BLOG – Microsoft

C. W. Andreasen – updated 12.08.23

Every organization and business faces a problem. It is growth by the Peter Principal. There appears to be no way to keep it from happening (read the book detailing the Peter Principal). Any business or organization will continue to grow at an exponential rate without regard to work produced (for the clients/customers). I won’t go into detail beyond telling you that unless something external limits growth, it will continue unabated and require ever larger resources to support. The only way to keep this in control is to have, at intervals, major lay-offs to cut back growth. Microsoft has grown very large and they need ever growing cash flow, to maintain the growing beast. Any way they can find to extract more money from the customers is game, they need an ever increasing supply of money. The only limit is, how much they can get before the customer base has had enough and goes away.

I have become a Linux person and it is the breath of freedom from annual fees and everything costing a lot of money, I did have one copy of Windows 7 Professional that I had since Windows 7 was the current Windows operating system. When I bought it there was no time limit on it. I ran it in a Virtual Box on one of my Linux computers. Windows 7, suddenly, without warning, on October 9^th 2019, when I logged on, gave me a message that my key had expired and I needed to purchase a new key. It still sort-of worked but I got warning messages, my wallpaper had disappeared, and files I used to upload on a regular basis would no longer upload correctly, I had to export and move the files to my Linux side of the system and upload from there. Microsoft was trying to cause me to purchase a new key by ‘throwing rocks on my path for me to trip over’. Windows continued to work, but with induced problems.

[I confess I finally threw away the non-working Windows 7 and now have a working Window 10 system I can use if needed, (it came installed on a new computer – but it is rarely used). I do have a couple of purchased specialized, Windows only, utility programs that will not run under Linux, Wine, or Crossover.]

For those of you reading this, do understand that one does not have to bow to Microsoft, there are other choices. Linux is arguably better than Microsoft Windows in many ways, and there is very little that cannot be done with Linux as compared to MS-Windows. For example, Microsoft Office is a great product and you get to pay upwards towards $100 a year to use it. In Linux we have LibreOffice which is almost identical to Microsoft Office and in fact even reads and writes the same file formats, if set to do so. The files are then interchangeable. A person using Word (MS Office) or Write (LibreOffice) would find it hard to tell the difference. Oh, LibreOffice is, like almost all Linux software, free. No cost, no fees, however if you want to support the development teams one can make donations, it is not required nor are you pressured in any way.

I run Linux Mint Cinnamon and it looks very much like MS-Windows Classic. I highly recommend Linux Mint (or LMDE – Linux Mint Debian Edition) as an alternative to MS-Windows. Many Window application programs are also available in Linux form. Linux Mint and LMDE are available by free download from the web. (linuxmint.com).

Another GREAT Linux advantage is the installing of updates. With MS-Windows it takes ‘forever’ to update, with reboot every time there is an update… sometimes more than one. With Linux, updates are as fast as your Internet connection will allow, and a reboot is rarely required.

As an aside, the qso.com computers are running the Linux operating system as are most web servers these days.

Another advantage of Linux is the freedom from hackers and addware, virus’ and such. No Anti-Virus product is available for Linux because it is not needed. The very nature of Linux makes it very difficult to hack.

Another problem with Windows is they are evolving (on purpose) where ‘everything’ lives in the ‘cloud’. This means it is easier for hackers to get to, you are monitored more easily, and Microsoft is heavily involve in controlling YOU. You do it their way or else! If the Internet connection is lost, you are separated from you files. Linux is not like that. While you can store files in the cloud, there is no need unless you travel a lot and want to get to the files from other computers. Linux could work fine without an Internet connection as your computer does not require the Internet connection to work (exception being for eMail). Of course we are all connected to the Internet, but even so, Linux is a safe and secure system, and is not being controlled by some corporation. YOU control your computer, not Microsoft.

If you have question about any of this I can be reached at cwa@qso.com.

This document was composed using LibreOffice Write and directly exported as a PDF, and HTML files.

If you want to try LibreOffice, it is available for Windows also, free; download from https://www.libreoffice.org/ but do be aware the Windows download sites do try to make you make a ‘donation’ but ignore that and go to your download area to find the already downloaded file.