 Hello and welcome to episode 507 of the Bruce Wagner show today is technology day personal technology made easy and Today, we're going to be talking about one of the technologies that I think is most profound in in my life in our life And that is an operating system that replaces windows and Mac operating systems called open to Linux And our guest today is Matthew Jordan from open Gotham calm welcome welcome. Thank you. And so the Question to start off with is When someone asks you okay, I've heard of Linux. I've heard that name. But what is it? What I generally tell people is Linux is a Operating system like windows or Mac that can replace your dated operating system and it's it's different from most operating systems and Most software because it's not only free as you know, it's free as in cost but it's also free in the respect that all of the source code all of the guts that go into it are shared and So any fixes any Improvements any software that works with it is available to everyone to contribute to so the people who built Linux Are everywhere and and and you can build Linux and you can and you can help fix Linux when you when you're using a Windows machine And something goes wrong You have to wait for Microsoft to acknowledge. There's a problem and then go ahead and and Send out a approved repair Linux Linux allows anyone to go ahead and make those fixes and then share them and places like Ubuntu Linux will go ahead and acknowledge that very quickly and put that out as part of their official Well, now you're a you're a programmer and you're a developer yourself So that you're referring to people obviously who are programmers the average person is If they're not a programmer, they're probably not going to be involved in fixing it That's true but it does it does actually improve the process of delivering software to a The average person right because they take the feedback from the average people and they say they report bugs, right? Yeah, people people People report bugs all the time. There's a huge community around Linux. Linux is not just a A bunch of software. It's not it's not consumer software In the respect that you go to a shop you buy it and if there's a problem you return it What happens is if there's a problem you give feedback to the community the community talks about it Sometimes they tell you, you know, no, you're doing it wrong. You have to do it this way It's very vibrant and sometimes sometimes they're you know, people actually see a problem and there's enough threshold That a fix is put in. Okay. Well, the way the way I explain it when people ask me what it what it is and what it's about This is this is how I explain it. Tell me if I'm right or not correct me if I'm wrong, but I I use this analogy I say imagine Proprietary software companies like Microsoft and Apple per se for example, I mean Produced software and it's it's like the code itself. The actual programs are a secret They're they're proprietary. They're owned by that corporation and they're not released to the public or to anyone to any developers Except internally so I say imagine if there was a bakery the chain of bakeries like Starbucks and you could buy these brownies and they were fantastic brownies, but they're $10 of brownie and The recipe is secret like the coca-cola formula or Kentucky fried chickens, you know secret recipe ingredients Whatever and they don't release the recipe to anybody It's top dollar and you can only buy them at that one bakery, but there's you can buy them anywhere the alternative That's that's what proprietary companies are like Microsoft and Apple and all these these companies the Open-source movement, which they call FOS right free open-source software movement, which open to Linux all Linux Is a part of depending on who you talk to it's a free software or open source And and both labels have their own political implications But yeah, you can get you can discuss that down to a fine point, of course But the main the basic idea is that the analogy would be I always say imagine a bakery where the recipe book is Huge volumes and anybody like a library can go in and take a copy of any recipe They want go home and bake it The only rule is that if you tweak that recipe and you add ingredients or take away ingredients or change the The formula or the recipe you're required Legally to put that new and improved version of the recipe back into the into the recipe book So that the volume becomes massive and then The public the members or whatever the which is the public can go in and basically Rate which are the best the cream of the crop They could take a best of volume of those recipes and then release it as a district as a cookbook Okay, so it's as a distribution of the best of all the recipes in that this these mammoth volumes that continuously grow so that every year every six months whatever they come out with a new cookbook of the best of and by doing that the You know the whole entire community everybody who every baker in the world can contribute to this and they end up Eventually over time they end up with a better brownie Preventory ones and oh by the way the brownies are free. Yeah. Yeah, which is that you know instead of paying $500 for a brownie You're paying zero. There's a there's an author who wrote in the beginning was the command line Who made the analogy between operating systems? and and car dealerships saying that Windows was not an agilist to a Like Ford dealership that had family sedans and you'd go there and get a reliable family sedan And it wouldn't be all that attractive. It wouldn't have all the bells and whistles You know it would break down fairly frequently, but you know it was inexpensive and it and it worked for most people and across the street you'd go and and go to the BMW dealership Which would be the Mac and it was very very pretty the dashboard had it all these Wonderful things very easy to drive a very fast and and good performing Machine was very expensive And then across the street from that There's this dealership where they sold these tanks and they actually didn't sell them Just a whole bunch of crazy people just built these tanks And and when you went to the dealership they would point you in the direction of a whole scrap he pulled apart and And they'll go ahead and take you back