedora and I that is where I am most comfortable because most of my exposure has come from using Fedora for more than just day to day tasks and it has the backing of Red Hat which has the most successful enterprise Linux.
I love having full control of my system and not being forced to update or install applications against my will. The operating system just gets out of the way and lets me get to work without interrupting my work flow and is extremely secure while respecting my privacy.
Citizen science: Using open source hardware solutions
Today we have access not only to open source software but to hardware as well. The release of the Arduino microcontroller and open source 3D printers have opened up whole new industries to the enthusiast.
The possibilities are endless using an Arduino board with a few connected sensors from simple robots to complicated weather stations and irrigation systems. This makes it possible for anyone to contribute and use existing open source projects in their own projects.
It is incredible to think that all of this powerful software and knowledge are available for free and everyone has access to everything all you need is the will to learn and even the oldest of machines will run a Linux distro with relative ease.
I hope to become a Fedora ambassador in future and will continue to look for opportunities to contribute to the open source movement.