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1. Store their files outside of their home directories unless you give them permission to store them elsewhere Let s look at the filesystem a little closer This is the root directory not to be confused with root s directory which we ll see below It is the considered the main directory bin The binaries directory contains essential user commands boot The boot directory contains the information needed to start GNU Linux when you turn on your computer dev The device directory contains all device files As stated above all devices are treated as files etc This directory contains the configuration files for most of the system as well as a number of servers home The home directory contains the files for all users who have accounts generally home jqpublic or similar lib The libraries directory contains programming libraries used by your applications lost found In the unlikely event of a system crash you may find lost data here media The media directory is where removable media such as CDs floppy disks and USB drives are mounted mnt The mount directory is used mount external filesystems such as those on another computer on the local network opt The optional directory frequently contains programs that are experimental or proprietary or simply commercial In the old days this was used to install programs not installed wi
2. directories which is the way everyone used to refer to them anyway Microsoft changed the terminology when they launched Windows 95 with a goal of simplifying the terminology for new users So the terms folder and directory are synonymous Many Windows users are familiar with the c prompt which denotes the root directory of the hard drive Windows 95 introduced the My Documents and Program Files folders In Windows 2000 and XP the My Documents folder is under the Documents and Settings folder Most programs should be stored in the My Programs folder while users store their documents in the My Documents folder GNU Linux along with most UNIX systems uses simply a to represent the root directory Underneath is a fairly complex but logical directory structure When a new user is created a new directory is created under home that might look like home samjones The image below shows three users and a public directory where all users can put shared files It also shows the main directories under We ll address the filesystem in more depth later in the book For now you should just bear this basic information in mind A Little Background for Non Techies CEAC A905 se0m E gt Location Efile JH OSa Folder fa y al Ebin B bin B media A srv Ge E boot gB dev A B etc B boot B mnt B sys A home lo Eadollyp B dev Pon P tftpboot E donp p ipublic y amp Bsam
3. or even excel in today s educational rat race Much of it could be used in home and private school environments as well GCompris For kids aged 2 10 years old GCompris is an excellent multi discipline educational program that uses activity boards Children 79 Free and Open Source Software for the Church can develop their mouse skills learn the alphabet and arithmetic operations and play educational games Boards have a modular function in that you can pick and choose the boards you want to use People can develop additional boards to be added to the collection http gcompris free fr Moodle Moodle Modular Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment is a highly rated web based distance learning application generally referred to as Course or Learning Management Systems A number of Christian organizations are deploying Moodle which supports at least 50 languages Moodle includes a number of add on modules that enhance its functionality http www moodle org General Applications Audacity Audacity is a sound recording program that runs on GNU Linux Mac and Windows systems and offers numerous features including recording live audio editing audio files in a variety of formats and the ability to convert tapes or records to digital recordings Ardour Ardour is a complete Digital Audio Workstation that allows users to record edit and mix multi track audio produce CD s video soundtracks and more
4. The ps command gives us a list of processes processes are usually programs currently running The default behavior is to provide a list of processes running in the current shell However what if we would like to change its behavior a bit In that case we would use the h or help flags to find out what options are available to us The manual pages or man pages and info pages offer a summary of a command and the options and switches available to it To use these simply type man command man ps The info command is used the same way Google is Your Friend Google is an oft used tool for searching e mail list archives for answers to questions and challenges users face Using Google in the following way should yield some fairly useful results site www somesite com keywordl keyword2 site lists suse com asus This search finds information about the ASUS motherboards on the SUSE Linux e mail archives site 67 Support Options Use the define keyword to find definitions for acronyms and other terms define term define ssh This search brings up definitions of ssh which is the secure Shell a secure alternative to Telnet There are a number of useful ways to use Google to solve problems This applies to all software challenges as well Regardless of whether your operating system doesn t recognize your printer or you can t figure out how to create filters in your e mail client you can always ch
5. their reputation is at stake That said let s take a look at the various support options available to users of FOSS Aside from the vast on line documentation users will find additional help from a supportive user community made up of professionals and enthusiasts alike The community support options consist mostly of e mail lists and web forums Additionally for those willing to pay for it commercial technical support by telephone and e mail is often available We will discuss each option in detail However users should know that there is a process by which we get help If you purchase a technical support license from a commercial software distribution feel free to get your money s worth by giving them a call For those willing to rely on community support you should as a first step 64 Support Options consult your on line documentation If you cannot find a solution to your problem or are confused by the information you find you can ask the community with a reasonable degree of assurance that your question will be answered in a technically useful way The on line documentation comes in a variety of forms User can get help with commands by using the commands man or info These two commands are not generally considered to be very easy for most end users as they simply provide the command and its syntax The How To documents normally found in a directory called usr share docs often provide much more detailed
6. Modified Version as the publisher Preserve all the copyright notices of the Document Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications H go ie 132 Resources adjacent to the other copyright notices F Include immediately after the copyright notices a license notice giving the public permission to use the Modified Version under the terms of this License in the form shown in the Addendum below G Preserve in that license notice the full lists of Invariant Sections and required Cover Texts given in the Document s license notice H Include an unaltered copy of this License I Preserve the section Entitled History Preserve its Title and add o it an item stating at least the title year new authors and ublisher of the Modified Version as given on the Title Page If here is no section Entitled History in the Document create one tating the title year authors and publisher of the Document as iven on its Title Page then add an item describing the Modified ersion as stated in the previous sentence reserve the network location if any given in the Document for blic access to a Transparent copy of the Document and likewise e network locations given in the Document for previous versions t was based on These may be placed in the History section ou may omit a network location for a work that was published at east four years before the Document itself or if the orig
7. Whether or not all computers are upgraded simultaneously is of little importance GNU Linux can act as a server for Windows workstations or connect to a Windows network using SAMBA the open source implementation of Microsoft s file and print service protocol We have discussed OpenOffice org s ability to handle Microsoft Office documents previously This is a good time to install OpenOffice org on the Windows computers as it provides an opportunity for the users still using Windows to begin getting comfortable with the new office suite 88 Migration Strategies This is either an all at once or a piecemeal approach depending on how you upgrade your hardware Either way it affords an opportunity to prepare for the change One advantage of deploying GNU Linux with new hardware is that you can simply tell New and Small Ministries New and small ministries may have the greatest opportunities for migrating to GNU Linux Many ministries are just starting with computers or have yet to purchase a proprietary church management database GNU Linux provides these churches to accomplish the same tasks that larger churches perform albeit without the hefty financial investment in proprietary software This is a church s best opportunity to start with or to migrate to a purely free and open source software platform The reason that going with GNU Linux is ideal for new and smaller ministries is that most have very little invested in their compu
8. and how it is used Do users have the right to know what is in the source code before they run the software on their computers Do users have the right to modify the tools they use to suit their system and task requirements Do l as a Christian developer have the right to force users to depend on me for modifications Few other tools require the kind of dependence that is built into every single proprietary software license Technical skill money and other issues may propel the user to a vendor who can modify or fix the tools properly but no license prevents such modifications Copyright law does not prevent the modification or defacement of a book or music recording by the person who purchased it as long as 20 Truly Free Computing it is not redistributed Yet proprietary software licenses prevent this kind of action A Peruvian senator authored a bill that would require Peru s government agencies to use only free software In response to the concerns of a proprietary vendor the Senator explained his bill as follows What the Bill does express clearly is that for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data watching over its integrity confidentiality and accessibility thr
9. and thus puts the users at a disadvantage In other words while proprietary software forces dependence on the developer free software promotes independence For this very reason the Peruvian government prohibits the use of proprietary software in government agencies see Dr Nunez on p 26 Those who argue that licenses are neutral claim that by ignoring technology on the basis that we disagree with the license terms thus robs us of the use of that technology On the other hand this argument ignores the harm done by the developers who made the technology proprietary From a development perspective the code used must be duplicated cleanly by those who wish to use such technology elsewhere From a user perspective the user is forced into dependence upon the developer Those Christians who see free software as a moral imperative are not alone Richard Stallman has communicated with this author 2004 and with the World Association for Christian 99 The Christian FOSS Movement Communication in 2002 that Christians should be pushing the adoption of free software The importance of this statement should not be lost on those unfamiliar with a man well known for his devout atheism Given that many atheist geeks openly attack Christians in the Internet forums even just for mentioning the word church Stallman s warm welcome is refreshing O Hobart Mowrer accused the Church of selling her birthright counseling for a meal of ps
10. 80 82 85 87 94 96 99 102 104 107 Mac 1 6 7 32 33 42 51 76 82 101 Sun Solaris 7 UNIX 7 9 32 59 91 95 100 109 114 Windows 1 2 6 7 9 11 17 18 20 30 32 34 37 40 42 46 48 53 57 60 65 69 70 75 77 81 82 87 89 94 99 101 106 107 111 112 Windows 2000 9 52 Windows 3 11 41 Windows 95 9 Windows 98 20 34 Windows XP 20 Organizations Business Software Alliance 15 Free Software Foundation 27 97 110 119 123 124 Open Source Initiative 25 97 110 P Pastor 13 14 19 53 74 99 100 S Server 6 8 9 19 32 37 56 61 69 77 78 91 94 96 111 112 114 115 Shells 10 37 39 Software types of FOSS 1 2 4 12 15 28 138 Resources 30 67 68 73 88 101 75 85 86 92 93 96 98 Free and open source software 99 101 102 1 3 5 12 15 18 23 Proprietary 1 4 12 15 27 34 35 44 47 53 64 17 18 21 25 29 33 35 41 67 75 85 86 92 93 96 42 47 48 50 51 53 56 61 98 101 102 64 66 75 80 85 87 92 98 Free software 12 24 95 101 102 114 120 125 96 99 119 120 123 125 W Free Software 25 59 74 Windows Compatibility Software 100 110 119 123 124 Open source software 1 3 5 Code Weavers Crossover 34 12 14 15 18 23 24 27 Win4Lin 34 34 35 44 47 53 64 67 Workstation 6 8 32 36 55 90 94 105 112 139 ABOUT DON PARRIS Don is a bi vocational minister and former business owner He holds
11. Firefox 1 41 44 45 88 89 Freedom 11 12 17 19 22 24 25 86 119 H Hardware 1 6 7 9 17 19 29 30 33 38 40 47 49 50 58 60 73 87 91 92 101 102 105 107 114 127 I Interface Command line 115 Command Line 115 Interface Shell Graphical 1 2 10 11 37 39 43 59 64 69 87 115 123 10 11 37 K KDE 11 Kernels Kernel 1 6 7 95 114 122 Linux 1 7 137 Resources L Licenses Software Copyleft 24 End User License Agreement 24 EULA 24 53 Linux Users Group 74 93 94 100 M Microsoft 2 6 9 18 33 34 38 41 48 49 51 52 54 58 65 70 87 89 91 94 108 111 112 115 Microsoft Office 8 33 34 41 48 49 51 52 87 89 91 108 112 Microsoft Office Access 23 34 41 44 51 Excel 34 35 41 44 PowerPoint 34 35 41 44 80 PowerPoint 2000 35 PowerPoint 97 35 Word 17 33 35 44 59 Ministries 1 2 5 49 50 73 81 85 87 91 92 99 49 73 Mozilla 1 41 45 MySQL 3 19 37 45 56 77 79 88 115 O OpenOffice org 1 17 31 34 40 41 44 48 49 52 59 62 71 72 77 79 80 87 89 91 93 110 OpenOffice org Base 34 44 Calc 34 41 44 Impress 34 41 44 Writer 17 34 36 44 72 Operating Systems BSD 7 10 11 44 45 69 101 102 104 111 GNU 7 11 25 44 45 59 90 92 95 97 99 114 119 124 125 GNU Linux 1 2 4 6 7 9 11 17 20 25 29 30 32 34 37 38 42 44 47 49 53 55 60 64 67 69 71 73 76
12. If any provision of this License is held to be unenforceable such pro vision shall be reformed only to the extent necessary to make it enforceable 14 Definition of You in This License You throughout this License whether in up per or lower case means an individual or a legal entity exercising rights under and com plying with all of the terms of this License For legal entities You includes any entity that controls is controlled by or is under common control with you For purposes of this definition control means i the power direct or indirect to cause the direction or man agement of such entity whether by contract or otherwise or ii ownership of fifty per cent 50 or more of the outstanding shares or iii beneficial ownership of such entity 15 Right to Use You may use the Original Work in all ways not otherwise restricted or conditioned by this License or by law and Licensor promises not to interfere with or be responsible for such uses by You This license is Copyright C 2003 2004 Lawrence E Rosen All rights reserved Permis sion is hereby granted to copy and distribute this license without modification This li cense may not be modified without the express written permission of its copyright own er 127 Resources 128 Resources THE GNU FREE DOCUMENTATION LICENSE FDL GNU Free Documentation License Version 1 2 November 2002 Copyright C 2000 2001 2002 Free Software Foundati
13. It is even capable of mastering projects to completion http ardour org Rosegarden Rosegarden is a general purpose music composition and editing 80 Free and Open Source Software for the Church environment that includes score editing along with audio and midi sequencing Rosegarden will likely be ideal for most church musicians with an interest in composing general music http www rosegardenmusic com LilyPond LilyPond is music typesetting software enabling users to create engraved musical score sheets in the classical music tradition LilyPond is a batch program that takes musical commands you enter in a text file and produces a score sheet as the final result http lilypond org web index html Asterisk Asterisk is a PBX system for GNU Linux When used with Digium s Wildcard TDM400P card 100 340 churches and other organizations have the ability to run a full featured PBX system with support for up to four lines Asterisk works with other hardware and supports additional phone lines It is available is now available for Microsoft Windows as well http www asterisk org 81 Migration Strategies 12 MIGRATION STRATEGIES The decision to migrate to GNU Linux involves examining each of the major challenges we have examined thus far It also involves considering the best strategy to use for completing a migration The best approach is probably a gradual one for most organizations except those jus
14. Licensor even if such marks are included in the Original Work Nothing in this License shall be interpreted to prohibit Licensor from licensing under different terms from this License any Original Work that Licensor otherwise would have a right to license 5 External Deployment The term External Deployment means the use or distribution of the Original Work or Derivative Works in any way such that the Original Work or Derivative Works may be used by anyone other than You whether the Original Work or Derivative Works are distributed to those persons or made available as an application in tended for use over a computer network As an express condition for the grants of license hereunder You agree that any External Deployment by You of a Derivative Work shall be deemed a distribution and shall be licensed to all under the terms of this License as prescribed in section 1 c herein 6 Attribution Rights You must retain in the Source Code of any Derivative Works that You create all copyright patent or trademark notices from the Source Code of the Original Work as well as any notices of licensing and any descriptive text identified therein as an Attribution Notice You must cause the Source Code for any Derivative Works that You create to carry a prominent Attribution Notice reasonably calculated to inform recipients that You have modified the Original Work 125 Resources 7 Warranty of Provenance and Disclaimer of Warranty Licensor war
15. Linux distributions is absolutely free In that case th cost of migrating Strictly from a software perspective is 0 00 As an alternative consider the Xandros Business Desktop For less than 500 you can run GNU Linux on five computers and even continue using Microsoft Office along with other programs you might use It works with Windows NT primary domain controllers PDC and Windows 2000 Active Directory domains It also includes Sun s StarOffice the commercial equivalent to OpenOffice org Of course churches could use the Open Circulation Edition for next to nothing You should realize by now that the cost of computing in the Windows environment is pretty high Again though the above scenario does not account for a number of factors The cost of Anti virus anti adware anti spyware and any Internet filtering software your church may deploy adds up While there is very little need to worry about this with GNU Linux generally speaking the software available is of course mostly free If your church is 501 c 3 you may qualify for discounts on proprietary software Many churches though have chosen not to file for that special status and thus don t qualify for the discounts That means they get to pay full price even though they are non profit organizations by default The upshot of it all is that many smaller churches don t have the income to get started with computers This puts many churches in the position of t
16. Migrating your ministry s data will prove to be a tedious task but certainly not an impossible one GNU Linux may not work with some of a ministry s hardware but may extend the life of other hardware A good strategy based on your ministry s situation can make the migration path smoother and generally reduces the upfront costs involved with an overnight approach There is another factor to consider as you calculate your migration costs The cost of future upgrades should be taken into account The initial cost of migrating to new software might be higher than the cost of simply upgrading However once you migrate to free and open source software the future costs are much much lower than that of the proprietary vendors It is also much easier to change vendors if you begin to experience problems with your current vendor Let s look at an example of this 43 The Cost Challenge Since OpenOffice org runs on Windows let s take a look at the cost of migrating from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice org OpenOffice org typically requires about two weeks to get used to without any retraining at all The reason is that most of the features that are different between the two are unused by the majority of users Most folks could easily pick right up and keep going We ll use this as our example The table below shows two churches each with five staff members Both run some version of Microsoft Windows One is migrating to Microsoft Office Sm
17. Servers MS SQL MySQL Oracle PostGreSQL MySQL Oracle Educational Kaplan GCompris Keduca Mathematica KTouch typing tutor XPlanet Multimedia Windows Player Real Player Real Player XMMS CD Burning Nero K3B Roxio X CD Roast Audio Production Audacity Audacity Rosegarden 42 The Cost Challenge 8 THE COST CHALLENGE Have you given much thought to the cost of computing Have you pondered the possibility that your present computing platform could actually represent poor stewardship of your church s resources Cost is not the only factor in your decision and not even necessarily the most important Yet if you could reasonably manage your church for less money than you currently do wouldn t you want to explore that option further You might be able to help one more family or boost a missionary s efforts purchase new bibles or a number of things While hardware costs have dropped significantly over time software costs are increasing significantly It used to be that you would pay 1300 for the hardware and less than 100 for the operating system Now the operating system costs nearly as much as the hardware and the application software is often astronomical This makes absolutely no sense given that the cost of distributing software is a far cry from the cost of distributing computer hardware There are a number of factors pertaining to cost Church leaders need to consider the potential need to retrain the staff
18. a better job of correctly identifying and configuring a printer than some operating systems at least in my experience The only problem ever had 14 Identifying the Issues was configuring a printer across my ministry s GNU Linux network Along with my personal experience I ve heard numerous complaints about setting up printers with a certain popular operating system In other words migrating from Windows 98 to Windows XP brings change There are new features to learn Migrating from Windows to the KDE desktop brings change Simply put some things are different That alone has scared some people half to death They are not necessarily more difficult just different And you say you would follow Jesus to the cross Hang with me We have much to discover Lets look at some facts that just might make this cross a bit more appealing Having introduced you to the challenges you ll face and how to overcome them I ll also point out the most prominent applications that churches can use PII also introduce you around the community You should know where to go when you need help and where to find applications or how to get help introducing free and open source software to your church and local community 15 Truly Free Computing 4 TRULY FREE COMPUTING In the beginning was the source code and the source code was free Computer programmers mostly scientists frequently shared their code to help each other out It was the way of
19. a brave soul in your midst you could order Debian CDs for about 15 no manual with that or download it via your broadband Internet connection Again shop around In most cases even the most expensive GNU Linux solution would cost less than the Microsoft operating systems and their respective applications Bear in mind that GNU Linux includes a vast selection of application software Whether you download GNU Linux for free or buy a commercial distribution you still get to choose from hundreds of applications So as far as pricing is concerned our fledgling congregation could have the capability to broadcast our worship service on the Internet for about 15 or less for the OS plus the cost of a video camera and a broadband connection What s more for that same 15 or less we can have our choice of office suites the best of which is OpenOffice org www OpenOffice org our choice of multimedia and Internet tools even our choice of graphical desktops All of the free and open source church management software is currently cost free Perhaps the major cost will lie in extracting the data from your current application and importing it into the new database This process of migrating your data is mostly a tedious process and will likely consume a bit of time However once migrated you will no longer be caught in the proprietary trap that keeps so many paying such huge fees for software Please note that the tables used for the cos
20. access is the root user unless permission is granted by root So for example a normal user cannot generally rewrite the system 62 System Resources configuration files stored in etc This does not mean that administrators can relax However their job is made that much easier by the default security settings of most GNU Linux distributions Administrators will also want to control access to inappropriate content on the Internet DansGuardian Privoxy and Squid included with SUSE Linux offer excellent firewall privacy and content filtering services and Privoxy runs on multiple operating system platforms DansGuardian offers commercial support as well for those who need it Administrators will want to learn about the GNU Linux security tools and monitor their system logs consistently Even so the design of GNU Linux along with the default settings of most distributions offer better security and stability than some proprietary systems do When you combine an operating system that makes it difficult for users to exploit with good security tools you have a secure system Maintaining a secure system is a major element in ensuring system and data integrity in any organization Now you have a little better understanding of how GNU Linux uses your hardware how the Filesystem is laid out and how its design makes it more stable and secure You know you can use the mini distros as they re often called to rescue your system