there and help you build this thing And you can drive it off the lot for free and whenever you have problems You just come back and and how much people will sit around scratch their heads and help you It's going but those those back in the 90s Yeah, I have improved a great deal one of the one of those main reasons that they've improved his distributions like Ubuntu Which has taken this process, which is very homebrew very do it yourself and really made it into a very sleek And and user-friendly distribution Okay now bringing it back to to the average person who's watching this Says, okay, this sounds interesting, but I really still have no clue what you're talking about Let me let me explain a little bit. We're talking about something that is an operating system. It it is like Windows It's like Mac OS X OS Leopard People might people might yeah people might I have gotten work recently that Windows XP Has has reached its end of life for support with Windows Yeah, and and also people a lot of people have when they first initially upgraded Vista had some very Serious problems. They didn't like it. So a lot of people move back to XP Vista XP are all versions of the Windows operating system They it's the core bit of software that you install all the other software on Right so, you know, obviously when you turn your computer on you're gonna see Windows Or you're gonna see a Mac startup screen or Ubuntu. So this replaces that and that sounds really scary because First of all, you know, well, wait a minute. We use Windows at work or we use Mac at work and Is my software gonna run on it? There's all these issues like how do I install this? without You know taking away ability so we'll get to that in a second, but some of the I wanted to talk about some of the reasons why you would even consider doing this and To me that some of the selling points the biggest selling points are well first of all, it's free It's free from a cost standpoint. It's also free from a freedom standpoint in that it's almost it's almost a movement There are evangelists behind it that are you know very supportive of it because it's Really basically it's world what programmers worldwide acting as volunteers for free Donating their time to improve all these products So it's a movement that's for the betterment of mankind third world countries where they can you know, they can't afford anything They can barely afford food if they can get the computers donated They can put these this software on there an operating system and applications and so on for free Absolutely free. So it's like for the betterment of all mankind Which is essentially being done. Yeah, there's a the one laptop for child movement, right which UNESCO put together the UN and UNICEF and organizations like that they they built a very lightweight very Portable very user-friendly machine and they put Linux on it and they give it away to children third world Right. I read some time back that they were talking about Switching from Linux to Windows, which is kind of disheartening. I don't know if they've done that or not But I don't think they're doing it with the one laptop per child But there was there were a lot of competitors that came out and and several others you can essentially buy a Linux laptop for a hundred dollars Yeah, or 300. Yeah, but but if you if they do replace Windows operating system a lot of people don't realize that the part of the cost of their PC is you know a few hundred dollars of The operating system. That's right. So You know when you're paying for your PC Microsoft gets a few hundred dollars every single time or well Maybe not that much, but fifty dollars somewhere some some amount for sure, right? Yeah, because some of the new PCs are $400 Flat out. So, you know, maybe like 50 bucks But then part of the reason that that is driven down is because you know people Dell and several other large companies started to Sell PCs without Windows so it started selling with Linux. That's right They're selling and then also the other thing is the what they call, you know crapware the stuff that actually, you know There are some retailers that will charge you a for a fee They will remove all the garbage the light versions of all that crap software that you do not want It's basically just advertising. It's spam and I and they actually will charge you to take that off You know, it's like crazy because you know why it's on there in the first place is because they're getting paid To put it on there. So it's so bizarre like a a manufacturer will pay Microsoft say just for I don't know the amount but some say fifty dollars to put Windows on the machine and then So they're paying out 50 bucks. Meanwhile, then all this crapware these other companies are They're agreeing to put that software on For another 50 bucks. So they spend 50 and then they make 50 and then the retailer will charge you 50 bucks to take it back Off again. It's so crazy Meanwhile, if you buy a PC that comes with Linux Ubuntu Linux or otherwise, you're just gonna get what you want and you're not gonna get any crapware It's absolutely free. Okay, the other thing There's several other huge selling points that you need to know about that You know, we know about where you may, you know, we forget that it's so important to mention all software is free on Linux all software is free. So when you go to The like the way you buy software is you go to ad remove programs on Windows They have an ad remove programs, but it should be really called remove this crap That's what the button should be called because you don't actually add software by using it in Windows But in Ubuntu you actually do so you click ad remove programs and it pops open this thing that looks like a it looks like a software Store you can click by category you can type in the title and so on and it'll list every application that Matches that description the word you're looking for right. So if you needed to install Say I needed to play a Presentation that someone sent me a PowerPoint presentation normally, I would need a Microsoft office right with something that nature which does not come with with your standard PC I go ahead and look something up in Ubuntu Or presentation or PowerPoint and it'll come up with some software that plays that So I get an office suite that has that directly