Welcome to my site, I hope you will find it useful. This is a site devoted to my explorations of Linux, the free, open-source operating system. Free is a word with various meanings in English. One meaning is free as in freedom. Software is “free” if you have the freedom to use it as you wish without restrictions. Linux is free in this sense. You can use it freely, there is no EULA (End-User License Agreement) that governs what you can do. The other common meaning of free is free of cost. Linux is free in this sense, though there can be some purely nominal costs involved in getting it. You can download the software and burn it to a CD or DVD, and then install the software from the disk you burned, all without any expense beyond having an Internet connection, a computer, and a blank disk to burn it onto.
My first exposure to Linux was on a server at the University where I worked. I had somewhat limited rights on this Red Hat machine, and everything was done on the command line. Then about 6 years ago (I guess) I heard about Mandrake, and how it was the distribution of choice for newbies. I downloaded it and installed it on a box, but never quite got comfortable with it. Then a couple of years ago I found Kubuntu, the KDE version of Ubuntu, and it is now my main environment. I know most people use Ubuntu with the Gnome desktop, but I never could get comfortable with Gnome. Maybe it was the Mandrake history, but KDE is just what clicks for me. I joined a LUG, the Washtenaw Linux Users Group (http://www.lugwash.org), and now I am the president of the group. This is not because I know more than others, I am maybe intermediate (at best), but I have good organizational skills and that is what they needed.
What I want to do with this site is to record my thoughts as I work on projects in Linux, maybe comment on issues in the world of Open Source, and also provide some instructional content I have developed (and will continue to develop). I hope you find some of this useful, and will join me in this exploration.
You can e-mail me at zwilnik@zwilnik.com
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