21. alleging that the Original Work infringes a patent This termination provi sion shall not apply for an action alleging patent infringement by combinations of the Original Work with other software or hardware 11 Jurisdiction Venue and Governing Law Any action or suit relating to this License may be brought only in the courts of a jurisdiction wherein the Licensor resides or in which Licensor conducts its primary business and under the laws of that jurisdiction ex 126 Resources cluding its conflict of law provisions The application of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods is expressly excluded Any use of the Original Work outside the scope of this License or after its termination shall be subject to the requirements and penalties of the U S Copyright Act 17 U S C A 101 et seq the equivalent laws of other countries and international treaty This section shall survive the termination of this License 12 Attorneys Fees In any action to enforce the terms of this License or seeking dam ages relating thereto the prevailing party shall be entitled to recover its costs and expens es including without limitation reasonable attorneys fees and costs incurred in connec tion with such action including any appeal of such action This section shall survive the termination of this License 13 Miscellaneous This License represents the complete agreement concerning the sub ject matter hereof
22. are inaccessible to the Christian FOSS community More will be said about this in Chapter 14 Church Management Applications Lets get down to one issue that really matters to churches the church management software There are two general options for free and open source church management software InfoCentral and its variants Open Source Church and ChurchIinfo are currently web based applications CHADDB is a simple database back end for MySQL Users can currently use OpenOffice org to connect to CHADDB via the JDBC driver and a Java based front end is currently in development InfoCentral s lead developer is developing the next version using Java J2EE for larger churches Being in the early stages no release date is set Even so the new application will include a full set of financial tools for churches That functionality will be an important factor for most large churches The InfoCentral team may also provide professional technical support None of the Windows based companies are moving to port their applications to GNU Linux The GNU Linux community might jump in and help to meet this need Some such as Info Central and my own CHADDB are trying to meet the needs using MySQL and PHP but others will need to pitch in and help out Churches should encourage their vendors to consider porting their applications to GNU Linux InfoCentral ChurchInfo Open Source Church InfoCentral is a web based church management project that u
23. consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the library If this is what you want to do use the GNU Library General Public License instead of this License Open Software License v 2 1 This Open Software License the License applies to any original work of authorship the Original Work whose owner the Licensor has placed the following notice immediately following the copyright notice for the Original Work Licensed under the Open Software License version 2 1 1 Grant of Copyright License Licensor hereby grants You a world wide royalty free non exclusive perpetual sublicenseable license to do the following to reproduce the Original Work in copies e to prepare derivative works Derivative Works based upon the Original Work e to distribute copies of the Original Work and Derivative Works to the public with the proviso that copies of Original Work or Derivative Works that You distribute shall be licensed under the Open Software License e to perform the Original Work publicly and 124 Resources e to display the Original Work publicly 2 Grant of Patent License Licensor hereby grants You a world wide royalty free non exclusive perpetual sublicenseable license under patent claims owned or controlled by the Licensor that are embodied in the Original Work as furnished by the Licensor to make use sell and offer for sale the Original Work and Derivative Works 3 Grant of Sour
24. copy directly or through your agents or retailers of that edition to the public K oct It is requested but not required that you contact the authors of the Document well before redistributing any large number of copies to give them a chance to provide you with an updated version of the Document 4 MODIFICATIONS You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely this License with the Modified Ver sion filling the role of the Document thus licensing distribution and modification of the Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of it In addition you must do these things in the Modified Version A Use in the Title Page and on the covers if any a title distinct from that of the Document and from those of previous versions which should if there were any be listed in the History section of the Document You may use the same title as a previous version if the original publisher of that version gives permission B List on the Title Page as authors one or more persons or entities responsible for authorship of the modifications in the Modified Version together with at least five of the principal authors of the Document all of its principal authors if it has fewer than five unless they release you from this requirement C State on the Title page the name of the publisher of the
25. cost less than doing it yourself Ensure they have real hands on experience with GNU Linux and check their references A skilled consultant could save you time and money and should be required to pass on their knowledge to your staff Additionally make sure you obtain some post migration support You may want anywhere from thirty to ninety days depending on your comfort level If you decide to pay a tech guy specify a free distribution such as Debian which is also highly respected and you likely won t spend any more to migrate to GNU Linux than you would to upgrade Windows Even so once you re running GNU Linux you ll be able to upgrade it at a fraction of the cost I m certain you ll miss having to pay over 200 to get a word processor that thinks it knows more about what you re doing than you do MS Office Small Business Edition includes Publisher http www officemax com max solutions product prodBlock jsp BV_UseBVCook ie yes amp expansionO ID 536907354 amp prodBlockOID 537141049 Easy Worship http www easyworship com Novell s SUSE Linux http www digitalriver com dr v2 ec_dynamic main cat_id 1 amp pn 7 amp sid 27477 QuickBooks http www officemax com max solutions search search jsp bvc yes amp searchTyp e product amp searchString quickbooks amp searchBtn x 0 amp searchBtn y 0 54 System Resources 9 SYSTEM RESOURCES How your operating system and applications use your computer s resou
26. even if it seems a little geeky Still it points to the notion that having access to the source code is important for very practical reasons Having access to source code is not a pie in the sky ideal that has no application to non geeks rather it is a very practical way to exercise control over your system regardless of your status as a non techie A great many computer programs nowadays are free as in free coffee but not free as in freedom The developers give you a program that you can run What they don t tell you might just hurt you Many tell their users in tiny never mind the fine print legalistic mumbo jumbo print that their program includes software that detects everything you do on your computer other than spilling coffee on the keyboard This raises a question How far do you trust your software vendor Some well respected proprietary vendors actually have reputations for underhandedness Regardless of how far you trust 17 Truly Free Computing your vendor if the code is proprietary your trust rests on a sandy foundation Again having access to the source code is a very practical matter Access to the source guarantees you can determine the suitability of the code to run on your system even if you need to find an outside consultant The problem with trusting the developer is that some developers operate in an immoral manner even while they may comply with the law Furthermore since only developers
27. mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program or with a work based on the Program on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License 3 You may copy and distribute the Program or a work based on it un der Section 2 in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following a Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine readable source code which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange or b Accompany it with a written offer valid for at least three years to give any third party for a charge no more than your cost of physi cally performing source distribution a complete machine readable copy of the corresponding source code to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software inter change or c Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer in accord with Sub section b above The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it For an executable work complete source 120 Re
28. people from migrating wholesale to a FOSS platform you will be better able to see how you can help One major problem with GNU Linux is the lack of commercial 100 The Christian FOSS Movement retailers providing GNU Linux computers Wal Mart now sells computers with Linspire installed However most retailers are not providing GNU Linux as an optional operating system Many that do offer GNU Linux as a choice don t make it as obvious as they could You have to know that they offer a choice before you know to look One salesperson spoke with at Best Buy kept trying to insist that GNU Linux is a geek toy However if they sold computers with GNU Linux pre installed those computers would have all the advantages of most Windows systems Most users don t install Windows it comes pre installed on the computer they purchase If a GNU Linux system were configured similarly then the Windows computers would lose their advantage We mentioned in The Compatibility Challenge that one major issue facing GNU Linux users is hardware support The reason is that many manufacturers only support Windows or Mac systems At least part of the reason for their lack of support is due to misunderstandings about legal issues Another issue seems to be the perceived lack of GNU Linux users This is a major reason why many GNU Linux users continue to dual boot None of the proprietary church management software developers have any plans to develop ope
29. period Normally an installer will notify users about conflicts and offer the opportunity to keep the old file or overwrite it It s probably safe to say that most users probably just choose to overwrite it as the new program depends on the newer version Just imagine the look on the Treasurer s face when the quarterly financial reports have not been updated because a library was updated during the installation of new software At the other end of the spectrum is the UNIX approach Developers only include additional libraries when they need to write a new library for some function that the current selection doesn t offer Otherwise programs generally rely on the standard libraries already installed in the system This approach reduces or eliminates the number of duplicate copies of libraries and enables users to update the library once without impacting functionality of previously installed software This can at times present something of a challenge Occasionally a user may try to update a program only to discover that it depends on a certain library which in turn depends on another library The result is what some have dubbed dependency Hell This is becoming less of a problem as most package 60 System Resources management software is able to help resolve the dependencies The Debian based distributions which use Apt have a solid reputation for practically eliminating the unfavorable problem of dependenci
30. site offers a document that points out significant differences between MS Office and OpenOffice org It is but one example of solid software development in the open source world The filesystem is likely the single most confusing aspect of GNU Linux and UNIX in general Here we ll introduce the basic GNU Linux filesystem in a way that will help readers navigate it with ease This discussion applies to the typical GNU Linux system While it may not be completely applicable across all UNIX or even all GNU systems users will find below a fairly typical layout Let s talk first about disks and partitions Windows uses letters to denote drives Even partitions on a single hard drive are assigned drive letters Since there are only 26 letters in the alphabet it is possible though highly unlikely to run out of drive letters There may well be ways of working around this but Windows has never overcome this limitation 56 System Resources Here are the typical Drive letter associations for Windows systems A 1 Floppy drive B 2 Floppy drive C 1 Hard drive every letter after this depends on the number of hard drives and partitions are part of the system D 15 CD ROM drive or 2 Hard drive The CD ROM DVD ROM or any writable devices drive is always the next letter after the last hard drive partition Any additional drives take on the next available drive letter Given a single hard drive in the computer wi
31. specific to Christians need similar involvement from users If you are able to write produce some step by step instructions for projects that have little documentation available 102 The Guide to GNU Linux Distributions 15 THE GUIDE TO GNU LINUX DISTRIBUTIONS Software frequently consists of a number of different files that are packed into a single compressed file and then distributed across the Internet or by CD and other media Thus the term distribution could refer to a single program or an entire operating system together with its included programs Thus GNU Linux can be distributed by any number of people including you Which distribution you choose depends on your situation One of the advantages of GNU Linux is that you do have a choice If one distribution doesn t suit your needs another very likely will Some Organizations distribute GNU Linux commercially while others distribute it as a non profit enterprise Both have advantages and disadvantages that churches will want to consider as they explore the idea of migrating to this extremely flexible operating system One of the major differences between distributions is their approach to package management Software is usually packaged for installation on the computer and distributions have a few different ways to handle that Red Hat developed the Red Hat Package Manager or RPM Debian s apt is extremely popular In fact there is now a utility cal
32. suites that open A Little Background for Non Techies Microsoft Office documents to musical notation editors to DVD players users can find applications that will enable them to accomplish much in their church or other non profit organization One advantage of these systems is that they work extremely well in the so called client server infrastructure in which one computer provides services for another The best example is of the Internet where web servers retrieve web pages for web clients your browser Another good example is using a file server to store files you create at your workstation Client server terminology might seem a bit confusing at times as the concept applies not only to physical computers but also to programs Workstation E Data and Client programs Services to access data and services Illustration 1 The client server concept The illustration above provides a rough idea of what client server computing is Typically the server resides in a secure closet or room and is rarely touched unless administrators need to perform maintenance tasks The server could be running Apache and ora number of other server programs The workstation is the tool for users to access the information or services such as printing or file storage on the server The fact is that a single computer can be both the client and the server depending on the situation For instance a single computer can run both the ser
33. t evolve programs without modifying them Since our purpose is to make evolution easy we require that modification be made easy 3 Derived Works The license must allow modifications and derived works and must allow them to be dis tributed under the same terms as the license of the original software 115 Resources Rationale The mere ability to read source isn t enough to support independent peer review and rapid evo lutionary selection For rapid evolution to happen people need to be able to experiment with and redis tribute modifications 4 Integrity of The Author s Source Code The license may restrict source code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of patch files with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code The license may require derived works to car ry a different name or version number from the original software Rationale Encouraging lots of improvement is a good thing but users have a right to know who is re sponsible for the software they are using Authors and maintainers have reciprocal right to know what they re being asked to support and protect their reputations Accordingly an open source license must guarantee that source be readily available but may require that it be distributed as pristine base sources plus patches In this way uno
34. technology Even here you have to realize that most folks come from a wider range of theological backgrounds and we have to respect each others differences Generally speaking though Christians will find a much warmer atmosphere in the Christian FOSS community You can learn more about this community in the chapter devoted to it 65 Support Options Using the On Line Documentation In Depth There are a few different types of documentation available for GNU Linux and BSD systems The manual pages are great when you need help with command line utilities and some applications include their own help utility Knowing which one to use in a given situation could help you find answers without having to rely on others The How Tos tend to be tutorials The How Tos vary widely and may take the form of web pages you can view in your web browser or Adobe s PDF format A how to may be a full blown user manual or a step by step on how to install and configure a file server The How Tos are uSually located in the directory folder usr share doc The KDE and GNOME desktops generally have their own help systems similar to the Windows help system Commercial and even non profit distributions may also customize those help systems to include helpful features For instance SUSE s KDE help system includes a way to browse the man and info pages from within your graphical shell The image on the next page shows the KDE Help Center
35. tend to know little about programming were happy to give up their rights to modify the program To them 16 Truly Free Computing it was a simple trade off Pay a lot of money let the developer modify the program It s a pretty simple equation However they gave up their rights not only to modify the program but also to redistribute share the program with others What s more by declining their rights to the source code they chose to place a great deal of trust in the developer s hands This meant that the first step in using a computer was to promise not to help your neighbor A cooperating community was forbidden The rule made by the owners of proprietary software was Tf you share with your neighbor you are a pirate If you want any changes beg us to make them Richard Stallman The GNU Project http www gnu org gnu thegnuproject html I am not a programmer Having the right to modify the code is of little use to me because of that Even so if have access to it may be able to find someone to modify it for me There might be some minor things can do to make the program work more the way I want it For instance having the source code allows me to re compile the program to perhaps take advantage of certain features of my system This is a little more technically advanced than many users want to get Frankly some might be surprised to discover just how simple compiling a program can be
36. the computer s hardware JDBC Java DataBase Connector allows people using Java technology to connect to databases ODBC Open Database Connector allows people using ODBC capable applications to connect to standard SQL databases Protocol A set of rules for communicating across a network Just as humans use different protocols for business and church computers require different protocols for accomplishing different tasks For instance the HyperText Transfer Protocol HTTP is used for displaying documents marked up with HTML On the other hand files are most commonly transferred using the File Transfer Protocol FTP PNG Portable Network Graphics An open graphics format designed to replace the proprietary GIF format Shell see User Interface 113 Resources SQL Structured Query Language The standard relational database technology in use today Microsoft SQL Server Oracle Informix MySQL and PostGreSQL are the most common databases in use MySQL and PostGreSQL are the two most popular open source databases User Interface command line and graphical Also called a shell The point of a user s interaction with a computer From the Command Line interface CLI a user is prompted to type commands In a graphical user interface GUI users click on icons to execute commands OASIS OSIS 114 Resources THE OPEN SOURCE DEFINITION Version 1 9 The indented italicized sections b
37. to imagine a more compelling reason to change than the desire to obey Christ s command to love our neighbors as ourselves Proprietary software makes this prohibitive at best Free and open source software by their very nature encourage Christians to love their neighbors by enabling them to share Furthermore if ease of use is the only factor considered in the decision making process then security stability and the licensing issues are ignored to the detriment of the church have suggested that churches using proprietary software illegally is a disgrace to God only to have people suggest that the current software is easy to use as if that justifies breaking the law and disgracing our Lord s name The Business Software Alliance is an organization that helps enforce software licensing violations in the business arena They have also gone after schools Although I do not know of any churches being pursued by the BSA churches are not above the law Violators could face statutory damages from the license holder of up to 150 000 per program copied along with other financial considerations Additionally violators can then be criminally prosecuted and face fines up to 250 000 and jail time At the very least churches need to ensure that their proprietary software is properly licensed Doing so not only ensures compliance with the Law but will honor God as well Ideally churches using proprietary software illegally will
38. to the decision making process First they failed to understand the issues and to get the facts Second they passed up the opportunity to expand their horizons Third they potentially placed their church in legal jeopardy namely due to copyright law a truly costly error The deacon had not experienced Linux for himself He had simply parroted someone else s opinion Whether that technician had experience with Linux is not known I had actual experience with both Linux and the legacy system they were currently using The fact is that many companies especially overseas were already deploying Linux on their desktops The pastor accepted hearsay in favor of experiential knowledge Had he taken an hour or two given me the chance to demonstrate Linux for him and or his staff he would have been able to make a more informed decision From a theological perspective this pastor missed a phenomenal opportunity to demonstrate for his sheep the ability to adapt to new things to break free of the old ways of thinking This is a battle that church leaders face in every arena Whether it s the style of worship or which activities to start and end this year churches face the decision of moving from their comfort zones and into the realm of faith As pastors we teach our congregations that stewardship applies to every aspect of life Hence we must set an example of how to face new challenges wisely and intelligently A Legal and Moral Dile
39. ve checked the documentation for your program and attempted to find something on Google the next step is to state the 68 Support Options problem in terms that will let people know you have some idea about the problem Below is an actual thread from the OpenOffice org e mail list The original poster OP wants to know how to create two numbered lists both starting with 1 He does not state what if anything he has done to research the problem but has nevertheless received a helpful response For those not familiar with e mail and newsgroup quoting the gt gt refers to the original post The gt refers to the response It apparently worked or the thread would have continued until the issue was resolved gt gt I m using 1 9 71 1 gt gt gt gt How do get Writer to restart numbering with 1 when gt gt after a line or more with a style that is not the gt gt numbering style gt gt Format gt Paragraph gt Numbering tab gt Restart at this paragraph checkbox Thanks Because time is frequently a factor in getting help you may be interested to know that the response to the OP took 25 minutes about how long you might expect to sit on hold while waiting for a Support technician using paid technical support options The Original poster responded an hour later with the Thanks message Such a post suggests to the audience that you have researched your problem and are
40. what the FOSS community is asking In one case the FOSS community simply wanted to be allowed to distribute the driver binaries with their operating system distribution A well designed e mail campaign helped convince the manufacturer to release the drivers to the community It is important to note that while many devices will work with GNU Linux you will do well to note a few observations regarding certain devices It is also important to understand that some devices may require a bit of tweaking in order to get them working correctly It isn t necessarily a big deal but it might cause confusion initially Let s consider some of the different types of hardware that could trip up some users I ve installed several monitors with GNU Linux without a hitch recommend getting to know your monitor s specifications to be safe Most GNU Linux installation programs offer the opportunity to test your settings before making them final SUSE s Yast also allows you to adjust the width and height of the display frame GNU Linux can handle most monitors very well If you still rely on a dial up modem you may need to change yours The typical internal modem that comes with a Windows system is not likely to work with GNU Linux They are software controlled which makes them cheaper but also slower and OS specific In spite of the fact that GNU Linux is improving support for Win modems you ll be better off with an external hardware contro