and it installs and suddenly I can have that functionality Now you can do that with just about anything. That's the one of the beautiful things about Linux is is specialized things that Generic PCs don't have say I wanted to do some audio editing Because I'm a musician and I want to record some tracks One of the best programs for auto-editing is is you know a Linux based program called audacity And they have they do have this is another thing by the way, I'm sorry to sidetrack that but You are probably using free opens free and or open source software already and you don't know it Yeah, it definitely are because it's on your phone. It's on Linux installed just about everywhere. Well, yeah, there's the phones There's the Tivo there's so many devices that you don't even they don't say Linux on them But they're actually your cable box. Yeah, the end. Yeah, exactly the engine beneath it is Linux Even though it doesn't say Linux on it anywhere That's one part but even on your Windows and Mac PC You're probably using free and or open source software. I can almost guarantee you if you have ever used Firefox That's free open source software if you've used audacity is another example audacity has versions It's an audio editing probably the best audio editing software and it's free open source And it's available in a version for Mac. I believe and Windows for sure and of course Linux Yeah, max a max operating system is very close to the Linux operating system. It's OS X is a Type of Unix which is Linux is a type based on Unix from way back Yeah, like an earlier branch and they then they closed it and made it proprietary Yeah, put their name on it. Well, Steve Jobs did some some interesting work after he left Apple and he started a company called next which just which branched off pigs are Branched on a bunch of other things and then when he took over Apple again Next had made this operating system. They weren't doing so well. So Apple bought them There you have it. So yeah, there's a whole history of the legacy of Basically, you know companies borrowing technologies from other companies and then all the litigation that follows and all that nonsense But yeah, it has its roots in Unix of originally And then the other thing is I say we talked we talked about Firefox audacity and the other thing that you're using or you may be using or interested if you're not you should is Openoffice.org with Ubuntu Linux, you know, like you mentioned Microsoft Office, which is very expensive app I think Microsoft makes most profit off of Office, I think and maybe windows is number two or the reverse but those are the two main profit centers and If you like a friend of mine a girl friend of mine called me the other day And she says does she use this thing on open office? And I said yes She said because she went she bought a new computer She tries to install her office or Microsoft Office Software on it and it says, oh, no, you can't do that You already have it on a machine and you know and of course you can go through their process and you have to call Them and explain to Microsoft why you're now using it on imagine this okay imagine if you bought a Janet Jackson CD Okay, and you played that CD in your living room, right? And then the next day you took it and put it in your car to play it and it says, oh, no I'm not gonna play you got a call Sony records and say Excuse me I'm sorry But I have to explain to you that I was listening to it at home yesterday And now I want to listen to it in my car and you got to get their permission with a special serial number to type Into your car to play that disc. It's absurd, but that's how it works So you buy a new computer you got to call a Microsoft and explain and get permission To use it on your new computer and promise you're not going to use it on your old computer anymore, whatever So she said forget that instead of you know doing that or paying another $500 she decided to go to openoffice.org and download open office and what that is is the open source free version of word Excel PowerPoint and access basically right and then another one too. There's a calculator something. Yeah, they have a like an excel a draw There's another one draw. Yeah, they've uh, yeah, there's a there's an open source version or a equivalent Just about anything out there and they have versions for Windows and Mac So you may already be using this stuff, you know So it's it's it's creeping into the windows environment without even using about to or Linux with Firefox actually I heard Firefox has more people using it than the newest version of Internet Explorer It's that is a metric that will never be settled one of one of the reasons That the numbers get so skewed on that is because of corporate environments Corporate environments are really locked down and they have very strict rules about what type of software can be on each machine They have all of these empty cubicles that that never use really Internet Explorer or anything else to browse these are you know, people are just doing the jobs and Accounting those are counting. They're counting those as Internet Explorer clients today So if they if they open the browser once yeah, if they open the browser once During the installation and the browsers like attached to the operating system. That's one of the Which is such an irony because you know, they had all that litigation about that They went to court and prove that oh no no no Internet Explorer is an integral part of the operating system That cannot be separated and now I heard that in Europe The they're going to court to do the opposite to take out to take out the media player Yeah, because they're they're saying oh no media player is something about What do you call it Monopoly because there are other media players that you could download so that it's similar to the browser thing They're they're claiming that the media player is an integral part of Windows and they're saying okay No, you cannot distribute Windows with the media player in it. Anyway, it's so funny because It's a little Mickey Mouse mess But that's why I really believe that free open source software is the future because there's no Issues like that suddenly there's no issues whatsoever. Oh, yeah You're really separating a lot of what becomes a corporate bureaucratic process from