Go Open Source: My policy for the New Year

Yes, that's the plan, my policy and resolution for the year 2008, and possibly in the years after that. Down with proprietary software!! But, I'm not putting all my eggs in a single basket!! All my non-core activities will be done through open source software. In addition to that, I'll also do some of my core work through open-source. But, most of my core-work will remain through proprietary software.

Why open source suddenly? Well, for one, some open source software have matured enough so that they can replace their proprietary counter part for almost all my needs. For e.g. I'm now going to replace the Microsoft Office suite, that I've got, with Open Office. All my presentations shall henceforth be in OO Impress, rather than MS PowerPoint. Most of my writing, being technical in nature, I've already stopped using MS Word. I, instead, use LaTeX to do the job for me. For that matter, Word was not built with an intention to be used for scientific writing. It was for general writing and preparing thesis in non-tech fields.I am experimenting with LyX for my report writing, but I generally prefer writing in Emacs and compiling the stuff at command line in Linux.

I'll be using more of Linux, than Windows, but won't entirely give up on Windows. Why? That's because I have a licensed copy of Windows that came preloaded on my laptop. While Linux is great, stable and free, it hasn't reached a stage where it can completely replace Windows, when the user is a non-techie.

But, my core activities will go on in proprietary software. My research work and coding will continue in Matlab. I'm not switching over to SciLab. That is because Matlab offers loads of documentation and has far more user friendly features as compared to SciLab.

I am open to suggestions on more use of open source software. I would love to use open source software as much as possible. The world outside can help me broaden my horizon.