41. 8 Web Sites General Information The Free Software Foundation Open Source Initiative The Free Standards Group Creative Commons Filesystem Hierarchy Standard Linux On Line Linux Central Linux International Linux Hardware Net Linux Hardware Org Linux Hardware Compatibility List Distribution Websites DistroWatch Novell SUSE Linux Red Hat Mandrake Debian Xandros Linspire Slackware Gentoo Morphix Ubuntu Mepis FreeBSD OpenBSD NetBSD Resources www fsforg www opensource org www freestandards org www creativecommons org www pathname com ths www linux org www linuxcentral com www li org www linuxhardware net www linuxhardware org www tidp org HOWT O Hardware HOWTO www distrowatch com www novell com www redhat com www mandrakesoft com www debian org www xandros com www linspire com www slackware org www gentoo org www morphix org www ubuntu org www mepis com www freebsd org www openbsd org www netbsd org 109 Help Sites The Linux Documentation Project Just Linux Linux Questions OOod MSO differences Applications Appgen s My Books Code Weavers Scribus Info Central Lyricue OpenLP OpenSong CrossWire Sword Project Security Sites Linux Security Privoxy DansGuardian Prices www tldp org www justlinux org www linuxquestions org http documentation OpenOffice org manuals www appgen com www codeweavers com www scribus net www infoce
42. 9 2 during a football game one Saturday afternoon got the installation started and went off and watched the game checking on it from time to time installed five gigabytes of software out of seven gigabytes on my PC that day and the game was just about over when the process finished Of course that is not a typical setup for a business environment made a lot of custom choices which impacted the time involved This should give an idea of the amount of software available for GNU Linux In another case installed the Ubuntu distribution on an old machine running a Pentium II 450MHz processor in just over an hour It connects to my SUSE network just fine It s only a single CD but still has OpenOffice org and Firefox It s an extremely easy distribution to use Be aware that root access is disabled by default with most system tasks being performed via a special command sudo for those interested Just enter your user password to gain access to the commands Most standard GNU Linux installations can be completed in one or two hours including the application software Some installations take less time than that Most proprietary operating systems do not include the additional software Like the toy ads say all other accessories sold separately After purchasing all the additional 52 The Cost Challenge software you have to install it which generally takes 30 minutes to an hour per program For those system administrat
43. Administering Linux Author s Linda McKinnon Publisher John Wiley amp Sons Linux The Complete Reference Complete Reference Author s Richard Petersen Publisher Osborne McGraw Hill Linux Administration A Beginner s Guide Author s Steve Shah Publisher McGraw Hill Professional Publishing 107 Resources Linux in the Workplace Author s Publishers of Linux Journal Publisher No Starch Press Professional Linux Deployment Author s Michael Boerner Publisher Wrox Press Inc StarOffice for Linux Bible Author s Jacek Artymiak Publisher IDG Books Worldwide Magazines amp Internet Media Penguin Magazine Format Web based Cover Price no charge The Newbie Friendly online Magazine for Linux users Sys Admin Publisher Miller Freeman Format Web based and print Cover Price Yearly subscriptions available for 39 00 A journal for UNIX system administrators Linux Magazine Publisher Linux Magazine Format Print Cover Price Yearly subscriptions available for 34 95 Monthly magazine available via subscription or on select news stands Linux Journal Publisher Specialized Systems Consultants Format Print Cover Price Yearly subscriptions available for 22 00 Monthly magazine available via subscription or on select news stands Linux Gazette Publisher Specialized Systems Consultants Format Downloadable tar gzip file Cover Price no charge Monthly e zine SearchEnterpriseLinux com 10
44. C is a fun way to chat live over the Internet Users not familiar with IRC will need an IRC client and connect to Freenode From there it is simply a matter of typicing freely to join the channel With members spread around the world users will likely find someone on freely nearly anytime of the day The IRC Help Homepage www irchelp org offers help in getting started with IRC Freely members often try out applications that could be useful to ministries and offer evaluations of them in the forums The Freely Project recently connected with TechMission and will soon distribute their free software CD based on the GNU CD Freely has been featured in articles on NewsForge and SearchEnterpriseLinux com Ben Thorp Freely s webmaster lives in Scotland and works for IBM When he s not busy managing Freely he s usually tinkering with various GNU Linux distributions and applications He is also moderator of one of the forums at JustLinux org Open Source Ministry is a web forum where technology and ministry meet Ministry leaders can work with technologists to solve problems While OS Ministry members tend to be more Windows oriented the idea of GNU Linux and open source software in general is very much alive OS Ministry offers news about the Christian FOSS community and about open source software in general especially as it pertains to the community 96 The Christian FOSS Movement OS Ministry is headed by Bob Brown a Florida
45. Development KDE Help Center Languages o clisp A Common Lisp inter jmk d The cross platform m gt o PHP documentation o python doc Python Documentatia o Python Libraries alsa docs ALSA documentation o bit Tk extension o Linux Kernel Module Guide Pt 1 t The Linux Kernel Moc 8 se Illustration 1 The KDE Help Center These desktop help systems generally offer user guides for the desktop and for applications that are specifically designed to run on that desktop Getting help with KDE applications is a matter of using the help menu and often brings up the KDE help system Other applications use a help menu on their menu bar and tend to offer their own built in utility for displaying the help information 66 Support Options Every program can be run from a command line On a Windows computer with Microsoft WordPad or any program you can switch to the appropriate directory where WordPad is located and type in the correct command to launch it So try something similar to this C Program Files Windows NT Accessories wordpad You can add options such as a document name to the command and have WordPad open a document at launch time All commands regardless of the operating system have options and switches you can use to change the default behavior of the command The way the command runs by itself is its defau t behavior Consider an example using the ps command from GNU Linux
46. Gedeniers ee edeean ne eiaeys 8 So ldentifying the ISSUCS lisma a a a a a 12 Ae Truly Freg C Onn Putin ae seed eye el sled ce eee ue ua tata aaa E AEE 16 5 The Hardware Compatibility Challenge c ceeeeeceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeenneeeeeeeeees 25 6 The Interoperability Challenge cceceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaeaaaaeeaeeaeeaeeeeeeeeeeeeees 28 7 The Usability CMa len Ge wisn ini cersiensasiatincresecs ste netieeseeay sds nino ebe uneven ee 32 8 The Gost Challeng iania a v2 snare lo a ae sae abs i a a a eases 43 Oz System RESOUrCE S as asaina eiennenn naaa a Aaa athe Aptech ed aE EET EAE aA ace 55 10 S pport OPT ONS v3 18 5 cach cent anaes i a a a a a E iaa 64 11 Free and Open Source Software for the Church 0 cccceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees 72 Te IVIG FANON Strategies ie a Lecce canst at coatee chet aE mala gsat atone 82 13 GNU Linux BaCkGrounG iis 2203 eo ecco ccs canaiatnevcas cut anus vhesucuecestapenenreaesuane ts 92 14 The Christian FOSS Movemen cc cccceeeeeeccceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaeeeeeeeeeeteeeeeas 95 15 The Guide to GNU Linux Distributions eee eee eee ee eet eeeeeeeeeeeeeee 103 16 RESOUNO Siei sce er tuna ett tate tion atin o eee sie ded wages a gh SEEEN ema 107 GOS SAN Y sere cscs ch ete wares ect ac tee ee State eae bea tates a aa aE E a ten EEEa 113 The Open Source DENTON sis oe cectiteesee eases Neat eda hte eee ease 115 The GNU General Public License GPL ccecceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetee
47. H mi m TA D WrPPrDHR ZK GI UO H wn J E mi WwW END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs If you develop a new program and you want it to be of the greatest possible use to the public the best way to achieve this is to make it free software which everyone can redistribute and change under thes terms To do so attach the following notices to the program It is safest to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively convey the exclusion of warranty and each file should have at least the copyright line and a pointer to where the full notice is found One line to give the program s name and a brief idea of what it does Copyright C lt year gt lt name of author gt This program is free software you can redistribute it and or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation either version 2 of the License or at your option any later version This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY without even the implied warranty of MER CHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE See the GNU General Public License for more details You should have received a copy of the G
48. INDEPENDENT WORKS A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate 134 Resources and independent documents or works in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium is called an aggregate if the copyright result ing from the compilation is not used to limit the legal rights of the compilation s users beyond what the individual works permit When the Document is included in an aggregate this License does not apply to the other works in the aggregate which are not themselves derivative works of the Document If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these copies of the Document then if the Document is less than one half of th ntire aggregate the Document s Cover Texts may be placed on cov ers that bracket the Document within the aggregate or the electronic equivalent of covers if the Document is in electronic form Otherwise they must appear on printed covers that bracket the whole aggregat 8 TRANSLATION Translation is considered a kind of modification so you may distribute translations of the Document under the terms of section 4 Replacing Invariant Sections with translations requires special permission from their copyright holders but you may include translations of some or all Invariant Sections in addition to the original versions of these Invariant Sections You may include a translation of this License and all the license notices in t
49. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners A portion of the author s royalties are given to support the free and open source advocacy ministry of Oakdale Christian Fellowship Written by Donald C Parris Oakdale Christian Fellowship evangelinux matheteuo org or don parris thefreelyproject org Front Cover by Stanley Petrowski Volunteer Editorial Team Stan Glasoe John Lamb Vince Littler Mike McMullen James Pryor Version 2 0 Copyright 2004 2005 by Donald C Parris Permission is granted to copy distribute and or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License Version 1 2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation with no Invariant Sections no Front Cover Texts and no Back Cover Texts A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License Dedication To the entire MIS Staff of National Gypsum Company especially Gary Potts who so patiently answered my questions in the beginning And to To Ben Bob Linc amp Tim my co laborers in Christ Table of Contents Foreword To The Second Gio sy 2e cccceees evcases mises Agee eee eee geass iv ADout TAIS BOOK ieee te ea a E a eee aa eel eae alone vii 1 A Little Background for Non Techies cccecceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeteeeeeeeeeeeeee 1 2 A Legal and Moral Dilerimac ss ssstten ccarneee desunti dene Giitadecte
50. NU General Public License along with this program if not write to the Free Software Foundation Inc 59 Temple Place Suite 330 Boston MA 02111 1307 USA Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail If the program is interactive make it output a short notice like this when it starts in an interactive mode 123 Resources Gnomovision version 69 Copyright C year name of author Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY for details type show w This is free software and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions type show c for details The hypothetical commands show w and show c should show the appro priate parts of the General Public License Of course the commands you use may be called something other than show w and show c they could even be mouse clicks or menu items whatever suits your program You should also get your employer if you work as a programmer or your school if any to sign a copyright disclaimer for the program if necessary Here is a sample alter the names Yoyodyne Inc hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program Gnomovision which makes passes at compilers written by James Hacker Signature of Ty Coon 1 April 1989 Ty Coon President of Vice This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs If your program is a subroutine library you may
51. O WARRAN TY FOR THE PROGRAM TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW EXCE EN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND OR OTHE RTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM AS IS WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND E ER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED RANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE THE TIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH U SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL ECESSARY SERVICING REPAIR OR CORRECTION U KJ gal E ASHvs OZDPTPE Pal N H zZ NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRIT NG WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND OR RIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAM INCLUDING ANY GENERAL SPECIAL INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAM RISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM INCLUDING UT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR OSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES T t Q Q
52. Unlike Luke these were eyewitnesses Stili Luke W Perso THE AUTHOR S APOLOGY seems to be addressing a specific enquiry from Theophilus and here affirms what he and others FOR HIS BOOK have been taught WHEN at the first I took my pen in hand ri P Eme tw sibe Did ed z Illustration 1 BibleTime with ASV Josephus Pilgrim s Progress and the personal commentary One can use the Settings menu in BibleTime shown above to launch the Sword configuration utility From there the click of a button will connect you to the Sword Project website where you can choose a Bible commentary or other module to install To use the personal commentary simply right click on it in the module pane and select whether to edit it using plain text or HTML You don t have to know HTML BibleTime just displays it as such The Flashcards project is useful for advanced Bible students laypeople and clergy alike Use it to memorize Biblical Greek words A number of the folks on the e mail lists use and love Flashcards Because it is Java based it will run on any computer with Java installed This is highly advantageous when you run one operating system at the church and another at home Thus regardless of what operating system you use you ll always 73 Free and Open Source Software for the Church have a decent open source Bible study application available to you Some publishers have not made their works available and thus such tools
53. a Master of Theology degree from Lighthouse Christian College and leads OakDale formerly Matheteuo Christian Fellowship a house church in Charlotte North Carolina Don previously operated The Parris Group a computer services firm He is an advanced mostly self taught user of Windows 3 11 XP and GNU Linux Red Hat Mandrake amp SUSE He has been using GNU Linux since the days of Red Hat 5 2 Don has been busy advocating the use of free and open source software in Christian ministries He works closely with The Freely Project and Open Source Ministry on advocacy issues He has contributed a small amount of documentation to the JSword project and designed CHADDB the Church Administration Database He is available as a speaker for various ministries interested in using free and open source software He has a little desktop publishing experience including poetry and essays souvenir booklets a course catalog for a new Bible college a church newsletter and personalized gift items in conjunction with a local poet
54. akes it perfect for setting up a demonstration CD featuring a particular application set Morphix can be installed as well 105 The Guide to GNU Linux Distributions Mepis Mepis is a Debian based distribution perhaps best known for its hardware support and ease of use It is a commercial distribution but users can still download the base ISO images for free In reality the fee for Mepis is very reasonable Ubuntu Ubuntu is based on Morphix and is meant to be very easy to install One can install Ubuntu on a relatively slow 450 MHz computer in just one hour It will attempt to connect to the Internet and update itself Quite a few people run Ubuntu on laptops as it is so easy and offers most of the basic software they use By default this distribution will overwrite your hard drive during installation which is a bit unusual Just be careful to manually partition your hard drive if you want to leave Windows on your system Gentoo Gentoo named for the breed of penguins is a very different GNU Linux system Gentoo is designed to provide users with a system optimized for their specific hardware It is notoriously slow to install but once complete offers unbridled speed and excellent Stability Gentoo uses a tool called Portage which both maintains and builds software packages for your PC Apologetix Apologetix is another Morphix derivative albeit headed up by a Christian from Mississippi This distribution is in developmen
55. ale 109 00 Total 3 021 00 Total 4 782 00 An alternative approach taken by many churches is to use Microsoft Office Professional which includes Access and QuickBooks as their financial management software Access is probably ok for smaller churches as far as proprietary software goes While it eliminates the cost of the church management software the cost of including Access could be higher especially when you consider multiple copies In this case the financial comparison would look more like the table on the next page 47 The Cost Challenge Windows Upgrade Windows Full Windows XP Pro 950 00 Windows XP Pro 1 400 00 Office Pro 2003 1 645 00 Office SB 2003 2 250 00 QuickBooks Pro 600 00 QuickBooks Pro 750 00 Easy Worship 428 00 Easy Worship 428 00 Finale 109 00 Finale 109 00 Total 3 732 00 Total 4 937 00 The additional cost of the Professional edition of Microsoft Office Small Business edition does not include Access plus the cost of QuickBooks raises the bar even higher Appgen s MyBooks commercial software offers a 10 user license for only 800 a mere 50 more than the 5 user license for QuickBooks Professional A single user MyBooks license is a mere 60 For those interested MyBooks GNU Linux runs on Windows and Mac systems as well as on A completely free alternative to MyBooks for GNU Linux Systems is GnuCash GnuCash includes a payroll fu
56. all Business 2003 from the previous version while the other is migrating from their current office suite to OpenOffice org 2 0 If one assumes no productivity during the two week transition at a rate of 15 hour per employee the cost of migrating is obviously higher than the cost of upgrading to the next version of the current office suite However the cost of migrating to OpenOffice org 2 0 is reduced by the fact that some productive work will be accomplished during that time In fact users may lose no more than a couple of hours of productivity per week during the transition period After that they will be back up to full productivity Even at a loss of 25 productivity 100 man hours over the two week period the cost is 1500 MS Office SB 2003 Upgrade 1395 OpenOffice org 2 0 0 MS Office SB 2003 Full 2250 0 Production 6000 97 Production 180 90 Production 600 75 Production 1500 MS Office SB 200x Upgrade 1395 OpenOffice org 0 97 Production 180 97 Production 180 The upgrade might be cheaper short term but not necessarily In the long term however OpenOffice org will still be 0 00 and by the next version users will be more than comfortable with it Meanwhile your organization will again have to pay out hundreds or thousands of dollars for the next proprietary upgrade 44 The Cost Challenge The scenario above only involves an office suite The diff
57. alliance in the face of a largely proprietary software arena There is certainly more to the story than could possibly tell here You can explore the depths of GNU Linux on your own Hopefully this little bit of insight into GNU Linux will encourage you to do just that 94 The Christian FOSS Movement 14 THE CHRISTIAN FOSS MOVEMENT What most church leaders may not know is that there is a growing community of Christians committed to developing using and supporting free and open source software In the community of hundreds of men and women from various countries and denominational affiliations you will find Information Technology professionals as well as non technical users There is a community of Christians ready willing and able to welcome and support their fellow believers Many of the free and open source software projects for the Church have been around for some time Thousands of people have been using these programs from their beginnings Yet finding these projects has not been easy Even if you know where to search and the terms to use you could overlook some of the projects That has changed dramatically A few of the Christian FOSS community s websites have been mentioned throughout this book We ll get to know these a little better We ll also discover a few more sites that have not yet been mentioned The community has no format structure and yet there is a collaborative effort among the members of all the we
58. as a 98 The Christian FOSS Movement technological Old Testament in which they are bound by the strictures of tradition Either way free and open source software represents the technological Promised Land and the freedom that such deliverance entails If one sees the traditional EULA as similar in nature to the Old Testament and the GNU General Public License as similar in nature to the New Testament is that wrong Some Christians do see these software licenses in precisely such terms On two separate occasions in the Gospels Jesus healed a person on the Sabbath Luke 6 13 In both cases His acts stirred the anger of the Old Guard It was the Pharisees and Teachers not the common people who were trying to trap Jesus The established leaders sought to maintain their authority So too today s Pharisees are the corporate power mongers And Christians need to ask the question is it lawful or unlawful to help my neighbor It should be apparent that Jesus was not advocating that we be open for business on the Sabbath Yet helping our neighbors is a fundamental natural law The typical EULA destroys the balance intended by the United States Constitution and makes helping others a crime Some Christians along with their secular counterparts argue that all software regardless of the license involved is neutral Others counter that any license that prohibits access to the underlying source restricts free access to information
59. as now become its own list again It has a different character and seems to be mostly American in nature though a few folks of other nationalities are also part of the list Discussions tend to be less political and somewhat less technical than the CS FSLUG list L4C members have been behind efforts to develop a Christian oriented GNU Linux distribution The man behind the Christian Linux Live CD project recently put the project on the shelf to focus on his family Apologetix which appears to be a Morphix based distribution seems to be progressing slowly Lyricue s developer created a Morphix CD with the lyrics projection project L4C is moderated by Linc Fessenden a former pastor in Michigan Linc is currently the UNIX editor for TechChristian com a Christian technical news portal 97 The Christian FOSS Movement The various application projects also have communities of their own Since we have discussed these in Chapter 11 it is not necessary to repeat that information here You will find their web forums and e mail lists within their respective web pages The Philosophical Debate While Christians have been involved in the free and open source from the onset and the movement has grown we need to be aware that not all Christians are motivated by the ideological motives that have inspired Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation Some believers see definite parallels between free software and spiritual freedom Others simp
60. ation of the three merge those two alternatives to suit the situa tion If your document contains nontrivial examples of program code we rec ommend releasing these examples in parallel under your choice of free software license such as the GNU General Public License to permit their use in free software 136 Resources Index A Applications Financial GnuCash 35 41 45 51 52 MyBooks QuickBooks 57 Quicken 45 51 35 45 51 35 45 51 33 35 41 42 C Christian FOSS Community Christian FOSS community 2 4 98 99 ChristianSource Free Software and Linux Users Group 74 100 Linux 4 Christians 74 100 The Freely Project 49 73 74 94 99 Christians 1 2 4 15 67 68 73 75 86 98 103 Churches 1 5 9 13 17 42 48 53 58 67 73 75 77 78 81 92 93 101 104 112 Client server 8 9 Client Server 114 CLient Server Computing Clients 3 9 41 114 Servers 8 9 19 37 45 56 61 65 91 95 Workstations 9 91 113 114 Consortium Free Software 59 D Deacon 13 14 Distributions 1 7 18 19 29 30 39 52 56 58 62 65 66 69 71 73 88 90 91 93 95 99 104 105 108 Linspire 28 49 54 92 101 106 110 Mandrake Linux 8 0 13 SUSE 28 30 33 34 43 50 52 55 57 65 69 70 90 96 105 110 113 SUSE Linux Open Exchange Server 9 96 Xandros 34 52 54 90 106 110 113 E E Mail Thunderbird 1 44 45 88 89 94 F Filesystem 2 9 43 59 61 65 93 110
61. ber If the Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this License or any later version applies to it you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that specified version or of any later version that has been published not as a draft by the Free Software Foundation If the Document does not specify a version number of this License you may choose any version ever published not as a draft by the Free Software Foundation ADDENDUM How to use this License for your documents To use this License in a document you have written include a copy of the License in the document and put the following copyright and license notices just after the title pag Copyright c YEAR YOUR NAME Permission is granted to copy distribute and or modify this doc ument under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License Version 1 2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation with no Invariant Sections no Front Cover Texts and no Back Cover Texts A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License Gl If you have Invariant Sections Front Cover Texts and Back Cover Texts replace the with Texts line with this with the Invariant Sections being LIST THEIR TITLES with the Front Cover Texts being LIST and with the Back Cover Texts being LIST If you have Invariant Sections without Cover Texts or some other com bin
