It's Free!

It's hard to argue with that, but this is more than just a price tag. FOSS is free from restrictions, free from complicated end user license agreements, and free from centralized control. If you have the right knowledge and experience, you can take the source code from FOSS and change it to suit your needs.

The cost is also an important factor. FOSS is top notch software, and can be downloaded and used for any reason, free of charge. Imagine if you had to pay for Windows, Office, PhotoShop, and all the other software required to build a book. The cost is astronomical for commercial software. I haven't paid a penny for the software I use to produce my books.

Quality Over Price

FOSS is some of the finest software I've ever used. Designed and built by a whole community of developers, it ensures that hundreds or even thousands of eyes have seen the software before it goes out for public consumption. When I install Linux, I don't have to worry about whether something is going to work or not. Everything is installed and works out of the box. Linux installs with almost everything you need to create top quality books.

What About Community?

Like I said before, FOSS is built by a whole community of developers, who work and function like a team, rather than a corporation. They aren't in it to make a fortune. Many volunteer their time to build the features we need, and fix the bugs that hold us back. The level of support for FOSS is incredible, and unmatched by any corporate offering.

My wife once spent over an hour installing software to get a printer to work in Windows. When we had to get the same printer working in Linux, do you know what we did? We plugged it in, and it worked. No install, no fussing with drivers. Amazing, yes?

Like a Rock

I run Linux on all of my computers at home. My web server currently has an uptime of 109 days. My desktop is around 6 days, and that's only because I was doing something with my hardware. When you use FOSS, you grow to expect stability as a way of life. No unexpected crashes, no blue screens of death, no lost data, just smooth sailing.

Not Convinced?

Okay, so I probably sound a little preachy by now. But seriously, if you're ever in the market for a new operating system, or feel like trying something new, give Linux and FOSS a try. I use Linux Mint 15 right now, and it's marvelous. If you do try it out, and find yourself having trouble with anything, contact me and I'm more than willing to help you out of your jam.

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is based on a principle: Software Freedom. It is given away under a license that allows you to do with the software as you please. You can modify it, redistribute it, and never pay a penny for it so long as you abide by the terms of the license. This model has worked very well for FOSS. But this model doesn't work for everything.

Amazon's KDP Select allows you to give your book away for free for up to 5 days out of a 90 day period. Taken at its face value this seems like a good promotional tool, but I don't think so. Consider this: How many indie authors out there have made it big because of KDP Select promotions? How many have maintained a good sales rank for any significant length of time after the promotions are done? How many of those free giveaways actually get read?

Ask around, I think you'll be surprised.

Some report decent sales bumps when the promotions are done, but those don't last. They are bumps in the road. Many are okay with this, happy to be "good enough". To each his own, but I've never been willing to settle for "good enough".

There's a second side effect of this program, something that not many people thought of. Not even Amazon themselves, at first. If people are always scheduling books to go on sale for free, eventually you breed a culture of consumers who expect everything for free. I'm positive this isn't what Amazon wanted, and their actions appear to reflect that.

If you're going to give your work away for free, I highly recommend you do it for the right reasons. I'm simply not willing to give away 10,000 books to sell 100. That doesn't make sense to me.

I want to see my books at the top of the bestseller lists. That's best "seller" list, not best "free" list. The only way that's going to happen is through hard work, perseverance, and constant work on my craft. I would suggest the same thing to all indie authors out there.

I believe I have a good product, and they're only going to get better going forward. This is what will drive my sales. My exposure comes from you: the people who believe in me enough to keep coming back, the people who enjoy my writing enough to share my posts, and the people who refer others to my books so that I might win over more readers. I love you people. I want you to know how much I appreciate it every time you click the tweet, +1 and stumble buttons, or otherwise share my work.

But don't take me at my word. I do free for the right reasons. The first chapter of my debut novel, The Time Weaver, is available to read right here on my website, and for the first time, I'm going to offer the first chapter in a downloadable PDF, Kindle Format, and ePub format. Grab it, read it, and then pick up the whole book for a measly $2.99. That's less than a cup of coffee at certain coffee shops, and don't forget, a portion of that money is donated to Reglue, a charity that distributes computers to underprivileged children.

PDF Format

Amazon Kindle Format

ePub Format

If you already think you'll enjoy my book, you can pick it up in the following places with my full appreciation:

Amazon Kindle eBook

Kobo Books ePub eBook

Paperback

I've been using Linux Mint for a while now. Since version 8, I believe, when I changed over from Ubuntu. I find Linux Mint more user friendly than just straight Ubuntu and this is important. I'm a very plug-and-play kind of person. I don't want to sit around installing drivers and slogging away at software installs. I want to plug it in, turn it on, and have it work. When I installed Linux Mint 8 for the first time, it did just that.

Change is inevitable. It's a fact of life in the tech industry, and so each time a new version of Linux Mint is released, I try it out. Well, when I installed Linux Mint 11, I was disappointed. Something happened between version 10 and 11 that caused a very odd, very annoying bug with the window manager. I'm not sure if anyone else saw this bug, but it drove me up the wall. Suddenly, a system that was working and stable became a system that was annoying and often cumbersome to work on. This was not my Linux.

So of course, when 12 came out, I hesitated. I'd learned to live with the annoying window manager bug, and now I was presented with a new version, with possibly a new set of bugs. I'd have to learn to live with it all over again.

I finally built up the courage (and got annoyed enough with 11) to download and install version 12, and here's my experience. The download went smoothly and completed in exactly the amount of time you would expect a 1GB file to take. (I set it to download overnight.) I always install my Linux system from a USB stick. It's faster than a CD or DVD by a long shot. I can have a Linux system installed and working in under a half hour using this method.

There was one catch. I put the image on my USB stick using the system disk creator like I always do and rebooted. And got an error.

Not good.

An hour, and a struggle with various tools and methods and several google searches later, and I find out that the error is due to a slight change in the ISO format for version 12. If I boot from the stick and just type "live" and hit enter when the error appears, the system boots.

Okay, so I'm off and running. I had the system installed in under 30 minutes, and what's this I see? A new interface. I knew there was something new coming. Loads of people in the Linux community have been up in arms about a new window manager. I was used to the Mint 11 system, but 12 is all shiny stuff.

Unity. The new default window manager in Mint 12 is Unity.

I read a lot of news. I've heard about it, seen screen shots, and read enough to know that this system is one of the most controversial systems to hit Linux in all its years. Why?

Because it's different, is the best reason I can muster.

One week in, and I'm not bothered by it. There's a learning curve for sure, but if you're patient, you'll find there is definitely something to this system. It's pretty and runs nice and fast on my three-and-a-half-year-old system. It's functional too. I have an easy time finding what I'm looking for and it strikes me as a great system for a beginning user. Of course, I'm far from a beginning user, and maybe that's the community's problem with it too? I don't know.

I have two real gripes, neither of which are show-stoppers. First, I have not yet found a way to set up a screen saver. This isn't a big deal, but would be nice to have. I probably just need to install a certain package. Second, I haven't found a way to customize the main menu, or setup shortcuts on the taskbars. This is important to me. I want to be able to get to my frequently used applications fast, and this means having them within one click.

All told, neither of these issues will stop me from using it. Linux Mint 12 is otherwise a good, stable system that any user can enjoy. Now back to my writing, so I can get a move on with Legacy, and if you're looking for something to read this week, you can check out The Time Weaver. Written, edited, illustrated, formatted and published entirely in Linux with open source technologies. It's pulling in some great reviews!