Free O/S
- 0) The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
- 1) The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
- 2) The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
- 3) The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
It’s a 100% free multimedia operating system intended for music production, graphic design, audio and video edition, and all kind of tasks. It contains an enormous collection of free (as in freedom) programs that can replace Windows.
If you only use your netbook for the net (which probably makes sense) then Google’s Chromium might be just what you need. The lightning fast startup time means you’ll be checking email, social media and wasting time online before Windows has even reached its login screen.
Best of all you can run it straight from a USB stick, making it ultra-portable between PCs.
The current official builds can be a bit of a hassle to get going on a lot of computers, but a nice guy by the name of Hexxeh has compiled his own build called Flow which adds vastly improved hardware support.
That old laptop sitting in a cupboard might find a new lease of life with the help of Chromium and its web apps.
Many of you will have heard of BSD, one of the many UNIX-based operating systems floating around the web. Often favoured for its secure and reliable nature, the team at PC-BSD have aimed high and developed a user-friendly version aimed at the “casual” user.
The idea behind PC-BSD is to provide users with a complete desktop operating system that doesn’t require resource-intensive protection against viruses and spyware. In today’s computing world, many of us dream of such a charm.
The release runs FreeBSD at its core, and expands on this with unparalleled ease-of-use. Self-installing software packages make adding extras a breeze, and the desktop can be sexed-up with fancy 3D effects and transitions.
The team behind this OS just wants you to enjoy more of the time you spend at your PC, and less time worrying about it.
Inspired by BeOS (and implementing certain features and bits of code from the old operating system) Haiku is an open source operating system aimed at personal computing. This makes it extremely user-friendly, as the primary audience are average users like you or me, looking for a way to get our daily computer needs tended to.
What makes Haiku different to other UNIX-based operating systems is its vision to provide a unified experience, rather than using multiple layers of software that can often over-complicate the computer operating system.
Haiku does not use the Linux kernel but a custom-built one which has been designed for responsiveness. Couple this with a threaded design for increased performance on multi-core processors, and the whole package begins to look quite appealing.
Netbook owners listen up! This might be the one you’ve been waiting for. A simple operating system, aimed at armchair surfers who live for the web.
Incorporating a quick and easy one-click-install method for over 700 of the web’s most popular services, Jolicloud enables you to surf, chat, listen, watch and connect from a clean and attractive interface. Plus with Jolicloud’s Stream feature staying in contact and sharing fascinating finds with your social networks is easy.
You can synchronize your Jolicloud across as many devices as you like, and if you’ve not got your netbook with you simply log in with a HTML5-compliant browser to manage your account.
Kubuntu is an operating system built by a worldwide team of expert developers. It contains all the applications you need: a web browser, an office suite, media apps, an instant messaging client and many more.
Kubuntu is an open-source alternative to Windows and Office
Fedora is a fast, stable, and powerful operating system for everyday use built by a worldwide community of friends. It’s completely free to use, study, and share.
We try to always do the right thing, and provide only free and open source software. We will fight to protect and promote solutions that anyone can use and redistribute. To this end, we use only free and open source software to power the Fedora infrastructure itself. With this in mind, all of our developers are focused on working closely with upstream development teams, so everyone can benefit from our work and get access to our changes as soon as possible. Due to the huge amount of innovation that Fedora drives, this focus has had significant and long lasting effects.