62. bsites to accomplish various projects We ll examine the philosophical debate as it exists within the Christian Community It exists in the larger secular community as well The debate is much the same regardless of one s faith or lack thereof Thus it makes the most sense to view the debate as it applies to Christians This author s own viewpoint should be quite clear Enlightening debate is most welcome We ll also consider how Christians might come together to help make free and open source software an even better alternative to the standard proprietary fare While developers are needed in 95 The Christian FOSS Movement several areas even non developers can participate in a big way If you can write simple instructions share a program with a friend or actively help others after learning a bit yourself you can contribute to the community Christian FOSS Websites The Freely Project is working to change this While Freely has a help desk members of this web forum are organizing at the local level both for advocacy and for technical support Members are Starting to act as local coordinators to help spread the word to Christians in their own areas Some are simply working to develop marketing materials And some are reaching out to local Linux Users Groups to find others willing to help provide technical support locally The freely Project offers an Internet Relay Chat IRC channel on the well known Freenode IRC service IR
63. ce Code License The term Source Code means the preferred form of the Original Work for making modifications to it and all available documentation de scribing how to modify the Original Work Licensor hereby agrees to provide a machine readable copy of the Source Code of the Original Work along with each copy of the Original Work that Licensor distributes Licensor reserves the right to satisfy this obliga tion by placing a machine readable copy of the Source Code in an information repository reasonably calculated to permit inexpensive and convenient access by You for as long as Licensor continues to distribute the Original Work and by publishing the address of that information repository in a notice immediately following the copyright notice that ap plies to the Original Work 4 Exclusions From License Grant Neither the names of Licensor nor the names of any contributors to the Original Work nor any of their trademarks or service marks may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this Original Work without express prior written permission of the Licensor Nothing in this License shall be deemed to grant any rights to trademarks copyrights patents trade secrets or any other intellectual prop erty of Licensor except as expressly stated herein No patent license is granted to make use sell or offer to sell embodiments of any patent claims other than the licensed claims defined in Section 2 No right is granted to the trademarks of
64. ce it to say that you will likely want most of the software mentioned in this book GNU Linux distributions tend to offer multiple programs for a single task The goal is to offer you the choice It is not necessary to install multiple office suites or database servers Ordinarily either OpenOffice org or KOffice will work Since KOffice is almost always installed by default you may want to de select it and ensure that OpenOffice org is selected The same rule applies to most other software included on the installation media You don t have to install everything but you can in most cases if you want to One case where you cannot install multiple programs is that of your printing system Here you can use either the old UNIX system Ip or CUPS CUPS should be the default option these days and is what you will want to use CUPS is a modern printing system that supports far more hardware than the old system There may be situations where the old system offers advantages but you will need to check up on that CUPS is best for most people Hardware Upgrade Approach Some ministries will find it makes more sense to migrate to GNU Linux when they upgrade their hardware next This is a very sensible approach as ministries can specify GNU Linux compatible hardware and prepare staff and volunteers in advance It is also ideal as the church can rely on a knowledgeable vendor to install the operating system thus receiving a turn key solution
65. changes where appropriate would be an excellent way to help them get the feel of the new office suite Actually installing OpenOffice org can be accomplished at the same time as Firefox and Thunderbird However doing so could throw your users a bit more of a curve ball than they re ready for You could give your more adventurous users both the new Internet tools and the new office suite at the same time Some though will find too much new stuff a little overwhelming After your users have gotten used to the Windows based free and open source applications you can begin to introduce the new operating system They will need to get used to the virtual desktops as well as mounting and un mounting removable media You will want to show them little tricks like switching consoles and so forth The time line for a gradual migration could be up to a year depending on your situation would suggest letting your users spend about a month or two with Firefox and Thunderbird before adding OpenOffice org In the second or third month add OpenOffice org and give users another three to six months with it Optionally you could run OpenOffice org next to Microsoft Office for a short period and then remove the latter after a few months In about the eighth or ninth month you can begin installing a pure GNU Linux environment albeit for one user at a time Since GNU Linux works across the network with Windows computers this is the be
66. closing up software by indirect means such as requiring a non disclosure agreement 116 Resources 8 License Must Not Be Specific to a Product The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program s being part of a particular software distribution If the program is extracted from that distribution and used or distributed within the terms of the program s license all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in con junction with the original software distribution Rationale This clause forecloses yet another class of license traps 9 License Must Not Restrict Other Software The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software For example the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open source software Rationale Distributors of open source software have the right to make their own choices about their own software Yes the GPL is conformant with this requirement Software linked with GPLed libraries only inherits the GPL if it forms a single work not any software with which they are merely distributed 10 License Must Be Technology Neutral No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface Rationale This provision is aimed specifically aimed at licenses which require an explicit gesture of as sent in
67. ct one of the surest signs that your ministry needs to migrate is when migration costs a great deal more than upgrading With Windows there is only one vendor Microsoft The dozens of GNU Linux vendors must compete in a stiff race for your business Mind you Red Hat administrators might need a little time to adapt to SUSE s Yast but overall your users will see pretty much the same desktop tools they ve been using In other words once you migrate from Windows to any GNU Linux distribution you can migrate to any other distribution you want without further re learning Migrating your data from one GNU Linux distribution to another is merely a matter of copying it to the new system OpenOffice org running on Fedora Core is pretty much the same as OpenOffice org running on SUSE Linux So it is with other applications Even changing desktop environments is not such a big challenge as the core system remains the same 45 The Cost Challenge If Novell starts slipping in their service or the quality of their SUSE Linux distribution your ministry has plenty of options available Red Hat s Fedora Core is the de facto standard in the United States Mandrake Xandros and Linspire provide additional alternatives and there are others besides Unfortunately proprietary software makes migration a much more difficult and costly challenge than it needs to be This leads to what many refer to as vendor lock in Organizations experienc
68. ction for GNU Linux systems is significantly smaller These applications are the least likely to look like their Windows based counterparts That said the applications available are very interesting and often pretty innovative KTouch and Tux are two typing tutors that work very well and are aimed as much at children as adults KDE and GNOME include a number of educational programs that Span a broad range of knowledge Geometry astronomy languages and even programming GCompris is a general skills builder for children aged 2 10 that makes use of story boards Keduca allows parents and teachers including Bible teachers to make up quizzes for students Most of the programs available for education are well designed and provide a level of sophistication not seen in many proprietary packages Multimedia is an area where GNU Linux can excel The familiar Real Player program runs on GNU Linux Audacity is used to record worship services and other audio tracks in a number of churches Broadcast 2000 and Main Actor let folks produce high quality video clips XMMS is a theme able CD MP3 player similar to WinAmp And yes you can watch T V with one of several GNU Linux applications on your T V tuner card Some of the installation configuration and maintenance tasks might pose more of a challenge especially to non technical users Even so in many cases the real difficulty lies in the unwillingness to adapt to the new system If you under
69. e a basic copy of several distributions While the Guide to GNU Linux Distributions section in the back of this book will help you further here are a few thoughts about choosing your distribution Fedora Core Linpsire Mandrake SUSE and Xandros Desktop appear to be the best options for most new users Debian and Slackware will be more suitable for the technically inclined and the skilled users Morphix and Ubuntu offer the strengths of Debian along with the ease of installation of the other distributions You will almost certainly want to decide on a single workstation setup for all users Aside from limiting how much software you need to install a unified setup will simplify technical support issues If you want to give users a choice in which desktop they ll use you can involve them in the desktop trials giving them a chance to play with different desktop environments such as KDE GNOME and XFce With your choice of distribution and desktop made you only need to select the various software packages to install Most distributions offer the option to setup a simple workstation during the installation process In many cases you will want to 87 Migration Strategies choose the detailed package selection mode to install individual packages that you know you want You will need to do some research to determine which packages you want as it would be difficult to describe the thousands of programs included in most distributions Suffi
70. e distribution may impact its license The table on the following page will make things somewhat clearer 21 Truly Free Computing Rights Granted by Proprietary amp Open Licenses Use lor Study Modify Redistribut Release Release any udy odify edistribute Open Closed purpose Public Domain X X X X X X Commercial i X Proprietary Share Ware xe Proprietary Free ware x Proprietary Free Software Commercial and x x x x x Non Commercial Open Source Commercial and x x x x x x Non Commercial Only the un registered copies may be redistributed The table above reveals that there is very little real difference between the typical open source licenses and public domain software The only difference lies in the copyright statement Free software adds a restriction that prevents a future developer from adding restrictions to the modified version The idea is that the software is kept free for every user Open source advocates suggest that the developer has the right to determine how to release his software something the GPL prevents In other words an open source license allows the developer to take code that has been released to the community as free open software and make a proprietary derivative Thus the developer is given the right to restrict other people s freedom even though he has benefited from that very freedom It truly makes littl
71. e may even be some Red Hat Certified Engineers in your local area The Red Hat certification is highly respected and sought after Red Hat developed the Red Hat Package Management RPM in use by a number of GNU Linux distributions and focuses on the GNOME desktop environment Mandrake Mandrake Linux is a French distribution that is also pretty popular in the the United States Mandrake like Red Hat is an RPM based distribution albeit with a focus on the KDE desktop Mandrake offers a variety of solutions for a wide range of users and especially aims for the Linux newbie market folks who are unfamiliar with GNU Linux Mandrake also recently joined forces with Connectiva Linux the Brazilian GNU Linux distribution vendor SUSE SUSE was a German company until Novell purchased them Novell offers SUSE Linux to both the enterprise market and the SOHO market SUSE Linux Professional is the SOHO edition and is inexpensive enough for most home users Novell has recently released the Novell Linux Desktop a new corporate workstation distribution SUSE is another very popular distribution that is respected for its security and its support for a wide range of hardware 104 The Guide to GNU Linux Distributions Slackware Slackware is considered to be the first GNU Linux distribution It is perhaps the only one managed by a single individual Slackware tends to attract the more experienced users though they manage to entic
72. e operating system by its kernel GNU Linux is said to be a UNIX like operating system While it is not recognized by the standards body that defines UNIX systems it does adhere to the UNIX standards and is like UNIX in nearly every respect Unlike Windows or Mac which have only one form GNU Linux and BSD exist in a variety of flavors or distributions There are in fact over 330 active GNU Linux distributions Some GNU Linux distributions serve the general purposes of most home and business uses Many of these are specialized toward a specific purpose such as firewalls or evaluation CDs that people can run without installing the operating system on their computer The live CD let s users get a feel for a GNU Linux system s capabilities Other distributions are geared towards hobbyists who want to learn how GNU Linux works BSD is actually UNIX and this author knows of at least three or four main variants The best known FreeBSD OpenBSD and NetBSD There are at least six other BSD distributions out there You may be interested to know that FreeBSD is the underlying system for the easy to use Mac OS X Microsoft uses FreeBSD servers for some of its websites as well MSN or Hotmail used to be hosted on BSD These operating systems were designed from the ground up to serve as multi user systems capable of operating in a network environment Many applications programs typically used by end users exist for GNU and BSD From office
73. e sense to develop proprietary software In fact that is what the Open Source Initiative www opensource org argues Even so Apple s Mac OS X is based on FreeBSD butis a closed source system Other than guaranteeing the developer s right to restrict others freedom and to take without giving back there seems to be little real value in the open source concept One may as well release code into the public domain 22 Truly Free Computing As mentioned previously most proprietary licenses restrict the use of a program to a single copy of the software used by the user on a single computer Other restrictions may involve educational or non commercial uses For instance many freeware programs are only free gratis for non commercial use FOSS licenses make no such restrictions It should be noted especially for consultants who work with religious and non profit organizations the terms free and open do not rule out the ability to profit from your labors Developers can write software and sell it all day long The Free Software Foundation sells quite a bit of software and with quite a price tag on it Red Hat a Raleigh North Carolina based company learned how to profit from free and open source software Most organizations sell the technical expertise which is the biggest cost associated with software anyway Some developers don t want their competitors to have access to their source code The ironic thing is that
74. e some of the newbies as well Slackware has a long and noble history and should Xandros Desktop The folks behind Xandros used to be the developers behind the now defunct Corel Linux They took Debian GNU Linux customized it heavily to look a lot like Windows and have put a tremendous amount of effort into getting it to work pretty much like a Windows system Because it is Debian underneath it offers most of the advantages of that system albeit minus some of the issues that could trouble some new users Linspire Linspire used to be known as Lindows and is very much like Xandros Linspire however is aimed more at the home user market and offers a high level of compatibility with Windows multi media formats Linspire offers a wide range of commercial options and makes a great choice for home and SOHO users Linspire is sold pre installed on computers through Wal Mart s website Knoppix Knoppix is a live CD distribution based on Debian The idea is that it runs from the CD thus making it easy for users to get a feel for GNU Linux without installing it to their hard drive Users who like it can then install it Some Windows administrators keep a copy around to help them rescue their Windows systems Morphix Morphix is based on Knoppix but allows users to customize the distribution to suit their needs For instance users can choose between GNOME KDE and Xfce oriented CD images Users can customize the apps they use which m
75. e the cost of a migration you probably should seek to do it yourself Even so remember that you are investing in your computing future meaning it may be worth the extra cost in the long run As mentioned in the beginning of this book some people seem to think that getting an expert opinion from someone on their job is all the answer they need However most of the IT experts know are Windows experts who know little or nothing about GNU Linux Guys with far more experience than have in information technology are lost when I speak of NFS the Network filesystem It s not that they re stupid they just don t have experience with GNU Linux Look for someone who does have experience with GNU Linux While you certainly want the more mature folks in the crowd don t 90 Migration Strategies discount that teen ager who runs GNU Linux at home One of the volunteers with The Freely Project Help Desk is a 16 year old who is more knowledgeable about GNU Linux than a number of the so called IT experts who really are only Windows experts This is truly an important issue While most Windows technicians will be able to better grasp the differences between GNU Linux and Windows many simply cannot tell you whether you should or should not migrate to GNU Linux Most of them don t even know what applications and utilities exist for GNU Linux Yet many people rely on their advice to make a decision about whether or not to migrate
76. e truth is that most attacks are aimed at proprietary systems with vulnerabilities even though they represent less than half of the servers on the Internet Frankly the bully concept comes to mind Most bullies attack weak people because they are weak and vulnerable not because they are popular In other words malware writers attack legacy operating systems because they can One would hope that the typical church or human services ministry would not need to worry about being exploited by local users However administrators cannot rule out the possibility of that happening Not only do policies need to be established and implemented to help control access to sensitive information administrators should be aware of a few issues pertaining to local system access By default Microsoft Windows allows normal users write access to the whole filesystem including the system directories Whenever users click on the system folder in Windows Explorer a message is displayed warning that important files are stored herein and giving you the option to continue This means that anyone can drop a malicious file into the system directory although it is generally not even necessary so long as the user that runs the malicious code has access While the permissions can be changed the default is usually accepted by administrators GNU Linux on the other hand does allow read access to system directories but not write access The only person who has write
77. e vendor lock in when they become trapped in a forced upgrade cycle Typically they need bug fixes security patches technical support or new software that is unsupported on their current software The answer from the software vendor is to upgrade Also some vendors distribute software that requires an upgrade after a certain period of time Hardware Costs Hardware should not impact costs much at all most common devices already work well Once you ve checked to ensure your current hardware will work with GNU Linux and made any necessary adjustments for hardware that may need to be replaced then you can take it from there In most cases GNU Linux would improve a computer s life as mentioned previously Printers and wireless network cards will need to be examined most closely One simple solution here is to upgrade the software when you purchase new hardware At that point you can choose hardware that you know will work well with GNU Linux If you upgrade hardware on a piecemeal basis the GNU Linux system can work with any current Windows systems until you upgrade the rest A good opportunity would be to purchase a computer with Linspire from a retailer like Wal Mart In short the need to purchase new hardware is minimal One point related to hardware is that because GNU Linux is often available for free gratis ministries could purchase more and or better hardware than they could if they chose to use expensive proprietary so
78. eck Google as a Starting point E Mail Lists amp Web Forums Users have three options when it comes to asking questions telephone support from their distribution vendor e mail lists and web forums In most cases telephone technical support is included by commercial distributions to cover installation of the GNU Linux operating system Beyond that you re best bet is typically to turn to e mail lists or list servs and web forums Knowing how to ask the questions is every bit as important as knowing where to ask them The response time is not the same as if you pick up the phone but it is a great deal cheaper and frequently the help is at least as good if not better than the phone support Sometimes it is even faster Typically though you should expect a 24 hour turn around time on questions posted However the initial response may not solve your problem right away You may need to work through a process to find your solution Before posting to an e mail list refer to the on line documentation There are two important reasons for this The first is that you may find the answer to your problem The second is that if you don t you ll be better prepared to ask your question than if you had just blurted out I can t start OpenOffice org in a user list The first response assuming you get one will be to ask how you attempted to start OpenOffice org whether you re sure it is correctly installed and so on Once you
79. ed how much hardware is supported by GNU Linux As for church management software there is no software that is compatible with common programs such as ACS PowerChurch or Servant Keeper However you can still migrate your data which is a more tedious task than it is complex Interoperability refers to the ability of GNU Linux and its applications to function well with other operating systems and their applications GNU Linux does very well with this and many free and open source applications work well with their proprietary counterparts For instance you can open Word documents in Writer the OpenOffice org word processor You can also connect your GNU Linux system to other operating systems The question of usability involves the intuitiveness or ease of use of the interface you work with Some consider GNU Linux to be difficult or not as user friendly to use as other operating systems One test has established that neither GNU Linux nor Windows is any more intuitive than the other where new computer users are concerned It is important to note that this issue is almost purely subjective The fact is that we tend to stick with what we are used to because we are comfortable with that 12 Identifying the Issues When we speak of freedom in the software realm we refer to the user s right to use or modify the software obtained be it cost free or purchased to suit their needs Proprietary Software generally li
80. ed only in or among countries not thus excluded In such case this License incorporates the limita tion as if written in the body of this License 9 The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and or new versions of the General Public License from time to time Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns Each version is given a distinguishing version number If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and any later version you have the option of following the terms and condi tions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation If the Program does not specify a version number of this License you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation 10 If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs whose distribution conditions are different write to the au thor to ask for permission For software which is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation write to the Free Software Foundation we sometimes mak xceptions for this Our decision will be guided by the two goals of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally NO WARRANTY 122 Resources T T 11 BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE THERE IS N