actually delivering media and delivering An application to people the The one of the largest one of the best things about the open source movement about the free software movement is Is you are actually becoming closer to the people who are making the software when I purchase Microsoft Office Not only do you know the the software mill that is in in Washington that Microsoft employs is a is a bunch of programmers who maybe spend a month or two on one function of That program and then they're done and then they're on to some other project, right? So you're never actually You know when you file a bug report when you say there's a problem when you do things like that It never will get to the person who wrote the software Ever I can imagine that I heard I read somewhere that the the number of people who actually Understand the core core code of windows is in the world is just like a handful or less Who actually really understand it because it's been added to and patched and corrupted and changed so many times It mentioned so secret. Imagine a huge building that like, you know, you have a hundred and fifty architects Working on at any point in the process and you have like, you know hundreds of construction crews going You know through and starting up again and building certain sections It's it becomes just a puzzle and every month or two you're assigned to a completely different aspect of the project Or even a completely different building whereas whereas with a free software most projects are very small teams They're very dedicated to the process because this is generally something that like, you know I'm a programmer I got a wild hair that I really need an application to do this and I build it and lots of people like It and I'm the person responsible and you then can hire me the person who wrote the entire software package to help you train or install or improve it or whatever and And that's and that's kind of the best of both worlds because then you have a free product That you can actually get close to the person who authored it right and and actually you know Give them the support and also improve your Product in the end there the developers the programmers their their heart is in it. That's the difference there They're too big motivating factors. One is their heart is in it. This is something that they're passionate about They chose this project. It wasn't assigned to them for a paycheck They're doing it for the for the for the benefit of all mankind as their gift to the world But at the same time they can also have a monetary reward too because even though the software is their gift to the world As you said they can as a personal consultant they can sell their consulting services for training and support and You know customization or whatever so they can still you know make a career out of the side effects That you know all the sidebar services that they can personally offer even though They're giving the product away to the public and because it's open source all the rest of the programmers in the world can say this is good I can think of a way to make it better. So everybody's constantly making it better, right? Also, it's not like with the proprietary companies. They you know like Windows for example They have to come out with you know this it's this year. It's a me then it's XP then it's 2000 then it's NT then It's seven or whatever bizarre thing their marketing team came up with they have to like Scrap the whole thing we used to call it I had an acronym MAB FNAR Which was The new version of Windows moved all the buttons around for no apparent reason. That's what it was You know like that's all they did they just moved all the buttons around for no apparent reason So you could get you could buy certification and be certified in the new version so they could sell more training in that sense But basically they're almost like scrapping like Vista is a great example They scrap the whole operating system Supposedly create one from scratch The same way cars in the auto industry change the whole body style because that way I'll know you're using an old version. You're driving an old model You don't have the new model and that's the reason because they have to sell it again and again and again Whereas with Linux and and all the applications that go along with that. It's been in development for Since for 50 years with if you count the Unix days It's been in development like it's kind of like the tortoise and the hare that you know open source is the tortoise It's moving along very very very slowly, but it's evolving and they never throw it all out They're constantly improving it Whereas the other one has to throw it out every single year They've got a billion dollars, but they're they've got teams of programmers But it's just such a chaotic mess because they have to reinvent the wheel from scratch every year or two and they you know the the model that Microsoft came up with for selling software is is really one of the One of the most ridiculous models ever it's very much like the recording industry What what they come up with is okay? We've we've developed the software package And then we're gonna stamp it on CDs and then we'll sell each CD for an amount of dollars Whereas the actual developers who worked on that project and actually coded every bit of that got paid an hourly salary and And we'll only see we'll never see any residual money from that again They'll only see the the hours that they spent on the portion that they worked on And you know when those will continue to sell that product long after that Programmer has worked on sure they made they made X dollars per hour, and that's it That's their paycheck, and they own nothing that they created Meanwhile if they had actually developed the same thing if a team the little team that developed that thing if they had Off on their own didn't work for Microsoft created the thing they could give it away completely But they would get Residuals in the in the fact that they would be the worldwide experts on that product And they would be in huge consulting demand and they would make big money just doing consulting and training and things You know on their own so it's it's I say this like you say it's very much I was gonna say that too very much like the recording industry because back in you