I know that it is Halloween time now, but Autumn gets me thinking about Thanksgiving. While it is an American holiday (with a somewhat simplified history), the general idea of being thankful for things is a positive practice for anyone. Thanksgiving gives me a warm feeling. Not just because of the family “togetherness” but also because I feel a real sense of thankfulness concerning many of the things I encountered tangentially to my education, yet those tangential things ended up helping me every single day in more ways than I can accurately recount. So, a month early, I’m going to talk about some of those tools.
GNU+Linux: Impossible to describe my joy when finding these gems of collaboration. Like Windows and OSX, GNU+Linux forms a complete and usable operating system. The focus is broad, but it wouldn’t be incorrect to say user freedom and customizability. GNU+Linux not only made me a better computer user, a better student, and a better teacher, but it also made me a better person.
LibreOffice: This no-cost, full-featured office suite comes already installed (and fully functional) on most GNU+Linux distributions (operating systems), but it also works on Macs and Windows machines. It does written documents (and works perfectly… I did my master’s thesis and all of my papers with it), it does spreadsheets (I kept track of personal finances, as well as student grades, using this software), along with presentations (which I used as a teacher and a student for digital slide-based teaching). There are other tools included in the set (drawing, databases, and mathematical equations), but I rarely had a need to use those capable tools.
I’ll talk about some additional tools tomorrow. These two tools have provided an ease-of-use and contentment with computing that I’d never experienced before. Perhaps you will also find them useful (in fact, I’m certain that you will).