81. elow appear as annotations to the Open Source Definition OSD and are not a part of the OSD Introduction Open source doesn t just mean access to the source code The distribution terms of open source software must comply with the following criteria 1 Free Redistribution The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several dif ferent sources The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale Rationale By constraining the license to require free redistribution we eliminate the temptation to throw away many long term gains in order to make a few short term sales dollars If we didn t do this there would be lots of pressure for cooperators to defect 2 Source Code The program must include source code and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code there must be a well publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost preferably downloading via the Internet without charge The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modi fy the program Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed Rationale We require access to un obfuscated source code because you can
82. elp them to find the local Linux Users Group and provide whatever additional information you can Again your volunteer does not need to be a technical genius to begin the adventure They simply need to be willing to commit some time and effort to it Getting a Windows only user or any non technical person up and running as your GNU Linux administrator could take a little time That s O K Churches rarely have the need to rush that most businesses might face Again look for Linux Users Groups and refer to the chapter on technical support options The Christian free and open source software community is an excellent resource with plenty of patient folks willing to help others learn A new or small ministry with any technical expertise at all should be able to migrate or get going almost immediately If a member can install Windows it is highly likely they will be able to install GNU Linux especially one of the commercial distributions The main task will be saving all documents to a CD or a few CDs so that you can open them in OpenOffice org later Working with the Experts It is not generally necessary to obtain the services of an expert However doing so could boost your comfort level significantly and may even reduce the cost of a migration Using a consultant could help you to make a short term migration provide some basic training for your staff and reduce the fear factor involved with change If the consultant cannot help you reduc
83. emains a section Entitled XYZ according to this definition The Document may include Warranty Disclaimers next to the notice which states that this License applies to the Document These Warranty Dis claimers are considered to be included by reference in this License but only as regards disclaiming warranties any other implication that these Warranty Disclaimers may have is void and has no effect on the meaning of this License 2 VERBATIM COPYING You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium either commer cially or noncommercially provided that this License the copyright notices and the license notice saying this License applies to the Doc ument are reproduced in all copies and that you add no other condi tions whatsoever to those of this License You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute However you may accept compensation in exchange for copies If you distribute a large enough number of copies you must also follow the conditions in section 3 You may also lend copies under the same conditions stated above and you may publicly display copies 3 COPYING IN QUANTITY If you publish printed copies or copies in media that commonly have printed covers of the Document numbering more than 100 and the Docu ment s license notice requires Cover Texts you must enclose the copies in covers that carry clearly and legibly a
84. en source software is how it will benefit them what challenges they need to overcome and that there is a community with a broad knowledge base ready willing and able to support churches and ministries seeking to migrate to these alternatives Py THON Illustration 1 Lyricue in use in the developer s church in Gosford Australia This book was produced using OpenOffice org running on SUSE Linux 9 2 Professional Screenshots were created using Ksnapshot the GNOME panel screenshot applet and The Gimp The front cover was produced using Blender 3D and The Gimp viii A Little Background for Non Techies 1 ALITTLE BACKGROUND FOR NON TECHIES Many folks who use computers understand very little about the computer itself have encountered many people that do not understand the difference between the operating system and the applications that run on the operating system If you happen to be one of these folks you should probably check out this section You technologists on the other hand will likely want to skip to the next section Simply put the operating system is what makes the computer tick The operating system handles all the details of interacting with the hardware so the application programs don t have to worry about that as much For example as long as all the programs know how to interact with the operating system they don t have to know how to interact with the printer because the operating syste
85. erences in cost could become even more dramatic when applied to a total platform migration scenario The difference is that some ministries will have the ability to migrate themselves while others will feel the need to either rely on consultants or send their in house folks for training Alternatively churches may be able to get help through a local Linux Users Group or The Freely Project All of these issues should be factored into the cost of the migration It should be noted that this scenario is not necessarily an accurate guage One has to account for the time spent installing and configuring the software as well as running Microsoft Office Update While this would not be a big deal for a church with cable or DSL a church with a dial up connection could spend a significant amount of time downloading the update software There are alsoa number of Outlook related security vulnerabilities that may need attending Installing and configuring OpenOffice org is no more time consuming than installing Microsoft Office and may be even less time consuming Most people do not take advantage of the features that differ between OpenOffice org and Microsoft Office A good two hour overview should get most users going and probably would increase production during the two week adjustment period You may want to let your power users get some additional training on the more advanced tools We mentioned being able to switch vendors if need be In fa
86. es Start if you want to In modern times the command line is used for system administration tasks while the graphical shell is used for productivity tasks es Jeane a 1 2 ldonpetuke s Shell Konsole a Boe Oe RE Illustration 4 The KDE T ae hore as part of SUSE Linux 9 2 is similar to the Windows desktop The image above shows the KDE graphical shell under GNU Linux If you pay close attention you may be able to see just how similar KDE is to the Windows desktop A few desktop icons clutter the left side The Start menu is the big green icon on the far left of the task bar The launcher tray task bar and system tray function similarly to their Windows counterparts The numbered squares in the task bar are the virtual desktops Clicking one takes you to a different KDE desktop Windows and Mac OS X are both proprietary and their use is governed by the developers software licenses Similarly many of the applications that run on each have proprietary licenses Proprietary licenses except for proprietary freeware usually prohibit sharing the software with other users although many people still do so in violation of the law GNU and BSD on the other hand have licenses that do allow users to share their copies with others Most of the applications that run on these two operating systems also have similar licenses The licenses offer additional freedoms something we discuss in more detail
87. es Apt is so popular that there is now a version known as Apt for RPM which works with the RPM based distributions like Red Hat Fedora Core SUSE and Mandrake The Yellow Dog Updater Modified a k a YUM is used by many Fedora Core users Computer Security Securing your computers is a necessary task in today s rather hostile computing environment Whether restricting access to sensitive information from staff and volunteers or preventing external attacks and viruses from bringing down your ministry s network computer administrators need to be aware of the design issues and the capabilities of GNU Linux especially as compared to proprietary software Bear in mind that GNU Linux unlike its proprietary counterparts was designed from the ground up to be a multi user network operating system From a license perspective open source software allows everyone access to the source code Because so many eyes are examining the code bugs and vulnerabilities are generally spotted and fixed much more rapidly than is possible with proprietary software Proprietary software is open only to the vendors and the illegal hackers who don t care much about license agreements anyway This means only the vendor and the hackers know about vulnerabilities The question becomes will the vendor step up and admit to the vulnerabilities and fix them Or will the vendor hide them With free and open source software you can get a patch whether it comes
88. es Mandrake Linux She produces various homemade craft items and shares photos of her work with her fellow crafters across the Internet a predominantly female crowd After having suffered a number of viruses with her legacy software she was encouraged to try GNU Linux After spending a period of time investigating GNU Linux thoroughly she settled on Mandrake Linux This non technical user then managed to install her own firewall choosing to install one she chose rather than accepting the default firewall system included with Mandrake Linux It took her a little time and one can be certain she relied on help from e mail lists If a middle aged lady without a background in computer technology can manage to switch to GNU Linux and install her own firewall there is absolutely no reason to suggest that GNU Linux is too difficult for non techies When I bought my HP 970 Cse to print with Windows 98 I had to jump through hoops backwards to install it missed a step somewhere along the way and even the vendor s tech support couldn t help me un install the driver correctly ended up formatting the hard drive and reinstalling the OS just to get the printer installed Talk about frustrating When I upgraded from Windows 98 to Windows XP Professional decided to start with a clean installation After formatting the hard drive and installing XP then attempted to reinstall my CD burning 32 The Usability Challenge sof
89. et s examine some of the applications available to users including those that run on proprietary operating systems It is important to note that many of the available applications support multiple operating systems and frequently multiple spoken languages as well Applications range from the simple to the complex both in terms of purpose and use Furthermore some of the tools available to Christians are cutting edge technology designed to serve specific missions oriented needs The applications we address here may not be the only ones but certainly are some of the most important free and open source applications available to Christians Bible Study Applications The CrossWire Bible Society sponsors The Sword Project which offers Bible study applications for several operating systems The Sword project provides Bible translations commentaries and other reference texts as modules Several sub projects develop platform specific and platform independent applications to access the modules thus providing Bible study tools for a wide range of operating systems The Sword for Windows project is available for Windows users 72 Free and Open Source Software for the Church MacSword obviously is the Bible study tool for the Mac operating system BibleTime and GNOMESword are GNU Linux versions of the Sword Project JSword Bible Desktop is a Java based Bible study tool that runs on any platform with Java installed You will discover tha
90. etees 118 The GNU Free Documentation License FDL cccceeceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee 129 iii FOREWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION Since the first edition of Penguin in the Pew hit the web in May 2004 much has changed The GNU Linux operating system itself and the many applications that accompany it have matured tremendously since the 2 4 kernel I was using at the time I have discovered a much larger cache of programs available for Christians and churches than I believed existed And there is a visible community of believers who are ready willing and able to assist other believers and ministries seeking to explore the world of free and open source software When first wrote Penguin in the Pew lamented the lack of good software for churches and for Christians in general Shortly after releasing it on the Internet people began to bring to my attention all kinds of free and open source software for the universal Church Bible study tools lyrics projection website builders distance education tools for missions organizations and even church management applications have quite a history FOSS Bible applications support 60 translations across some thirty languages on GNU Linux Mac and Windows and have been downloaded tens of thousands of times OpenOffice org and the Mozilla Internet tools Firefox and Thunderbird are quickly outstripping the most popular proprietary solutions in the same fields Remote desktop s
91. ffers an auto complete feature and not just dates Once you type a word in a new document you need only type the first few letters of that same word again to bring up the rest of the word If that s the word you want just hit the Enter key and keep moving If you re typing a similar word just keep typing until it pops up wonder how much time saved using OOo to type much of this document There are some subtle differences between OpenOffice org and Microsoft Office that may not be immediately apparent to some users In Microsoft Office users generally define sections to change the page layout between say the front matter and the content of a book Users define page styles in OpenOffice org It s very similar to formatting a paragraph OpenOffice org 2 0 includes an Access like database feature that may just go a step further than Microsoft Access The OpenOffice org database application takes advantage of the World Wide Web Consortium s XForm standard for web based data entry which will eventually replace the current HTML forms used in so many web pages However OOo 2 0 is a much more powerful XForms client than the currently existing clients OpenOffice org 2 0 adds new chart types and also improves interoperability with Microsoft Office tremendously Impress is better able to deal with comments in a PowerPoint file It also offers an interface more like PowerPoint The sorting feature in Calc has been changed to be
92. fficial changes can be made avail able but readily distinguished from the base source 5 No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons Rationale In order to get the maximum benefit from the process the maximum diversity of persons and groups should be equally eligible to contribute to open sources Therefore we forbid any open source li cense from locking anybody out of the process Some countries including the United States have export restrictions for certain types of software An OSD conformant license may warn licensees of applicable restrictions and remind them that they are obliged to obey the law however it may not incorporate such restrictions itself 6 No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor For example it may not restrict the program from being used in a business or from being used for genetic research Rationale The major intention of this clause is to prohibit license traps that prevent open source from be ing used commercially We want commercial users to join our community not feel excluded from it 7 Distribution of License The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistribut ed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties Rationale This clause is intended to forbid
93. find one or two in the crowd Even if there are no Christians you will usually find folks are willing to help you solve problems After all LUGs are a Support network of sorts The Christian FOSS Community The Freely Project offers an on line help desk for churches and other ministries and some members of The Freely Project are working to establish local support networks by working with local Linux Users Groups The Freely Project is an advocacy website that offers technical support for free It is a great resource for learning about various FOSS distributions While we discuss the Christian FOSS community further in Chapter 14 it is worth noting here the Christian groups that offer technical assistance The help desk offers a ticket based approach to helping users solve problems Given the number of other resources available for individual users the Freely Help Desk is only available to organizations Users can submit a trouble ticket and get an e mail response with instructions There is also a growing number of F A Q s Frequently Asked Questions available to the users The Freely Project is working to establish local support networks 70 Support Options through local members and or Linux Users Groups where possible While The Freely Project is still fairly small in numbers there are members in various states in the U S and several other countries If there is no member local to your area you might find help through a local L
94. fixed it in OOo only to find it re goofed in Word left it alone in Word and discovered it was still fine back in OOo Between Excel and OOo you may or may not need to readjust the cell alignment when you open your files Again it is no big deal Between PowerPoint and OOo you may lose some functionality which would be true if switching between PowerPoint 97 and PowerPoint 2000 These are issues that arise anytime people use different applications and platforms They are not debilitating and certainly a non issue for a typical church GnuCash imports Quicken files including bank records which utilize the Quicken format MyBooks is a commercial financial accounting distribution that also works with Quicken and QuickBooks Ultimately most users will discover that free and open source software tends to be highly interoperable with proprietary software 31 The Usability Challenge 7 THE USABILITY CHALLENGE Whether GNU Linux is easier or more difficult to use than other systems is to me a matter of perspective If you re using GNU Linux as a desktop workstation it isn t necessarily more difficult to use than the others It is different Different is not necessarily more difficult You get more choices with GNU Linux which adds to the fear one may feel when faced with several desktops to choose from at the login prompt Even so usability is a fair issue to address Allow me to share the story of a 55 year old lady who us
95. from the vendor or elsewhere If you have a developer in your ministry you could even fix it yourself You need to be careful that you get the patch from a reliable source and in most cases you will want your patch to come from the developer From a design perspective GNU Linux has several advantages GNU Linux does not rely unnecessarily on remote procedure calls as some operating systems do While some vendors have integrated their flawed web browsers into their operating systems GNU Linux will do no such thing even with a reasonably secure web browser Web browsers have nothing whatsoever to do with the operating 61 System Resources system and have no need to be integrated into it Yet millions of computer users around the world continue to rely on an operating system with inherent design flaws Graphical user interfaces GUIs a k a your desktop have little or nothing to do with basic system tasks yet some operating systems have an integrated GUI Thus when a graphical application hangs it affects the whole system GNU Linux keeps the GUIs separated from the underlying operating system When a crash occurs it rarely brings down the whole operating system In most cases the application or the desktop can be shut down without the need to reboot the whole computer The numerous viruses that exist generally attack one operating system While some proclaim the popularity of the operating system fuels malicious attacks th
96. ftware For instance a ministry could purchase two computers instead of one Or the ministry could purchase a computer with a faster processor more memory and a bigger hard drive than it otherwise might because it does not have to count in the additional cost of software 46 The Cost Challenge Upgrade Windows or Move to GNU Linux What will it cost to change Studies suggest that GNU Linux is ideal for new organizations and those without a heavy investment in Windows based solutions The cost of change varies although the larger the organization the greater the complexity of their infrastructure and thus the greater the cost of change However that would be true if an organization migrates from GNU Linux to Windows Even so many users actually suggest that their migration costs have been minimal The tables below show two churches each with a staff of five persons One is upgrading from Windows 98 to Windows XP Professional The Windows church is merely upgrading all of its software The other has chosen to migrate from Windows 98 to SUSE Linux 9 2 Professional We re assuming a single cost for the church management and lyrics display software as well as for the music typesetting software Windows XP Pro 950 00 Windows XP Pro _ 1 400 00 Office SB 2003 1 395 00 Office SB 2003 2 250 00 Easy Worship 428 00 Easy Worship 428 00 PowerChurch 139 00 PowerChurch 595 00 Finale 109 00 Fin
97. ght weight desktop offering few of the features of KDE or GNOME and consuming the fewest resources A simple panel across the bottom offers some launchers or menus depending on what you set up The background and desktop theme can be changed along with a few other items This is a great desktop for administrators to deploy with the non technical users An administrator can easily setup the applications a user will need and then show the user which icons launch which applications Creating launchers setting up your icons that launch programs in XFce is very simple Right clicking on the main panel brings up a context menu from which you can choose to setup a launcher In the ensuing dialog box you can enter the command or browse for it and pick an icon to match In most cases the command is the same as the program name i e Firefox firefox 35 The Usability Challenge a e gt s 27 ta Gao m ag gt Illustration 2 The XFce desktop lightweight and simple Because Xfce requires so little memory it loads very quickly You may need to create your own launcher icons to launch programs but once in place you have easy access to the most important ones An organization with a decent administrator could easily setup the icons correctly for the users This setup above is probably fairly typical consisting mostly of application launchers on the left the virtual desktop pager in the middle and system launcher
98. haring makes remote support simple and is literally a matter of a couple of clicks Multi media tools that run on GNU Linux are quickly proving themselves in a number of churches For users who depend on graphical installation and configuration tools the tool sets offered by many GNU Linux distributions have definitely come a long way The Linux kernel itself is more mature The number of so called Live Linux distributions that offer worry free trials and ease of installation is growing Hardware auto detection works better than ever There is seamless support for a broad range of peripherals such as cameras scanners and USB mass storage devices Perhaps the most spectacular thing to happen in the wake of Penguin in the Pew and the articles is the coalescing of a community of Believers who use free and open source software FOSS Hundreds of believers from around the world have been coming together to develop use and advocate FOSS and to provide technical support for Christians and ministries This growing community is on the verge of breaking loose in the real world as they are also beginning to meet in person and not just on the web The once barely visible community is now a vibrant community consisting of Christians from around the world The opening chapter Linux isn t ready yet Says Who has been changed to A Legal and Moral Dilemma The question now is not whether GNU Linux is ready but whether t
99. have access to their proprietary code they are the only ones apart from outlaw hackers better known as crackers who will know if the code is actually secure In a free or open source software program everyone has access to the source thus security vulnerabilities are found and fixed far more quickly as a general rule The payoff from having secret bits is well understood traditionally software business models have been constructed around it Until recently the payoff from independent peer review was not well understood The Linux operating system however drives home a lesson that we should probably have learned years ago from the history of the Internet s core software and other branches of engineering that open source peer review is the only scalable method for achieving high reliability and quality Eric S Raymond The Cathedral and the Bazaar Revised Edition Section 4 10 1 mentioned the right to redistribute share the program with others Scripturally speaking Jesus commanded us to love our neighbors Throughout the entire Bible such love is demonstrated through giving and sharing The Non Disclosure Agreements and End User License Agreements that accompany most proprietary software prohibit access to the source code and the act of redistribution Some will argue that the Scripture is also replete with passages about being rewarded for one s labor We should not muzzle the ox as
100. have more like the sorting feature in Excel Many other improvements have been made as well Mozilla s Firefox web browser functions similarly to Internet Explorer However its tabbed browsing feature reduces the number of windows users have open at once Tabbed browsing technology has been around since the days of Windows 3 11 yet Microsoft has failed to implement it Firefox is extensible through easily developed extensions like the Super Bible Toolbar that allows users to search The Bible Gateway right from within Firefox The extensions are available through the Mozilla website 37 The Usability Challenge GnuCash is similar to Quicken It isn t quite as fancy but works for personal and business finances Where Quicken uses categories GnuCash uses double entry accounting Learning to split transactions is a little tricky at first However once you get the hang of it you ll be o k If you re familiar at all with Quicken you should be able to manage the change just fine The Sword Projects BibleTime GnomeSword Bible Desktop MacSword and others generally use interfaces similar to the On Line Bible for Windows Selecting books chapters and verses uses a similar approach allowing the user to select each in succession Adding bible and reference modules is a simple matter of opening the module management dialog and selecting the modules you want While there are numerous educational applications for Windows the sele