know back in the day when we had Records and CDs Still do but they're on their way out back in the day when we had record stores in the mall remember that the The thing is that I always say It's kind of like in a sense It's almost like the end of the age of copyright that if you support Artists you have to support the free freedom of information basically sharing information, and this is how it works when Back in the day. Okay an artist Diana Ross, you know, whatever had a you know a platinum album or something She would make money By radio play royalties. She would make Money off the record sales and she would make money off of live concerts But the record sales might be only a few pennies where you pay 1899 for the CD in the retail store only a few pennies may go to the artist and all Basically all the profit goes to the record label the minute the suits the men think the guys who make nothing but money Yeah, they've been they've invested in the in the recording studios and they they did a lot of advertising and so well And and they charge the artist actually for that Yeah, yeah When you sign to a label as a recording artist Everything that they give you the recording time everything the wardrobe. Whatever Is accounted for in the in the residual sales so the deduct that from your earnings. Oh my gosh They won't that's even even worse than I thought But here's the thing so if you only make pennies on each record that's sold You make you're still gonna make your radio royalties and you're still gonna make your live performances But you only make pennies on the records imagine okay now now we're up to 2009 the way the world works now First of all, you don't have to pitch your song and and have a casting couch and sell some record label And I got a record agreement a record contract. No, everybody has a record contract We all have a record contract just record it You the equipment is so cheap that almost anybody can record it in their in their living room or their garage or whatever And you can you can record the music if you've got talent you rise to the top So it's the ultimate form of democracy. It's distributed freely on the internet If you if you distribute it you can you can become insanely popular in Russia and China and you know Australia whatever you can become a worldwide hit in just a few days and Guess what? Here's the thing you'll make more money than you did before People that the record labels and all these people they're brainwashing you that the opposite But the truth is you still make the royalties on Radio plays because that's very easy to control that you're still gonna make a check gonna get if it's copyrighted You're gonna make a check from that you're still gonna make the money from live concerts because there's only one you until we have cloning So but you you make nothing on the records this actual record sales But you only made a few pennies anyway, and you're popular in Russia You know you've got global distribution if your stuff is good if you're if you're good you can make a lot more money It's all about gaining a following and and and being able to to leverage that balling I mean look at what radio head and nine-inch nails have done exactly I mean they they already had a following they released their albums out to the world for free They said okay pay us what you think the songs are worth and they made Insane much sales. I think I read that they made like they broke records of More than I don't know million dollars or something in the first three days or something some crazy amount They gave it away, and they made more money in a shorter period of time than any other album release or something They they gave it away, and they basically what we would call it like a love offering like they said you know Take it for free if you really love it send us send us 20 bucks And you know we'll give you a CD or whatever or send us 75 bucks And we'll send an autographed one or something like three different special editions and their fans are fans, and they appreciate them It's like saying You know pay what you think it's worth give us if you appreciate us Support us and people do and it's also a numbers game because Only a percentage of people are going to actually send money But when you distribute it globally worldwide to millions and millions of millions of millions of people all over the planet When the tip jar is available to everyone every world You're going to make enough money. That's right There's a and that's and that's you know that that compensates for the model that opens our software and free software originated that has has gone through and and really extended itself to the music world to the to the To Hollywood if you look at One of the top sellers right now On Amazon and and iTunes was the sing-along blog dr. Horrible sing-along blog. Have you heard of this? It's a it's a Josh Whedon the guy who came up with Buffy the vampire slayer. Oh, okay He hit during the last writer strike. He just got some friends together and they did a show a musical using just the the equipment that he had in his house And and okay, Josh Whedon. Yeah, he can afford some good equipment, but the thing is now with Open source and free software and you know really cheap consumer Like I said, you can you can go ahead and have a full production studio of any kind of media You want the bar the technical bar has lowered to an extent that all you really need is a good idea And some you know elbow grease. Yeah, and yeah, and you're and you're you're ready to Put your art out there. Yeah, you know I really view it as a as a almost a philosophical a spiritual thing because it's it's it's the idea that you know If you have talent, whatever it is whether you're a programmer or an artist a singer or an actor, whatever You have this God-given talent. We call it. Well, it's not really yours It's it's given to you to share and that's the whole point of it And you know you can think of it as no, it's mine mine mine mine and you know people somebody said recently that you know How they felt when somebody said to to someone else, you know, oh, I I love your work I bought your CD and I shared it with all my friends and they were like, ah, you know But really that's not a bad thing. You've got to change your mindset. It's a brave new world We're in yeah