When you say that something is expensive, you have to say also, compared with what? This comparison cannot only be on price. You have to compare value received. What is the value of an education, then? In crass financial terms, you can set a price on education based on the Net Present Value of expected earnings over a lifetime.

How much did your computer cost? $500? $1,000? $2,000? How much has it cost you since you bought it? The price of a computer is not a one-time expense — it is rather, an ongoing one. How much you pay for your computer over a year's time, or the entire lifetime of the computer, depends greatly on your choice of operating system.

Coming from a lifetime as a Mac user you can imagine that I am rather trusting of the OS, especially as a creative tool. In recent years, as Apple has evolved OS X, it has continued to surprise me (in a good sort of way.)

There is a popular saying that goes like; “Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to use a cheap Linux powered computer and you have fed him for a lifetime” (something to that effect).

Subversion is a version control system: It keeps a record of changes over the lifetime of a file, allowing you to revert to an earlier version at will. It's particularly useful for code projects, but it can handle, and be useful for, pretty much any type of file (e.g., for tutorials!). It's available as a package for most Linux distros, or as source from the web site.

In articles past, we have examined both the up-and-coming open source projects to watch, and which open source applications you simply cannot live without. But where does this leave the enterprise user? Often times, the need of the enterprise user differs from that of the home-office/small-office worker.

After writing four posts about this, it’s time to wrap it up. Over the last few weeks I installed and tested enough software to last a lifetime and I feel confident to draw a couple of conclusions.

After a lifetime of high-tech disappointment, Hugo Rifkind has found true love, in Ubuntu Linux. As a new version launches, he attempts to share his excitement

Last time out I was on an adventure of my lifetime, traveling to our Pune, India office to meet others in BMC's R&D Support team. I had taken my Dell D620, configured with Mint 3.1. It was reliable and trouble free.