101. he Document and any Warranty Disclaimers provided that you also include the original English version of this Li cense and the original versions of those notices and disclaimers In case of a disagreement between the translation and the original version of this License or a notice or disclaimer the original version will prevail If a section in the Document is Entitled Acknowledgements Dedica tions or History the requirement section 4 to Preserve its Title section 1 will typically require changing the actual title 9 TERMINATION You may not copy modify sublicense or distribute the Document except as expressly provided for under this License Any other attempt to copy modify sublicense or distribute the Document is void and will automatically terminate your rights under this License However par ties who have received copies or rights from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance 10 FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE The Free Software Foundation may publish new revised versions of the GNU Free Documentation License from time to time Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version but may differ in de 135 Resources tail to address new problems or concerns See http www gnu org copy left Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version num
102. he church mentioned at the beginning of this book wondering how they can 49 The Cost Challenge keep dancing the EULA jig From a legal standpoint a church could be violating copyright laws and not even realize it Things are changing and the Windows installation program knows if it s been installed before It won t let you install to more than one computer Companies have every right to enforce their copyright protection After all when you clicked the I Agree button as you installed the software you legally bound yourself to not passing along copies of the software Doing so in light of the typical proprietary End User License Agreement is a matter of breaking your agreement and violating the law As a pastor discourage using software illegally Doing so destroys the church s witness to the community That s why free and open source software is like a ram in the bush GNU Linux is very different in this respect The operating system is freely available and can legally be shared with others In fact sharing free and open source software is encouraged Thus your church can save money and share with the local community to boot It is important to grasp this Now any church can help folks in the local community where technology is concerned GNU Linux is distributed by numerous groups both commercial and non profit This choice helps to ensure competitive pricing among the commercial versions When it comes to choo
103. he church is ready The answer depends largely on a given user or organization The attitudes that people hold play the most important role in the exploration process The real question each individual and Organization must ask is are we ready to take advantage of an established technology built on a community development platform FOSS has traditionally been better known for its robustness stability and strong security rather than for its ease of use FOSS solutions while still robust secure and stable offer a more polished look and feel that makes users more comfortable Most of the graphical desktops look similar to and even behave the same as Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X Applications look and feel similar to their Windows counterparts Many applications include wizard like utilities to help users get up and running That have expanded this edition by more than double the original number of pages reflects my growing understanding of the issues involved as well as of the software available for Christians and ministries have sought to help readers understand how they can benefit from and participate in the Christian FOSS community have also addressed more issues that some new users might find a little puzzling notably the GNU Linux filesystem This book discusses legal and philosophical issues in some depth However nothing in this book should be construed as legal advice suggest that some Christian churches may use pr
104. help for those who need it These are generally easy to use and understand and come in the form of a web page or in Adobe s PDF format There are a number of list servs and web forums that offer users help with problems The turn around time on issues can be anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple of days depending on the issue the information provided about it and the time it takes someone with knowledge to respond Each forum and list serv has its own rules for posting questions It is extremely important if you want to solve your problem to follow the guidelines for posting questions You should also be aware that there may be a number of ways to solve a single problem For instance once posed a general question about setting up e mail service for Oakdale s LAN only to discover at least four different approaches each with additional options In a case like this you can pick one option and stick with it until you get it working It is a good idea not to discuss your Christian faith in most forums and list servs as merely mentioning the word church can create quite a stir What s more technical forums are not the place to discuss religion which can be freely discussed by those who care in appropriate forums It is one thing to say that you are working on a computer for your church It is quite another to start evangelizing in a technical forum The Christian FOSS community sites are the best places to mix theology and
105. hile offering a minimum of desktop toys to confuse your users Flexibility is demonstrated in the choice of graphical desktops all of which can be customized to look and act an awful lot like Windows or not It is also demonstrated in the choice of productivity applications available Adherence to open standards is yet another reason Got a Japanese document in OpenOffice org format Microsoft Office cannot open it OpenOffice and StarOffice KOffice and others support and use the OpenDocument format a format soon to be an ISO standard Networking protocols security protocols and a number of other standards are in place Proprietary software vendors do not always conform to the standards or typically adapt them to their own standards making their proprietary innovations unavailable to the rest of the world We see a number of reasons to migrate all of which have been elaborated further in previous chapters Here we have simply Summarized the reasons for migrating Now let s consider the gradual approach to migration The gradual approach is the most recommended approach and is best used in established ministries with a heavy investment in proprietary software Newer and smaller ministries will be able to start out with GNU Linux or migrate fairly quickly by comparison The Emotional Element Perhaps the biggest obstacle to any migration is user comfort with the current software Many users seem to assume that something new is sim
106. icue Lyricue is a lyrics projection application for GNU Linux systems Compared to its proprietary counterparts Lyricue only lacks moving backgrounds and integration with PowerPoint Moving backgrounds could be added soon Integration with OpenOffice org Impress would be an excellent improvement One church sound technician uses Lyricue to handle his church s lyrics projection and Audacity to record services which are later burned to CD ist Cisplay Appications Biole Help amp amp Frey Fage Next Page Next Point Rlank Screen Add Available Songs Drefresh_ Gadd to pleylis Grove Down GIvove up refresh Gremeve save shew Main ee christian Gradients ERMIR SE tema Illustration 5 Lyricue s main screen OpenLP OpenLP is a Windows only application used by a large number of va Free and Open Source Software for the Church Illustration 6 OpenLP displays lyrics for Windows users churches OpenLP users can download songs using Christian Copyright Licensing International s SongSelect feature It supports several languages making it useful in a number of countries and in churches with multi lingual ministries The image below shows the main screen The left side shows the preview and live modes so the technician can view the results of changes before sending them out to the live feed Users can quickly select songs using the database in the middle OpenSong OpenSong ru
107. if and when the competitor enhances the software the original developer also benefits Both competitors benefit from expending less money in developing software and the customer realizes a cost savings Thus instead of competing the two collaborate Essentially it amounts to a win win win situation The nature of free and open source licenses has helped to create a very competitive software market Rather than a single vendor with a monopoly several vendors offer a broad range of solutions From Linspire s family friendly distribution sold through Wal Mart to Novell and Red Hat s predominantly business oriented solutions users will find a vendor with solid software and services Along with the choice of vendors and their solutions is a variety of prices Ironically the charge has been made that FOSS is somehow a communist concept One can almost picture Comrade Jones developing a new program for the people Some seem to imagine that developers must give up any semblance of earning an income at all As mentioned above FOSS has spawned new business ventures Red Hat is an enterprise GNU Linux vendor in Raleigh North Carolina SUSE AG was purchased by Novell the networking giant Numerous other businesses have sprung up with the FOSS community It is true that many programs are not only free as in libre but 23 Truly Free Computing also as in gratis free of cost Yet even the gratis software can be had for a price Peop
108. inal ublisher of the version it refers to gives permission or any section Entitled Acknowledgements or Dedications reserve the Title of the section and preserve in the section all he substance and tone of each of the contributor acknowledgements nd or dedications given therein reserve all the Invariant Sections of the Document unaltered in their text and in their titles Section numbers r the equivalent are not considered part of the section titles M Delete any section Entitled Endorsements Such a section may not be included in the Modified Version N Do not retitle any existing section to be Entitled Endorsements or to conflict in title with any Invariant Section O Preserve any Warranty Disclaimers DG Uo eKA SAQU t d HY ct O If the Modified Version includes new front matter sections or appen dices that qualify as Secondary Sections and contain no material copied from the Document you may at your option designate some or all of these sections as invariant To do this add their titles to the list of Invariant Sections in the Modified Version s license notice These titles must be distinct from any other section titles You may add a section Entitled Endorsements provided it contains nothing but endorsements of your Modified Version by various parties for example statements of peer review or that the text has been ap p
109. ing those of Invariant Sections in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License If a sec tion does not fit the above definition of Secondary then it is not al lowed to be designated as Invariant The Document may contain zero In variant Sections If the Document does not identify any Invariant Sec tions then there are non The Cover Texts are certain short passages of text that are listed as Front Cover Texts or Back Cover Texts in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License A Front Cover Text may be at most 5 words and a Back Cover Text may be at most 25 words A Transparent copy of the Document means a machine readable copy represented in a format whose specification is available to the general public that is suitable for revising the document straightforwardly with generic text editors or for images composed of pixels generic paint programs or for drawings some widely available drawing editor and that is suitable for input to text formatters or for automatic translation to a variety of formats suitable for input to text format ters A copy made in an otherwise Transparent file format whose markup or absence of markup has been arranged to thwart or discourage subsequent modification by readers is not Transparent An image format is not Transparent if used for any substantial amount of text A copy that is not Transparent is called Opaque Example
110. inux Users Group Two e mail lists serve Christians specifically The ChristianSource Free Software and Linux Users Group CS FSLUG and Linux 4 Christians lists are excellent resources and include members from all over the world Users include the very experienced and the very inexperienced A number of women are involved in the lists and not all of them are in the Information Technology field A fair number of pastors also participate The essence of this chapter is that you should first check out the on line documentation and search the web for information about your problem prior to asking for help If you paid for technical support it may still be worth looking into the documentation but feel free to get your money s worth If you post a question be sure to offer some background like you re hardware and software configuration as well as the problem itself Now that you know how to get help let s find some software that Christians and churches can use 71 Free and Open Source Software for the Church 11 FREE AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE FOR THE CHURCH Contrary to popular belief which to some extent was supported by the previous edition of this booklet there is quite a collection of free and open source software for Christians and churches Bible study church and worship management and educational programs not to mention standard office and Internet tools are available to Christians for use at home or in the church L
111. inux using the tools already available from Richard Stallman s GNU Project and released it under the GPL There are now at least 200 different distributions in active development according to DistroWatch com Version 1 0 was released in 1994 and the kernel the heart of any operating system has reached version 2 6 as of this writing The even number of the kernel version is important as a stability indicator Odd numbered kernels 2 1 2 3 etc are considered development releases while the even numbered kernels are the stable releases This convention may or may not apply to other software You should check with the developers to find out about their versioning schemes Users are free to download whichever version they want but the development versions are probably best 92 GNU Linux Background left for the tech guys While GNU Linux was initially a hobby system it has gained popularity not only among geeks but also among business technology managers Businesses and governments especially in overseas markets are migrating to GNU Linux Several GNU Linux vendors offer business case pages on their web sites A Christian denominational headquarters in Germany is using SUSE Linux Open Exchange Server to manage communication Many American Small Office Home Offices SOHOs are running GNU Linux GNU Linux is used almost exclusively by the movie industry and has been used producing numerous movies including Lord of the Rings Scoob
112. it were However this argument ignores the fact that free and open source software can be sold It also ignores the benefit to both users and developers of the collaborative development model Ironically most developers are paid not from the sale of software but from the internal use of software they developed for their employers 18 Truly Free Computing For instance may sell a word processor under a free software license You purchase it and pass along a copy to your neighbor Your neighbor improves it and then redistributes the modified version The free software license allows both of us to benefit from your neighbor s contribution along with everyone else We all benefit from the re use of the source code as none of us has to reinvent the wheel to develop our software Thus benefit directly from making my code open When I speak at technical conferences I usually begin my talk by asking two questions how many in the audience are paid to write software and for how many do their salaries depend on the sale value of software I generally get a forest of hands for the first question few or none for the second and considerable audience surprise at the proportion Eric S Raymond The Cathedral and the Bazaar Section 4 3 In his book The Cathedral and the Bazaar Eric S Raymond argues that 75 of a programmer s job lies in the maintenance of the software developed He further argues that most p
113. le are becoming consultants support technicians documentation writers and finding other ways to profit from FOSS Some have found ways to profit or raise funds in the case of non profits from the sale of free software CDs FOSS is neither capitalist nor communist It encourages people to build on the foundation already laid It reduces duplicitous efforts and inspires collaboration and creativity It reduces selfishness and promotes community It reduces development costs and improves stability The challenge for businesses is to learn how to profit from it The challenge for the Church is to learn how to deploy it effectively 24 The Hardware Compatibility Challenge 5 THE HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY CHALLENGE Perhaps the most important issue is whether GNU Linux is compatible with your current hardware One thing you should do is to check the various GNU Linux hardware resources to see if your hardware is compatible Proprietary operating system vendors usually publish some sort of hardware compatibility list There are several such resources independent and vendor specific for GNU Linux as well You will find a few of these in the Resources section of this book and would be wise to investigate them Take a bit of time to try to determine the specifications of your hardware You will want to know the make and model number as well as other factors such as speed storage space or frequency depending on your device At least k
114. led Apt for RPM that users of RPM based distributions are deploying Most distributions are said to be RPM based or Debian based Most distributions offer CD images over the Internet Those with broadband Internet connections can download the software and burn the ISO image to CD Once on CD you just reboot your computer to install GNU Linux or run the live distribution right off the CD You can also pass these out to others Exploring the various BSD distributions is an exercise left to the reader Web links are included in the Resources section of this book 103 The Guide to GNU Linux Distributions Debian Debian is a non profit distribution It is perhaps best known for being a real challenge to install but extremely easy to maintain Debian also has a reputation as the most stable distribution available Debian has three branches unstable testing and stable You can use whichever branch you want but no packages enter the stable branch until all known security issues have been resolved Several companies and non profit groups have developed customized usually much easier to use distributions based on Debian Fedora Core Fedora Core is Red Hat s community edition and is actually the future Red Hat Linux their corporate enterprise offering Red Hat is probably the most widely used in the American corporate scene Because of this many GNU Linux users already have skills with Fedora Core Ther
115. ling with change The Gradual Approach The gradual approach essentially involves first migrating to FOSS applications that run on your current legacy operating system software Just a few examples are OpenOffice org Firefox Thunderbird and MySQL Don t forget the church related applications mentioned in Chapter 11 Meanwhile your migration team can study GNU Linux closely and even play with different distributions using the popular live evaluation CDs Once users are comfortable using the new applications then replacing the underlying operating system is much easier Probably the best place to begin is with Firefox and Thunderbird Remove the Internet Explorer Icon from the desktop and get them using Firefox instead You should make Internet Explorer available through the Start Menu as some websites are designed for it exclusively The lack of security vulnerabilities makes Firefox the ideal starting point for your migration It shouldn t take long for 85 Migration Strategies them to get comfortable with it A little later you can install OpenOffice org next to Microsoft Office Be ready to point out the differences between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice org The OpenOffice org website has documents that point out some of these differences see the Resources at the end of this book for the link to OOo MSO differences Having the staff open the church bulletin and other frequently used documents in OpenOffice org and make
116. ll these Cover Texts Front Cover Texts on the front cover and Back Cover Texts on the back 131 Resources cover Both covers must also clearly and legibly identify you as the publisher of these copies The front cover must present the full title with all words of the title equally prominent and visible You may add other material on the covers in addition Copying with changes limited to the covers as long as they preserve the title of the Document and satisfy these conditions can be treated as verbatim copying in other respects If the required texts for either cover are too voluminous to fit legi bly you should put the first ones listed as many as fit reasonably on the actual cover and continue the rest onto adjacent pages If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more than 100 you must either include a machine readable Transparent copy along with each Opaque copy or state in or with each Opaque copy a computer network location from which the general network using public has access to download using public standard network protocols a com plete Transparent copy of the Document free of added material If you use the latter option you must take reasonably prudent steps when you begin distribution of Opaque copies in quantity to ensure that this Transparent copy will remain thus accessible at the stated location un til at least one year after the last time you distribute an Opaque
117. lled model Although they cost a bit more you definitely get what you pay for For cable DSL connections you ll want a router which is where that old 486 PC comes in handy Just toss GNU Linux in and convert it to a router saves you from having to buy one There are several distributions designed specifically for this purpose Some can even be run from a single floppy disk Of course you can purchase a hardware router off the shelf Routers are operating system independent and have the added advantage of offering decent protection from un wanted Internet traffic 26 The Hardware Compatibility Challenge GNU Linux usually handles printers very well have a fancy HP 970 Cse complete with duplexer attachment Using either of the two available printing systems allows me to print decent documents use CUPS as it provides the best drivers for my printer Combined with OpenOffice org I m a dangerous man However some printers are notorious for poor performance or even not working under GNU Linux You really should refer to the resources in the back of the book for more information Most storage drives such as Zip Jazz and flash storage devices work well with GNU Linux Most Palm devices work with GNU Linux many run GNU Linux Cameras and scanners vary A number of MP3 players are supported as well Whatever your device GNU Linux likely supports at least a couple models like it Unfortunately for various reasons vendo
118. lowship has six computers networked together Basic installations were performed on five of the computers After that the time it took to setup the IP addresses manually was all it took to configure the network settings Remote desktop sharing was ready to use File sharing was a simple routine setup The time spent maintaining your systems is another factor Fighting viruses rooting out spyware and dealing with inexplicable system crashes consumes time In most cases however GNU Linux administrators will be able to focus their efforts elsewhere after spending a brief period configuring the security software A thorough check of the system logs say a couple of times a week should go a long ways toward maintaining a secure computing environment Some distributions include tools to automate security updates and these are fairly easy to use 53 The Cost Challenge Do It Yourself or Get A Consultant Whether to go it alone or hire a consultant to help you migrate is a matter only you can decide It depends on your ministry If you have an in house tech ministry by all means have them study the issues and lead the migration If you have folks who are not professionals but are knowledgeable enthusiasts encourage them to try GNU Linux and lead you through If your whole congregation thinks that hitting the wrong key will blow up a computer you might want the consultant If you consider consultants make sure their plan will actually
119. ly Editor o Main Admin People Families Deposit Cart Data Reports Groups Properties Help S Search Person Family Items in Cart 0 User Typical Financial Family Editor Save Save and Add Cancel Pennsylvania Country United States gt Home Phone Done M 11 4 host216 ipowerweb com Q Illustration 2 Part of ChurchInfo s Add a Family form Open Source Church also remains similar to InfoCentral and offers a service hosting church databases on their web site While it is possible to keep data fairly secure many churches are hesitant to keep their data where it is more vulnerable to attack Still churches can use web based solutions like this right in their own offices Web based solutions keep the data in a central location and are easily accessed over the church network CHADDB The CHurch ADministration DataBase CHADDB pronounced like chaddy bee is simply a database back end designed for the MySQL database server As such any kind of front end can be used for it Currently a Java based front 75 Free and Open Source Software for the Church end is being developed and CHADDB can be used as is with OpenOffice org CHADDB provides basic church management functions and will be developed to add further functionality Connecting Ope