When you when someone says they bought the CD or like I Downloaded your CD illegally and I shared it with all my friends. You should jump for joy and say thank you because now you're You're more famous. You your name is out there more There was a guy who actually published a book and it was I don't know if it was bestseller Probably not I don't know but it was a book that was a wide distribution it was at Barnes and Noble and borders whatever and this author I read about it he actually took his own book and After it was in stores, right? And he he had got a PDF copy of it He uploaded it to the BitTorrent sites and distributed it free. Of course his publisher was not pleased He got sued by his publisher, but here's what happened. He went from selling Something like you know ten or I don't know like a million copies or something to like a hundred million copies Yeah, and he that's where I got the example He would became phenomenally popular in Russia and they were buying his book because you know look if you every 100 people who downloaded it illegally legally whatever Are sharing it they're talking about it and it's all if it's really good if your stuff is good That's the key if your stuff is good He became so popular that his sales were a hundred times what they were before he got rich And you don't have to be the best at anything. I mean really if you if you can keep up production If you can be prolific at anything people crave You know content quality content any any content half the time I mean it doesn't even have to be quality. Look at what we watch on television. Yeah, I was just gonna say if you Spanish-language television But you know having a good flow of episodeed content having a good flow of any kind of contact is Really important to people people want to be entertained people want new things to read new things to Play with innovation and software and the Say the thing I was gonna say about that Oh, I truly believe that everybody has a unique gift and you know what it is It's the thing that people say wow you're you're really brilliant when it comes to this and that's your gift And when everybody has one I believe everybody has a unique gift look at What's her name Sarah Boyle and by the way this illustrates two things one everybody has a gift and it may be hidden under a Bushel, but everybody has a gift inside them and they know they do you know you do and the other thing is the power of the Internet the democracy of the internet. She's from a little village in the UK and in three days Three days. She is a household word household name all over the planet The the most popular viewed video in the internet like over a hundred million last I heard This is a show that does not get broadcast in the US, right, right? It's the internet It's absolutely internet. There is no more. You know real TV. There is only new media So the internet the internet really set up things like Ubuntu to to be built to Have this huge cooperation and what I think what I think is not only is it a great thing because it's free and And it encourages all of this Wonderful work that can be done, but the thing is when you're Come on the the financial situation right now is not that great in the US. You don't have the extra money to go out and upgrade all of your software to what you know Buy the software that you need for a thing. So you can go ahead and get Ubuntu You can install it on your machine. You don't even have to uninstall Windows you can install it. What is the I'd say it's called a wooby. There's Actually a couple different ways now. Well, I want to come back to that. We can put links on that too. Yeah Yeah, exactly. No, I want to tell I want to point out a couple things before I forget that is so important Ubuntu basically there's Virtually no such thing as antivirus software for Ubuntu Linux And why because there's virtually no such thing as a virus for Linux for Ubuntu There's there's no such thing as a virus. You don't have to worry about Viruses adware spyware nothing like that the thing is the thing the analogy a lot of people use with the free software movement and malicious code is that Free software is very much like having a house in the middle of Manhattan. That's that is completely Transparent it's a glass house and it's completely lit all the time if anybody breaks into your house Everybody's gonna know everybody can see it exactly exactly. So that so that code is protected by being transparent very much like like You know President Obama wants to Protect the public by keeping the government transparent But that's that's the idea The transparency is good and that's recognized and that's and that's why you don't have viruses because if anybody puts any malicious code into Linux or into anything else everybody's gonna see it and nobody wants that very simple concept It's just like the city's safer in the daytime because we're protected by the light of day Everyone can see everything that's happening and there's so many eyes on it that if anything fishy was going on people would notice the other thing you know This baffles me that you know Microsoft comes out with you know two or three critical security updates every single week yet It's still completely vulnerable to software mixer makes your machine run slow. Oh, yeah, that's a mention the firewalls and all that on top of it It's just horrible. Yeah, the I was gonna say so like They were there was a hacker convention where they had this annual hacker convention And they had like I don't know how many different operating systems Maybe you know what up but what they did is they had They they have a contest. I think they win like $5,000 cash prize plus the machine That was being yeah, it was being hacked into and I believe if I remember right Oh, uh, Mac OS leopard took the least it took like four seconds to hack right into it windows Took like 28 seconds or something crazy There was only one operating system that no hacker in the whole world could hack into at least not during that I was around right during that it was like a week or two. I think yeah, and during the The entire convention. I think it was like a weekend. Okay, but it's a Defcon is the yeah, and you can you can look that up on cool check it out And it was Ubuntu Linux running on a laptop that nobody could hack into so