Adopt a Penguin

During last weeks there was a lot of talk in Italy about Beppe Grillo, Italy’s most famous comedian, and italian politics, probably more talk will come in the future. But I wanted to point out to one of his article about Open Source titled Adopt a Penguin and written on the 26 September 2006. Yes, I known almost a year ago but I am living in Spain and I always get to know about Italian things in late. Beppe Grillo in his article highlights about the fact that Italian Government don't look forward to the adoption of Open Source Software in the Public Administration even thought with all advantages that it will bring.

I have to say that here in Spain the situation is better, as an example the local government in the region of Extramadura has gone entirely open source, deciding to move its entire administration to Linux and Open Source Software and making a requirement to all its officials to use the ODF and PDF formats for all documents. Also it promotes the use in the schools of gnuLinex, a Spanish Linux distribution. Unfortunately the things do not go equally well in other regions, like here in Cantabria where the local politicians continue instead signing agreements with Microsoft without realizing of how much money they could save in software licences.

However I try to do my best with Open Source evangelization nearby, but unfortunately in Cantabria companies prefer to use proprietary software and, in the event of the small business, piracy gets very high percentages. In any case I think that the main problem here is the lack of knowledge rather than a clear will to get illegal software, therefore I take every opportunity to make people aware that there is one perfectly legal way of saving money in software.

At last I want to say that Linux is a good alternative also for home computing. I always heard that Linux is too difficult, that is good only for IT people, that it doesn't have a nice Look and Feel, that there isn't a good music player, that we cannot watch TV, etc... etc... well, all these arguments could be true until few years ago, but now there are no more excuses. The programs are there, the graphical interface is equally Nice and Easy to use as it is in Windows and if you want there is also the 3D version (created much time before Vista). The important thing is to choose the right Linux distribution, which in this case is Ubuntu Desktop Edition.

About Ubuntu Desktop I am actually preparing a series of articles, which I will publish weekly very soon, where I'll get into the main topics and I will help you to make a complete migration from Windows to Linux. Stay tuned.

Danilo