Conclusion
Preface
This book reflects my wider interest in serving the computing needs of others. I run a private computer support ministry where the profit motive is specifically excluded. As with any ministry, I gratefully accept any donation that I can use. However, as long as the resources are available, I’ll do the work. My motto is helping you to need less help.
The whole point is to give you control over your own computer hardware and software, as much as you can handle. That control requires you to learn, but the information is free.
Note: When you see bold face text, it signals something you see or type on the computer.
1. Introduction
The target audience here is the SOHO (small office/home office) or those who use computers in that fashion. In particular, we’re looking at those who have invested good money in hardware that still works just fine, but the vendor no longer supports your OS (like XP). You can’t afford the upgrade, or maybe upgrading comes with so many problems that you find it worth considering something completely different. You need a serious computer desktop operating system that is stable, reliable and will be supported with updates and patches for several years. It also needs to be free. You need CentOS.
CentOS ‒ Community Enterprise Operating System: This is a clone of the more famous RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux). It’s perfectly legal and free (the community
part means volunteers), and directly supported by Red Hat. You can get RHEL 6, but it is not exactly free. You would have to pay for a support contract to gain full access. If you know how to dig around, you’ll find links to download the ISO images for RHEL, but you won’t have access to the packages they provide. You would have to learn a lot about building all your updated packages from source. It’s simpler to let the folks at CentOS handle it for you.
There are other clones of RHEL; a popular one is Scientific Linux, but it’s not as widely known and its focus is different, with a different way of handling the project. In terms of user experience, the difference is negligible. For the most part, what I say about CentOS here applies to the others. There are several clones of RHEL but one often ignored is Stella. Each varies in how well they stick to the original and some of the changes may well suit you better. Do your own research, but for this guide we use CentOS; it’s the only one officially supported directly by the folks at Red Hat.
This guide requires that you either have, or are willing to develop, a measure of computer savoir faire. The days of simply farming it out cheaply are gone. Even if you stick with the Windows environment, you still have to know a lot about how it all works to preserve your privacy, security and control over your own system. The primary advantage of using Linux is far greater control, such that privacy and security are relatively easy. I won’t try to tell you that Microsoft is evil, but it’s a major corporation that treats users as the product they sell to other major corporations. While RHEL and CentOS are very much in that corporate mold, they aren’t selling you and you aren’t simply buying a license to use software you don’t own. With Linux you own the software; the only thing you pay for would be tech support services. If you develop your computer skills, there is no need to pay anyone but yourself.
There are barriers you’ll have to negotiate moving from Windows to Linux. This guide should help you evaluate whether you can and want to try. The biggest issue is learning to do things for yourself. You’ll have a lot of good help; the Internet is replete with good advice from others on how to handle almost any issue you are likely to see. There is a Tao of Linux and then there is the Tao of Red Hat Linux. The latter is not universally loved, but has plenty of adherents and you’ll get lots of help.
Software in general suffers the same political wrangling as anything else in life that involves more than a handful of people. On the one hand, commercial software production is hidden behind a wall of PR and secrecy. It’s about image control and profit. On the other hand, Open Source is all about hobbyists scratching a personal itch and hoping to win admiration of a peculiar sort. Open Source developers tend to dislike ordinary people and can be dismissive of their needs. Unless you are ready to learn how to develop all of your own software, you pretty much have to chose between commercial or Open Source.
Red Hat and a few other companies are taking the Open Source offerings and normalizing them into something ordinary folks can use, so they catch a lot of abuse from the purists. The purists are so deeply involved in the development process itself that they cannot imagine wanting the kind of stability that everyone else likes. Red Hat