that's very very impressive now Ubuntu does have Critical security updates because they do find security leaks or problems or whatever But they're patched almost instantly and they only they seem to only come out like maybe once a month Or once every two months or something or not like two or three times a week like windows So it's just something very very bizarre to me. It seems like Microsoft with its so many security holes is either It's either inept or I Don't know what I don't know what's going on why it would be so so honorable But it's not in their best interest to why I mean they're they're in the business of selling software So delivering, you know spending a lot of money On improving certain things that don't actually sell software. Yeah, there's not the is not Not there well actually it does sell software because they own antivirus software companies, too And it sells antivirus software So it's kind of like if you if you it's actually the contrary Yeah, if you're the analogy of that is if you if you have a monopoly and you're the only home-builder in the country And you also sell ADT security systems What kind of locks are you gonna put on the doors and windows little maybe little plastic twist ties or something right because you're selling the Security systems, too. I don't know. I I'm just saying you know It's just a little bit a funny why they can't finally get the security Plus another thing that could impact it is the fact that if they scrap the operating system and they figure You know, we're gonna come out with something completely Oh, no, all of our focuses are now on windows 7 or windows 9 or whatever the next thing is that they're They don't stick with one long enough to actually perfect it It's it's just a moving time It's like a consumable product that they just scrap and start all over and well, we'll fix that in the next one Right. Yeah, they want to sell the next batch of copies and yet and then the this this grassroots movement of Free open source What do you want to whatever you want to call it freedom of information that sort of this movement kind of? Goes against corporate profits. I like to call it independent software independent software Yeah, of all kinds including music content of any kind it goes against corporate profit So that's you know, that's the battle But meanwhile these programmers are working at Apple and Microsoft and Google or whatever during the day and they're Doing this volunteer programming basically and and and to just the credit of a lot of companies a lot of a lot of companies actually do donate the time of their developers to Open source and through software Adobe as has released a ton of products under open source and and portions of their products Sun sponsors Java the entire platform is open source You know another thing too We're talking earlier about examples that of how you are using Linux. You may not realize it But if you've ever used Google Google their their applications are almost entirely running in Linux and they're even the corporation The majority of their desktops are Linux in as employees inside the company Of course they have obviously they have other operating systems too because they have to cater to the to all users But yeah most of their systems even internally are Linux But all their web properties are run in Linux and open source now all their servers run on Linux and actually their applications are not Open source, but they're run on Linux which Linux is open source, right? And then the other thing that is oh, yeah about it about buying and installing applications It's I was saying earlier about how you go to Adremu programs They lists every program by category or topic or you know, whatever it is you're looking for and then it also has user ratings It's almost like a software store But to buy the software and install it means put a check mark in the box and hit okay Guess what you bought it for free and you installed it And uninstalling it is taking the check mark out of the box and that's it most of the time. There's no restart There's nothing like that. It's just running on your system right then I don't think I've ever had to restart when I installed software No, the only the only time I've ever had to restart is when they've upgraded the entire operating system The kernel which they do automatically for you. So the other thing it in a Windows does that obviously Windows update Windows But with Ubuntu Linux Never go from XP to Vista now with Windows. No, no automatically. No, even if you want to pay that way Yeah, with with with Linux with Ubuntu You can go from one major release to the next major release and keep all of your data and keep everything just fine I mean my my dad just had to upgrade to Vista not too long ago And he had you know, it was such a hassle for him to take all the data off and And you know back it up and and reformat and get that all taken care of that He just you know dropped his box off at Best Buy and got the What are the Geek Squad To take care of that and that cost him you know a Lot more than than had he been able to you got to get him on to Ubuntu We just we've been talking about it. Yeah, he's he's been running the wubby. Oh, yeah It's so that's what that's another thing that About in how do you migrate to it? One way is the old-fashioned way of like what you would have to do if you're going from one version If you're going to X from XP to Vista or something You have to back up all your data Then install the thing tell it to take the whole entire hard disk and then restore your data and don't worry your all your Documents like word PowerPoint Excel all those things work within open office. In fact actually IT Departments and corporate IT departments say that open office is more compatible with more versions of Microsoft products than Microsoft's own products because a lot of times if you go for if you have if you're sharing a file between someone who has open office six And open office ten or whatever the versions are now There'll be a lot of problems throughout but the open office guys you need Microsoft the first Existing was Microsoft. Yeah, and but if but if The open office guys needed to be compatible with all those options So they've gone ahead and made the translations between all those files Yeah So if if you if you're