120. ly like the development model or the technical merits of FOSS The parallels between spiritual freedom and free software must be kept in perspective Free software does not save Jesus does Most Christians who see the parallels see in free software a moral imperative This is not to be understood as a theology of free software or even of computing Nevertheless the parallels of freedom run through the very core of their thinking Some will make the charge that such thinking is theologizing technology Perhaps it is Then again why would it not be There is a theology of practically everything Christians do There are theological treatises on Church Leadership Biblical Counseling Stewardship Christian Education the list goes on Why should technology thus be viewed any differently Money alcohol and other material things are pretty neutral in and of themselves How they are used is what makes them good or evil So too when technology is misused to control others or put them at a disadvantage that use of technology is evil When the greed of businesses outweighs the social benefits of technology that is evil If technology is used in a way that promotes freedom and guarantees free access to information then that use of technology is good Some would describe proprietary software as a technological Egypt in which they are held against their will by the proprietary EULAs Others might see proprietary software more
121. m B etc proc B tmp lo elib A media h FA root mnt i ome usr E Bopt Ve 9 sproc f O d egroot a B lib Da sbin B ar atleaichin bd Illustration 2 Konqueror showing the root filesystem Most operating systems also have two types of shells The shell is simply the starting point for everything a user does on the computer A shell can either be a command line or a graphical shell The command line gives you a simple or c or something similar while it waits for you to enter commands After typing a command you hit the Enter key to make something happen Bash Bourne Again Shell is the most commonly used command line shell in GNU Linux systems Other shells are available for GNU Linux and BSD systems You have the same command line capability under Windows but only one shell The image below shows what the filesystem looks like in the Bash shell donp luke gt cd donp luke gt Is bin dev home media opt root sru tmp var boot etc lib mt proc sbin sys usr donp luke gt f Illustration 3 The root filesystem from the command line The graphical shell also known as a desktop is just a pretty picture for all you do at the command line Instead of having to remember the name of the command that launches your word processor you Click a little icon to make it start But you can still type in the name of the command at the command prompt to make it A Little Background for Non Techi
122. m does that for them The kernel is the heart of the operating system and is what handles most of this interaction with the hardware Table 1 next page shows a few common operating systems what hardware they run on and how they are typically used Most people use one of two operating systems at home and in their businesses at least in the cubicles and offices Microsoft Windows is the most commonly used system of all and runs on the IBM PC and compatibles Apple s Mac OS X runs on Apple s Macintosh computers more commonly referred to simply as Macs GNU Linux is mostly used as a server operating system but is also being used increasingly as a workstation operating system A Little Background for Non Techies Mac Apple Apple Mac OSX Graphics amp Printing amp Home Use IBM PC Microsoft Windows Home amp Office Desktop IBM PC GNU Linux amp BSD Business Networks amp Enthusiasts Sun SPARC Sun Solaris Business Networks What many people do not realize is that two alternatives exist having spread mostly by word of mouth One is called GNU which uses the Linux kernel The other is known as BSD which is actually the foundation of Mac OS X The Linux kernel is the best known part of the GNU system and many simply refer to GNU Linux as Linux This book uses the term GNU or GNU Linux except when referring to the kernel specifically as it seems strange to refer to a whol
123. manual or other work in any medium that contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it can be dis 129 Resources tributed under the terms of this License Such a notice grants a world wide royalty free license unlimited in duration to use that work under the conditions stated herein The Document below refers to any such manual or work Any member of the public is a licensee and is addressed as you You accept the license if you copy modify or distribute the work in a way requiring permission under copyright law A Modified Version of the Document means any work containing the Doc ument or a portion of it either copied verbatim or with modifications and or translated into another language A Secondary Section is a named appendix or a front matter section of the Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the pub lishers or authors of the Document to the Document s overall subject or to related matters and contains nothing that could fall directly within that overall subject Thus if the Document is in part a text book of mathematics a Secondary Section may not explain any mathemat ics The relationship could be a matter of historical connection with the subject or with related matters or of legal commercial philo sophical ethical or political position regarding them The Invariant Sections are certain Secondary Sections whose titles are designated as be
124. mits the user to running the software on a specified number of machines and does not permit adaptation to the users needs except according to the options programmed by the supplier However open source software generally allows the user to run it on as many machines as he desires and also allows anyone the right to modify any aspect of the program to meet a particular need The free software philosophy rejects a specific widespread business practice but it is not against business When businesses respect the users freedom we wish them success Richard M Stallman The GNU Project http www enu or nu thegnuproject html Freedom from vendor lock in puts the customer in charge of the pricing A number of churches and other organizations seem to feel that migrating to free and open source software would be too costly This should be your first clue that you really need to migrate The initial cost of a migration could in fact be more expensive However even in those rare cases that this is true the long term impact is still to reduce your overall cost of computing For example Suppose you could migrate from Microsoft Windows to IBM Windows to save money that would encourage competition among Windows vendors Unfortunately there is only one Windows and it costs about the same at OfficeMax as it does at Office Depot In the GNU Linux world customers can choose from several vendors with a variety of system opti
125. mma On top of all this he may have inadvertently encouraged the illegal use of software Based on the conversation it is unfortunately possible that the deacon could have violated copyright laws in using the proprietary OS Depending on how the church is organized he and the deacon potentially the whole church could have been held liable for the copyright violations One business had to settle for 100 000 because they thought they were o k with their proprietary software Incidentally they now use open source software exclusively Copyright law is part of the U S Constitution and is intended to provide a balance between the rights of the author artist or developer and the general public Copyright grants these creators exclusive rights to control their work At the same time these rights are limited both in terms of time and in terms of use For instance copyright is limited to 70 years after the author s death and people can quote small amounts of material for use in criticism and similar endeavors Software is copyrighted unless the developer explicitly places it into the public domain Most commercial software is copyrighted and includes a license that specifies the user s rights These typically include the right to run the program and to keep a back up copy Users typically have no right to copy or redistribute the program This means it is illegal and immoral to copy or share software with y
126. n source versions of their software or even proprietary versions that run on open source operating systems This issue affects churches that have invested hundreds or thousands of dollars into proprietary database solutions Migrating from these solutions can be costly Developers that choose to support free and open source software platforms open doors for themselves Christians can work together to address these issues Well organized e mail campaigns would be very useful When you visit your favorite retailer let them know you want more options as far as operating systems are concerned Let them know that you deserve a choice and that they should be willing to inform you of alternatives to their current offerings Encourage them to inform you about GNU Linux One area that deserves special attention is that of Bible translations that cannot currently be used with free and open source Bible study applications For instance the New International Version module is locked as the developers do not have permission to make it available to the community The New American Standard Bible will soon be available for a small fee thanks to the efforts of 101 The Christian FOSS Movement the CrossWire Bible Society These translations are available to other freeware applications for a small fee and thus should also be made available to the free and open source software community in the same manner English translations are not the only ones
127. nOffice org to CHADDB is simply a matter of using the JDBC driver to establish the connection to the MySQL database It requires a few steps but is accomplished easily enough once all the components are in place Data can be extracted from CHADDB directly into any document you create in OpenOffice org EES Untitled1 OpenOffice org 1 1 3 a Paragraph 0X Fil Edit View Insert Format Tools Window Help FE m mima an a Navigator Hee x Baxe 9 e REA fox Z g gt a z y A te ia YUY S BREE chaddb_test E fst_name Ist_name address address2 city state zip E amp Data source 1 P james Austin 111 Any Street Queen City NC Links James Austin 987 Corporate Way Ste 48 Queen City NC E Queries James Austin 876 School House Ave Queen City NC E Janet Austin 222 Some Avenue Apt 3B Queen City NC rabi James Austin 333 Supply Blvd Queen City NC a ables x i j L Austin 444 2nd Street Queen City NC 7 _ Record 1 of 66 ro 7 a Gefauit a Nene 1E AAA BOSS Sees AA M g e 1 i X hs i ri 2 K ylar nyf utes nyhe tokes notas noih i The Church of Jesus Christ 316 Salvation Way p Queen City NC 28111 F lt fst_name gt lt Ist_name gt aie lt address1 gt lt address2 gt Ew lt city gt lt state gt lt zip gt R il A Dear I lt fst_name gt lt ist_name gt a 7 We just wanted t
128. nction and accounts are fully customizable albeit with a much simpler interface data from the bank in Quicken format directly to GnuCash It is somewhat similar to Quicken QuickBooks Users can import financial GNU Linux Upgrade GNU Linux Full SUSE Linux 9 2 60 300 SUSE Linux 9 2 90 450 OpenOffice org 0 OpenOffice org 0 GnuCash 0 00 GnuCash 0 00 Lyricue 0 Lyricue 0 InfoCentral 0 InfoCentral 0 LilyPond 0 LilyPond 0 Total 60 300 Total 90 450 The table above shows a per copy price in parentheses Legally 48 The Cost Challenge speaking a church could deploy SUSE Linux at the cost of a single copy would encourage organizations with the financial means to purchase a copy for each system in the organization Doing so supports the developers who have put so much effort into the software and makes it available to those people and organizations that do not have the means If you use a non profit distribution you should consider making a contribution to that organization Even paying on a per copy basis churches can save a phenomenal amount of money The upgrade for SUSE Linux contains the full SUSE Linux system but excludes the manuals The logic behind this approach is that you already know the tools thus no need for the manuals Some people choose the full edition just to get the newer manuals It s your choice You should note that the cost of some GNU
129. nly if its contents constitute a work based on the Program inde pendent of having been made by running the Program Whether that is true depends on what the Program does 1 You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program s source code as you receive it in any medium provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty and give any other re cipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee 2 You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it thus forming a work based on the Program and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above provided that you also meet all of these conditions a You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change b You must cause any work that you distribute or publish that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part 119 Resources thereof to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License c If the modified program normally reads commands interactivel
130. now your make and model If you don t see your device listed or described as functioning you should attempt to find out if anyone else has got such a device working Google can be your friend at this point GNU Linux will run most of the common hardware out of the box these days Hardware auto detection varies from one GNU Linux distribution to another but the most popular distributions do an excellent job of auto detecting and configuring hardware these days Certain peripherals may or may not be supported depending on the manufacturer In some cases you will still have to download drivers from the Internet to get a certain device working correctly While the commercial GNU Linux distributions often support the widest range of hardware some of the newer non commercial distributions offer strong competition in this area Downloading drivers is really only a minor inconvenience in most cases By comparison most device drivers for proprietary operating systems require either the device manufacturers CD or a download from the 25 The Hardware Compatibility Challenge Internet It is fair to say that DVD codecs are not distributed with most GNU Linux distributions due to legal issues but are available as a download from the Internet When hardware is not supported by GNU Linux at all it is typically a problem of the vendor refusing to release its drivers for that product The reasons vary but typically there is a misunderstanding of
131. ns on Mac and Windows systems but also on GNU Linux with a little work A thread discussion on the subject appears on the project s SourceForge site It s not quite as well 78 Free and Open Source Software for the Church supported as the Windows version Version 1 0 is due out soon with better GNU Linux support promised OpenSong is apparently very popular with its users Title L Text I a W IK Block LI W White W H Hidden E ibe WE IF Frozen Actions A Alert 4 Q Add Song S Scripture TE M Normal Scree hru el Es Retum Andan Bez 198 X Launch QOR roar E Le open Ja ee ut Cove res Lo Pre Hom AIG a as Illustration 7 OpenSong s TET control window running on Xandros Desktop Educational Applications Commercial GNU Linux systems typically include plenty of educational software that churches can put to good use in after school programs or in their own Bible schools Programs for Math Astronomy and foreign language studies should be easy to use for those who understand the concepts of each field Here though we ll mention two programs specifically Gcompris is a fun learning tool with bright colors Moodle is in use by universities and missions organizations alike The educational software should open doors for many families as well Those that cannot afford commercial proprietary programs can count on GNU Linux applications to help their children keep pace
132. ntral org www adebenham com lyricue www openlp org www opensong org www crosswire org www linuxsecurity com www privoxy Org www dansguardian org Prices used in this document are based on website pricing info as of 22 31 March 2004 and therefore may be outdated by the time you read this Author s note prices do not appear to have changed significantly over the last year Microsoft Windows 2003 Server Small Business 620 Standard 999 http www compusa com products products asp N 0 amp Ntt windows 20server amp Ntk All amp Nty 1 amp D windows 20server Resources Microsoft Windows XP Professional Upgrade 170 Full 300 http www officemax com max solutions product prodBlock jsp BV_UseBVCookie yes amp expansionOID 536884233 amp prodBlockOID 536950572 Microsoft Office Standard Upgrade 239 Full 399 http www officemax com max solutions search search jsp BV_UseBVCookie yes amp se archType product amp searchString Microsoft Office amp searchBtn x 23 amp searchBtn y 10 Capterra Church Management Software List http www capterra com church management software Powerchurch 395 w 90 Days support usually costs 595 www powerchurch com Church Pro 200 500 depending on church needs www churchpro com Roll Call 59 1695 depending on of records http www bythebook com order1 html Church Windows 475 for 100 families http www churchwindows com Ser
133. o remind you of the upcoming Bazaar to benefit the Young Missionaries of our church Bring your best and be ready to A bargain Page1 1 Default 100 INSRT STD HYP Illustration 4 A sample form letter created from CHADDB in OpenOffice org Above is a sample form letter created simply by dragging and dropping the column headings from the data source viewer shown above the document into the document at the insertion point When this letter is printed each copy will have the proper name and address where you see the fields The data source viewer shows a simple address book query that has been created using two tables from CHADDB We should note that church management programs are few and far between However the available solutions are flexible and free as in free coffee and freedom ChurchInfo and Open Source Church are the most mature projects CHADDB provides basic 76 Free and Open Source Software for the Church functionality that works with OpenOffice org Developers are encouraged to pitch in with the current projects as well as to build a native GNU Linux front end for CHADDB Worship Software Asaph Asaph is a Java based song database and is thus multi platform The developer is a worship leader who wrote Asaph to meet his own need Asaph will likely add lyric projection capabilities in the future Asaph enables users to print songbooks sheets or transparencies with or without chord markings Lyr
134. o your programs too When we speak of free software we are referring to freedom not price Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software and charge for this ser vice if you wish that you receive source code or can get it if you want it that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs and that you know you can do these things To protect your rights we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you dis tribute copies of the software or if you modify it For example if you distribute copies of such a program whether gratis or for a fee you must give the recipients all the rights that you have You must make sure that they too receive or can get the source code And you must show them these terms so they know their rights We protect your rights with two steps 1 copyright the software and 2 offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy distribute and or modify the software 118 Resources Also for each author s protection and ours we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free soft ware If the software is modified by someone else and passed on we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the
135. oal If the cost of the migration is less than the cost of upgrading you essentially have capitalized on your savings The freedom to change vendors when necessary is difficult to calculate in your budget but the impact is phenomenal The typical proprietary license restricts our freedom unnecessarily Many people violate these licenses in spite of the hefty penalties Whenever Christians have the choice to use software in violation of a legally binding agreement or to use free and open source software we should choose the latter which legally permits us to use the software in ways proprietary software does not For Christians free and open source software by their nature harmonize with Christian values and principles in a way that proprietary software cannot do 83 Migration Strategies Another excellent reason for migrating is security We can reduce our vulnerability to viruses reduce the impact of external attacks on our systems and better protect our systems from internal attacks Certain proprietary vendors continue to suffer from security vulnerabilities due in no small part to their design methodology The need to purchase additional software tools to protect legacy operating systems adds to the cost of maintaining them Extending the abilities of your current hardware resources can be one reason to migrate Ease of use can be another XFce the lightweight graphical desktop allows you to maximize your system performance w
136. office is what we call networking The Local Area Network LAN is what you ll use within your facility Networking requires communications protocols that allow the computers to understand each other Many businesses that use Windows on the desktop workstation connect them to a GNU Linux file and print server using SAMBA Windows uses the SMB protocol for file and printer sharing GNU Linux and UNIX systems use the NFS protocol SAMBA simply allows GNU Linux and Windows machines to share files and printers with each other 28 The Interoperability Challenge GNU Linux also offers AppleTalk the Mac networking protocol and Novell s IPX protocol In fact Novell recently acquired SUSE Linux and Ximian the maker of Ximian Evolution the Outlook clone Novell recently committed itself to the open source movement Since GNU Linux was built for multi user networked environments it is able to connect to other computers in a variety of ways This means you can run one PC with GNU Linux while maintaining your current Windows and other boxes all while you adjust to the new OS It also means you can migrate gradually if that fits your needs better Of course it s possible that a church could have a mixture of donated hardware In this case you can run GNU Linux Mac and Windows without missing a beat Office Productivity Interoperability Office productivity is one of the reasons why so many people try to use the same software This b
137. ommonly used applications The task bar shows what windows are open The system tray shows processes running in the background For the most part icons and windows behave much the same way as in Windows One difference is that the applications installed show up in pre arranged categories in the system menu Many Windows users manually setup categories of software in the start menu With GNU Linux this is an automated process making applications easy to find based on what they do Additionally windows can be rolled up by double clicking on the title bar 34 The Usability Challenge GNOME is another popular desktop which is generally considered to be light weight meaning that it consumes fewer system resources than KDE GNOME still functions similar to Windows but the system menu now is usually found at the top left corner of the screen This is not always true different distributions setup their graphical shells differently It offers many of the same features as KDE but does not include quite as many applications e 3 Semus 1 2 EE a es oa Illustration 1 The GNOME desktop SUSE Linux 9 2 The GNOME desktop above has the main panel at the top of the screen and the task bar at the bottom The task bar in Windows can be placed at the top as well The main panel shows a few icons added for quick starting of commonly used programs Icons on the desktop let you access your CD media easily XFce is the true li
138. on Inc 59 Temple Place Suite 330 Boston MA 02111 1307 USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document but changing it is not allowed 0 PREAMBLE The purpose of this License is to make a manual textbook or other functional and useful document free in the sense of freedom to as sur veryone th ffective freedom to copy and redistribute it with or without modifying it either commercially or noncommercially Secon darily this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others This License is a kind of copyleft which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be fr in the same sense It comple ments the GNU General Public License which is a copyleft license de signed for free software We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free software because fr software needs free documentation a free pro gram should come with manuals providing the same freedoms that the software does But this License is not limited to software manuals it can be used for any textual work regardless of subject matter or whether it is published as a printed book We recommend this License principally for works whose purpose is instruction or reference 1 APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS This License applies to any
139. ons and services A variety of prices across commercial GNU Linux distributions reflects the highly competitive marketplace As for power and flexibility GNU Linux runs on practically every hardware platform From Sharp Zaurus hand helds to floppy based network routers to 64 bit operating systems to IBM mainframes GNU Linux will run it all That older hardware you still have hanging around will make a great and cheap network terminal or even an e mail or fax server With over 330 active distributions to choose from you won t be locked into a single vendor In fact you can choose between non commercial or commercial distributions 13 Identifying the Issues We ll also examine costs an important factor in the decision making process After all the church must have the facts to be an effective steward of her resources The cost of migration is a hotly debated issue To make matters a bit more interesting a number of factors can affect the actual cost How much will it cost to purchase GNU Linux How much will it cost to train our staff Will we need to hire a tech guy When it comes to power Linux errs on the side of offering far more power than is immediately necessary for the typical end user Or does it Consider the rapidly growing church that has 50 members today but by next year grows to 150 members Trust me when I say that Linux and one of the included SQL database servers can handle the data for thousands of members bef
140. ook was created using both Microsoft Word under Windows XP Pro and OpenOffice org under SUSE Linux Pro 9 2 That s proof positive that OpenOffice org works very well with Microsoft Office In fact OpenOffice org is probably more interoperable than its proprietary competitors The two formatting glitches spacing and images in PNG format were easily fixed I found that with spacing can either make the minor adjustments or ignore them altogether knowing that when re open the document in OpenOffice org will have it exactly the way it should be The same goes for images For some reason Microsoft Office did not handle the PNG images inserted into the OpenOffice org document well at all It does fine with PNG images inserted from within MS Office and handles JPEG images well The problem with the images and is one example of the problems caused by proprietary applications Since they are poorly documented if at all they are nearly impossible for developers of other applications to work with If Microsoft and other vendors opened up their proprietary formats other applications would work much better OpenOffice org on the other hand offers a publicly available document format This improves interoperability and opens the door to establishing a standard One very important aspect pertaining to interoperability is the fact that OpenOffice org s OpenDocument format will soon be an ISO standard This means that the format will be recogni
