Ali Gangji

Why I use free and open software

Posted by Ali Gangji | Filed under free software

This is by no means comprehensive, but I wanted to quickly outline my reasons for staying away from proprietary software and sticking to free and open source software. My reasons are both technical as well as ethical.
Proprietary software products are specialized consumer products. They employ a systemic division between user and developer. There is no [...]

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Read more | Comments (21) | June 13, 2009

Hardware

These days I'm rockin an MSI K9AGM motherboard, with an Athlon X2 4400+, 4GB of 3200 DDR2 in Dual Channel, and a Radeon HD 3200. My CPU is cooled with a Scythe Ninja Plus 6 Heat Pipe Cooler, and my video card with an Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Heat Pipe Cooler. The only fans in my Desktop are an 80mm in the power supply, and a 120mm on low power in the back of my Antec Sonata III Case. It's hard to tell whether it's on or off just by listening.

Software

I believe in open, standards-based computing. I currently run Arch Linux and the Enlightenment 17 desktop environment. I edit code with Geany, bitmap graphics with The Gimp, and vector graphics with Inkscape. I do not use any proprietary tools. As alternitives to Adobe Flash Player, Sun Java SE, and the ATI RadeonHD driver I use Swfdec, OpenJDK, and the Open Source RadeonHD driver respectively.