ever in an office where someone says oh, I can't read this file my client sent me It's in the wrong version of You know of office Boom, just open up above open office and you can do the translation for them exactly and that's intentional There's no reason the only reason new versions of Microsoft office wouldn't read the oldest version of Microsoft office is because they intentionally blocked it so that it wouldn't to force you to buy a new version of it That's it. Well, or they just didn't you know That wasn't a price point with them They weren't going to spend the money on the development of doing that because it was not in their interest It's not it doesn't generate profit. It's not necessarily malicious But it is you know, it's not It's not consumer oriented and it's other it's either not consumer oriented or it's incompetence that kills us Not not Straight evil. Yeah, generally their motivation is in conflict their motivation is directly in conflict with the consumer really because they're trying to make money for the least amount of investment and whereas with free open source movement They're totally in concert with the with the consumer of it because they're all Developers are actually trying to create the best product for their for the for the own for the benefit of the reputation And to essentially, you know, they consider themselves craftsmen their personal pride Yeah, they want they want to they want to yeah They want to carve out the best statue so that they can so that people can look at it like wow That is an amazing piece of software. Did you know the guy who wrote it? That's true It's like art you could sign your name to it, which whereas, you know like Windows XP whose name is on that, you know It's just like this is generic, right, you know building full of people No one knows no one knows really the person who who wrote Windows But I think everybody knows the person who originally launched Linux at least in the Linux world everybody knows him Linus Tbilis exactly. Yeah, and and he has He's been able to because of that And because he he manages a good portion of the code still He's been able to essentially write his own check throughout the world and he's not He's not a Bill Gates millionaire, but he's He he does well enough for himself to be perfectly content with his family and and do what he loves Yeah, and that's really the best of worlds. Yeah, he's very famous and I'm sure he's doing very well And that's the thing again It's just when you give to the world that you you can't help but you receive it back You absolutely that you won't be able to stop it just by your own Fame and recognition and being in demand. I'm sure he's in demand, you know as a speaker and as a you know Obviously all of his professional talent Google has paid him several times to speak Yeah, he goes everywhere. That's fantastic. And that's a and then another thing about Making the transition to Linux is that Because you had the keys to the kingdom as it were you can you know go ahead and do anything you want with the system that gives you the opportunity to branch into Development or any type of media that normally would have a very high cost Barrier and a learning barrier and you know because there's a community because of these things you can actually learn a great deal about coding about you know Media production about all of these things without having to Spend an insane amount of money on training through a proprietary product You've looked at the cost of software lately, you know Remember all the software is free. So there is basically like an equivalent or sometimes better version of all the major software Like we already mentioned office word PowerPoint Excel access your Photoshop your would be Gimp and video editing software Financial like QuickBooks quicken is new cash But almost every kind of software that you can imagine there is an equivalent and sometimes better version That's free and open source that you can just click and install It's like having every piece of software in a giant software superstore free like a public library You just take it home and install it and That's it But you don't have to go anywhere you just click the checkbox install it so you can try out Several different programs to do the same thing and decide which one you like the best. It's all free So you can if you're depending on what you're doing Especially if you're doing it on more than one computer, you can save thousands and thousands of dollars in a small whether it's a home consumer or A small business or even a large corporation. There are a lot of universities and businesses and even governments That are standardizing on Linux because of that the cost savings is enormous. In fact, I read somewhere that something about the European Union and several governments standardizing on Ubuntu Linux and Eliminating windows. Yeah, I know Munich and several other cities have gone ahead and made the transition a lot of Cities in the US have made the transition as well And it saves a great deal of money and for most of business most business applications the barrier for entry Is very low it's because the interface is very similar for some things like video editing right now the There isn't the best user interfaces but as a counter to that if you know what you're doing you can actually do a lot more with the Linux software then you can with the the standard off the shelf You just it's just not pretty and you have to read some and invest a little bit of time. Yeah We're using you know, and then there's a one called Cinderella that's being completely rewritten from scratch And it's supposed to be going to be really really good. Yeah, I Used to use those but I gave up and I'm just using ffmpeg ffmpeg is a command line Program, but it does everything I want to do at all with video. I can I can change I can slice dice remix change the audio Do anything I want and But the thing is knowing knowing the proper commands and that's and that's it's a barrier for entry Yeah, but well, we're wrapped. We're we're out of times ready to wrap it up But check out Ubuntu.com is you be you and tu.com to for more information about Ubuntu Linux And I want to thank you Matthew Jordan from open Gotham.com check out his website and his services Thanks so much guys. We'll see you tomorrow