Single Speed and the Art of Simplicity

I guess the first entry of any blog is the hardest. "Hi, I'm Mark..." er... "welcome to my blog" or perhaps "this blog is about..."

Ahh...

About a month ago, my wife's Apple Mac decided to switch itself off and has been in a coma ever since. A quick trip to Tekserve on 23rd Street here in New York City revealed that to get the little fellow fixed would cost somewhere close to $900, including taxes. Just a sniff less than a brand new Apple Mac (exclusing taces of course).

Several weeks later and my wife is no longer a Mac lover. Apple's relentless drive to lock in its customers into a proprietry nightmare (iTunes, iPOD etc) from which there is no escape seems to be alienating some Mac affecionados. This, along with some rather questionable marketing practices, factories out in China, court cases to expose journalists' sources within the company, less than reliable hardware and no new machines for under $1,000 made the choice not to buy a new Apple a fairly easy one. Macs maybe cool, but they are no longer "PC".

Having had a vague interest in OpenSource for some time, I mentioned to her that an alternative to both Macs and Windows machines was an operating system called Linux. Thus the idea of a "single speed" computer was born. A machine that is functional, robust and runs only free software supporting her modest needs as a journalist, writer and internet junkie. The challenge, to build a Linux machine with everything she needs, that is easy to use, stable and free of the needless bloat offered by both OS X and the soon to be released behemoth that is Vista.

I myself am a Windows user, with virtually no Linux knowledge or experience myself. If I can get my wife onto Linux, I may also follow suite.

So, the journey begins from one of the coolest and most user friendly operating systems ever created, to one which is more often associated with geeks than writers.