First off I hope to get involved in more FOSS advocacy projects, there are a few about which I hope I can contribute too. As part of this, I am going to get involved [...]]]> Well, better late than never. I thought I would take this chance to set myself some ‘open’ goals for the New Year.

First off I hope to get involved in more FOSS advocacy projects, there are a few about which I hope I can contribute too. As part of this, I am going to get involved with or run a Software Freedom Day Event in September so I will be working towards that over the coming months.

I am also hoping to setup a local user group that can help support and guide people through the world of free software. The aim would be to have the group setup before the software freedom event so that it can be promoted as a source of help and further information. This group would help to form a team to run the event, and would enable people to drop in afterwards to learn more, get help and build a local community that can sustain future events.

Migrate another system. I have two systems at work, (two of many overall) one that runs Windows XP, the other Vista. Well it did until I took a Fedora 10 disk to it.

I do run Linux on some of my desktops and its not my first attempt to migrate this poticular one. Its the easier of the two work systems to do so i decided to give it another go. I am hopeful there will be more success this time. I know of 1 or 2 applications that will require Windows so I am going to build a get out of jail free card Virtual Machine on it. This should allow me to use workarounds if needed rather than to revert the system.

My goal is to have it running Fedora all year, even if I have a Windows VM on it.

I am going to try to blog more this year. It will hopefully be a good way of me to give information to the community that has helped me, and howto’s i have completed things or details of how I have over come issues etc.

So now I guess I should get to it, hope you have a Happy New Year!

So here is my answer to them, they run windows, they don’t know about FOSS, they may never run Linux or even take the time [...]]]> A number of people ask me:

• Where is the best place to buy office?
• Do you know any good sites to get freeware and shareware?
• Where can i get a free app to do…..

So here is my answer to them, they run windows, they don’t know about FOSS, they may never run Linux or even take the time to consider it. Why not start people on the road to a greater understanding about software as well as giving them a great app. OpenDisc replaces TheOpenCD project of days gone by, and its a great thing. One disk packed full of great quality FOSS for Windows.

Don’t just show them one app, give them a disk full of apps, then tell them there is much more where that came from!

OpenDisc also provide a nice list of apps that are on the disk, available here. Maybe next time you help some one with their PC, or re-load windows for them, see if you can install some or all of these apps. They will thank you in the long term.