141. oprietary software illegally This should not be construed as direct accusations but is intended to open the eyes of the Church to potential issues in many ministries It is up to individual ministries to investigate the legality of the software they use I am deeply indebted to many people for the content of this book Greg whose unfulfilled promise of 24 7 technical support forced me to learn more than originally sought to know about computers He sold me my first PC and helped me to overcome my technophobia Gary Potts of National Gypsum tirelessly answered my questions when first began to use computers Indeed the entire IT staff of National Gypsum has in one way or another made this book possible despite being Windows admins I am also grateful to the wonderful folks who participate so much on the SUSE Linux e mail lists they are my teachers and my greatest critics Likewise my brothers and sisters in the Christian free and open source software community have contributed much to my understanding of GNU Linux and have even supported most of my advocacy efforts James Pryor and Mike McMullen contributed much to my discussion of free software philosophy and the legal foundation of Copyright Law Of course were it not for the efforts of Christians who have devoted many years to developing applications for the Church would have had little use to expand this book Many in the Christian free and open source software community ha
142. or access limited functionality You also have a basic understanding of the more popular approaches to maintaining and upgrading your software So what do you do when you need help Thats what the next chapter is all about 63 Support Options 10 SUPPORT OPTIONS Perhaps one of the biggest stumbling blocks some churches will face is the perceived lack of quality technical support available for the GNU Linux system and other free and open source software People need to know how to get help and the best resources on how to go about obtaining help might strike some Christians as a bit obtuse Ministry staffers need to know how to get help and we ll present that here in a useful way Quality is probably a better term than professional when talking about technical support The term professional might refer to support by a polite but under trained or inexperienced help desk technician which results in poor quality technical support On the other hand an experienced technician may not always be polite It is important to recognize the difference between these two sides of the coin That the volunteer community often provides high quality support is really not so surprising given that many of the users who volunteer their time are actually computer professionals By the same token even fairly new users can be of some assistance to others Most people won t answer if they aren t pretty sure their solution will work
143. order to establish a contract between licensor and licensee Provisions mandating so called click wrap may conflict with important methods of software distribution such as FTP download CD ROM an thologies and web mirroring such provisions may also hinder code re use Conformant licenses must al low for the possibility that a redistribution of the software will take place over non Web channels that do not support click wrapping of the download and that b the covered code or re used portions of covered code may run in a non GUI environment that cannot support popup dialogues 117 Resources THE GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE GPL Version 2 June 199 Copyright C 1989 1991 Free Software Foundation Inc 59 Temple Place Suite 330 Boston MA 02111 1307 USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document but changing it is not allowed Preamble The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it By contrast the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software to make sure the software is free for all its users This General Pub lic License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation s software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU Library General Public License instead You can apply it t
144. ore it even starts thinking about breaking a sweat So you ve got plenty of room to grow We must bear in mind that with freedom comes responsibility We have the responsibility to administer our computers and ina secure manner It is our responsibility to secure our computers and our networks from external attacks and viruses It is our responsibility to ensure a back up procedure that is capable of helping us to recover from security breaches and other failures Part of that responsibility entails learning a few new skills Freedom also means that we need more knowledge to better understand the choices we face Linux not only offers freedom but flexibility to boot Which desktop environment should you use Which web server should you run Do you have the need to run Oracle s SAP 9 with its tremendous memory requirements Or can you get by with MySQL Many pastors may not realize that am speaking of databases and that s OK I am not asking you to know it all right now Think about it Did you understand the depths of John 3 16 when you first received the Gospel Of course not So why reject Linux simply on the grounds that you do not fully understand it As you have taken years to explore your faith so you should time to explore Linux Come out of Ur Abraham Go West to Canaan Will it be easy There will be challenges Then again simply upgrading from one version of Windows to another can cause problems Linux often does
145. original so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors reputations Finally any free program is threatened constantly by software patents We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses in effect making the program pro prietary To prevent this we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone s fr use or not licensed at all The precise terms and conditions for copying distribution and modifi cation follow TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION 0 This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed un der the terms of this General Public License The Program below refers to any such program or work and a work based on the Program means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law that is to say a work containing the Program or a portion of it ei ther verbatim or with modifications and or translated into another lan guage Hereinafter translation is included without limitation in the term modification Each licensee is addressed as you Activities other than copying distribution and modification are not covered by this License they are outside its scope The act of running the Program is not restricted and the output from the Program is cov ered o
146. ors not familiar with GNU Linux a bit more time will be required to set things up initially Even so assuming you ve done your homework you ll save time in the long run The nice thing about most general purpose GNU Linux distributions is that they pre configure most of the software so that it runs the way it s supposed to right out of the box You can always tweak the settings but most people can probably use the standard settings For example MySQL a popular database server is normally ready to run right out of the box with SUSE Linux assuming you chose to install it with the operating system All you have to do is use the Run Level Editor in Yast to start it Most proprietary operating systems require users to configure everything from scratch With proprietary operating systems servers like this have to be installed and configured manually Free and open source operating systems have the applications and servers you choose at install time ready to roll for the most part Some software depends on your specific system configuration and therefore has to be configured by you to run correctly Otherwise the software you select during the installation process is installed and pre configured You don t have to install everything at once but it can save a good deal of time in the long run The only reason not to is if you re not sure you re going to run the software or you want to install and configure it your way Oakdale Christian Fel
147. ot to migrate to GNU Linux the migration team should be assigned to continue watching the free and open source software community for future opportunities In other words always keep the door open to a potential migration 82 Migration Strategies Reasons to migrate In order to facilitate any movement in the direction of free and open source software we need to first understand why we are migrating Although that has been the point of the previous chapters let s simply summarize some of the main issues After all if we don t understand why we are migrating then we are merely conducting an exercise in change management One important reason is to rid our ministries of the proprietary traps that imprison us in an expensive restrictive license agreement Proprietary software makes migrating to any other solution more difficult and expensive than it needs to be Proprietary software keeps us stuck with a single vendor a great thing until that vendor raises the prices on its software Changing from that proprietary vendor to another is more difficult than migrating from one open source vendor to another The ability to choose between vendors gives you bargaining power In fact if the cost of migrating costs more than upgrading that is only an initial investment You are really investing in the ability to negotiate better prices You are also investing in an overall reduced cost of computing and we should not lose sight of that g
148. ou then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance the balance of the section is intended to 121 Resources apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circum stances It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims this section has the sole purpose of protecting the in tegrity of the free software distribution system which is implemented by public license practices Many people have made generous contribu tions to the wide range of software distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that system it is up to the au thor donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a consequence of the rest of this License 8 If the distribution and or use of the Program is restricted in cer tain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces th original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries so that distribution is permitt
149. ou goofed back near the beginning you had to retype most of the command With GNU Linux you can edit the command where it needs to be edited Although prefer the graphical interfaces the GNU Linux command line is a joy to use In fact the GNU Linux command line offers a history function the settings for which you can adjust to your liking This comes in handy if you happen to be using the command line to run a particular command several times frequently use the command line for interacting with the MySQL database server In doing so can simply hit the Up arrow key to bring up the last command can then edit it to login as a different user or make other changes and re run the command In some respects GNU Linux offers more intuitive graphical Shells than Windows The desktop known as Enlightenment eliminates the task bar in favor of simply clicking or right clicking on the desktop The focus is on efficiency just click on the desktop and there s your start button Most graphical shells offer a 33 The Usability Challenge concept called virtual desktops which allow users to organize their work in a more intuitive fashion For instance think of having one desk for your office tasks and another for your Internet related tasks As far as graphical shells desktops are concerned three are probably the easiest to use in a typical church environment It is possible to install all of them on a given sys
150. oughout time as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning Dr Edgar David Villanueva Nu ez 8 April 2002 English version posted at the Open Source Initiative site http opensource org docs peru_and_ms php Dr Nu ez argues at length that in order to guarantee a free society citizens many of whom work for the Peruvian government must have access to the underlying source code to ensure the stability of the software and to be able to modify it for their own requirements The free access issue affects education especially in the United States as well Whereas proprietary software forbids studying the source code free software guarantees free access to the code the information that underpins the resulting program A number of governments outside the United States fear that certain vendors might be working in tandem with the CIA to monitor their governments United States citizens should know that some vendors have the ability to detect users software settings via the Internet as if taking a direct cue from George Orwell A number of privacy organizations are actively promoting privacy and freedom both on the Internet and in our civic affairs Since we have seen in this chapter a great deal of terminology and concepts that may seem quite confusing it may be helpful to see the various freedoms granted by different licenses It is also useful to understand how the commercial or non commercial nature of a softwar
151. our neighbor unless the license explicitly permits such actions The case above involves a church member who may have contributed software to the church in violation of the EULA and copyright law Loaning your proprietary software CD to your neighbor usually involves the same kind of violation We don t know how many churches use the same faulty thinking when considering their software options However a Christian living in New Orleans recently wrote that he knew of a church with several computers but that only one of those had properly licensed software Setting aside any possible legal challenges involved one can only wonder in amazement that the Bride of Christ the Church would use proprietary software in an illegal manner Imagine our Heavenly Father s displeasure at the notion Some churches think they have to have the latest and greatest in software technology In fact many churches may not realize that the latest and greatest software is not even proprietary Some 9 A Legal and Moral Dilemma churches refuse to change on account of our current software is easy to use That is not to say that FOSS alternatives are not easy to use The real issue is simply that they are comfortable with what they have The church needs to realize that ease of use while certainly important is not the only basis for making decisions especially when a morally compelling reason for changing is presented It is difficult
152. pastor He participates in the Christian Webmasters website and is working to develop the Holy Scripters a play on HotScripts website for Christian software developers Bob has been instrumental in helping to bring up the news portal for the Christian FOSS community The Christian Open Development Network is a site devoted to launching Christian software development projects Developers can meet and help each other Users can find projects that may not be listed elsewhere though most are CODN is undergoing a transition in the site design The new design is much more polished and easier to navigate The ChristianSource Free Software and Linux Users Group CS FSLUG is an e mail list where Christians can discuss technical issues as well as faith and politics Because not everyone enjoys the political or theological debates posters usually preface these with PD or TD in the subject line of the e mail Users can then filter out the non technical messages if desired Prayer requests are another feature that makes CS FSLUG a great list CS FSLUG is moderated by Tim Butler a Christian businessman who runs the Open For Business website and several others Tim also offers web hosting to those who ask A number of the members of CS FSLUG are regular writers for OFB Members hail from Israel and Japan as well as The Netherlands Linux 4 Christians L4C is another e mail list that at one time had united with CS FSLUG and h
153. ply over their heads even if it isn t The more adventurous users will be better able to handle change while those less technically inclined will be more apprehensive about change 84 Migration Strategies The initiative and motivation to change will need to come from the church leadership The fact that we already know a particular program and are somewhat attached to it is neither the best nor the only factor in a change scenario There certainly is something to be said for being proficient with the tools we use However proficiency often becomes a euphemism for our emotional comfort level We will again become proficient with new tools We may even wonder why we didn t start with the new tools much earlier Most of the changes that the user will notice are more cosmetic than technical The technical differences do exist and some common tasks are accomplished using a slightly different process However the real problem of change is the change itself not the software Church leaders simply need to be prepared to help deal with the change aspect A great many migrations encounter very little resistance once underway Church leaders can help by encouraging the staff Providing a little hand holding assistance could prove quite beneficial not only from a financial standpoint but also from an emotional perspective Whoever is leading the migration should keep a good sense of humor about them and avoid belittling the folks wrest
154. programmers usually create files with code that can be re used in other programs called libraries Programmers have a couple of options when it comes to taking advantage of a computer s resources When developing for the 59 System Resources Windows platform most programmers typically include these libraries with their program When developing for the GNU Linux and UNIX platforms programmers try to take advantage of libraries already available on the system Let s consider the advantages and disadvantages of each When a Windows user installs a program the installer usually offers a few options and then installs the files in the program s own directory Users are oblivious of what is happening in the background However there are a couple of caveats to this approach On the one hand multiple copies of a library can be installed on the system On the other hand a program could copy a modified library over an existing copy of the same library Suppose a bug or security vulnerability is discovered in a library If you update a single program that uses the library you could still have other copies that have not been updated Most users probably wouldn t even think to check whether other programs use the same library If the other program vendors haven t offered updates of their own the user may still be vulnerable When a library is overwritten by a new or modified version you may not notice any difference until a much later
155. rants that the copyright in and to the Original Work and the patent rights granted herein by Licensor are owned by the Licensor or are sublicensed to You under the terms of this License with the permission of the contributor s of those copyrights and patent rights Except as ex pressly stated in the immediately proceeding sentence the Original Work is provided un der this License on an AS IS BASIS and WITHOUT WARRANTY either express or implied including without limitation the warranties of NON INFRINGEMENT MER CHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY OF THE ORIGINAL WORK IS WITH YOU This DIS CLAIMER OF WARRANTY constitutes an essential part of this License No license to Original Work is granted hereunder except under this disclaimer 8 Limitation of Liability Under no circumstances and under no legal theory whether in tort including negligence contract or otherwise shall the Licensor be liable to any person for any direct indirect special incidental or consequential damages of any char acter arising as a result of this License or the use of the Original Work including without limitation damages for loss of goodwill work stoppage computer failure or malfunc tion or any and all other commercial damages or losses This limitation of liability shall not apply to liability for death or personal injury resulting from Licensor s negligence to the extent applicable law prohibits such limi
156. rces is another interesting point While GNU Linux and Windows both require a pretty hefty amount of disk space to install GNU Linux is much more flexible and makes better use of your PC s resources Some GNU Linux distributions are small enough to fit on a floppy disk Distributions like this are usually specialized for a particular purpose System Requirements for Windows XP per Microsoft s Web Site PC with 300 MHz or higher processor clock speed recommended 233 MHz minimum required single or dual processor system Intel Pentium Celeron family or AMD K6 Athlon Duron family or compatible processor recommended 128mb of RAM or higher recommended 64MB minimum supported may limit performance and some features 1 5 GB of available hard disk space Super VGA 800 x 600 or higher resolution video adapter and monitor CD ROM or DVD drive Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device tete If your system meets the requirements for Windows listed above chances are you ll be fine with GNU Linux The requirements for GNU Linux actually vary depending on your needs wants In fact one can still run GNU Linux on older hardware using 4 8 MB of RAM and 60 600 MB of hard disk space Mind you it won t be quite as exciting but you do have more options Some GNU Linux distributions actually fit onto the small business card CD s Others can be booted from USB drives assuming your BIOS allows that Such di
157. replace it immediately with free and open source alternatives Not only can they pass along copies of free and open source software to poorer members of their congregations they can divert money they would have to spend on proprietary software to helping the poor as well All of this has implications for you and your church Do you understand the issues involved Are you willing to consider facts rather than hearsay This book will help you as a church leader to better understand the basic issues that churches should address when considering their computing platform 10 A Legal and Moral Dilemma http www bsa org usa antipiracy Piracy and the Law cfm Identifying the Issues 3 IDENTIFYING THE ISSUES So you ve discovered that due to costs security or legal issues you may need to change your software Before you rush down to the church office and start revamping there are a few things you need to consider The major issues are compatibility and interoperability usability freedom and cost In addition the power flexibility and stability your computing platform offers deserve consideration We ll examine each of these in more depth but would like to help you see the big picture When I speak of compatibility churches need to assess whether GNU Linux will work with their current hardware and any church administration software they might use Most but not all hardware works with GNU Linux You might just be surpris
158. rk seamlessly with other proprietary programs Interoperability in the office productivity arena is likely the most important issue for most church users The biggest challenge for free and open source software developers is that most proprietary applications store documents and data in a proprietary format that is difficult to render perfectly in another program This is one reason why many people are dropping proprietary applications it s easier to extract data from and exchange data with the open source solutions OpenOffice org is the best office suite available when it comes to compatibility with Microsoft Office Its Word equivalent Writer works best of all Calc works very well with Excel spreadsheets Impress has had a history of not working quite as well with PowerPoint but simple presentations will work Until recently Base will be part of the 2 0 release there has been no Access replacement However OpenOffice org enables users to connect directly to any ODBC or JDBC compliant database 30 The Interoperability Challenge You may need to make some minor adjustments to your documents as you open them in each OpenOffice org program For instance you may discover your page breaks don t work out quite the same Often simply by placing the cursor in an innocuous blank line and hitting the Backspace you ll be fine The image on the cover of this document seemed to keep getting goofed as it s really two images
159. rogrammers are paid to develop software in house and that their code is thus difficult to copy or re use Additionally if a proprietary software vendor closes its doors the customer is left holding a bag of non maintainable software Both free and open source software provide alternatives to the proprietary model These are two similar software licensing models with one fairly subtle but sometimes contentious difference The primary difference between the two models lies in whose freedom is being propagated the users or the developers In short free software propagates the users freedom while open source software propagates the developers freedom Beyond this difference the two are synonymous Those who lean toward the free software model consider it necessary in the free software license to prevent developers from being able to restrict other people s freedom Those who lean toward the open source model tend to uphold the developer s right to choose whether their software is proprietary or not While the two models generally have attracted their own camps of followers many people Christian or not agree that both models are preferable to the proprietary model 19 Truly Free Computing Free software licenses also known as copyleft are licenses that guarantee four fundamental freedoms According to the Free Software Definition at http www gnu org philosophy free sw html Freedom to run
160. roved by an organization as the authoritative definition of a standard You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front Cover Text and a passage of up to 25 words as a Back Cover Text to the end of the list of Cover Texts in the Modified Version Only one passage of Front Cov er Text and one of Back Cover Text may be added by or through arrange ments made by any one entity If the Document already includes a cov er text for the same cover previously added by you or by arrangement 133 Resources made by the same entity you are acting on behalf of you may not add another but you may replace the old one on explicit permission from the previous publisher that added the old one The author s and publisher s of the Document do not by this License give permission to use their names for publicity for or to assert or imply endorsement of any Modified Version 5 COMBINING DOCUMENTS You may combine the Document with other documents released under this License under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified ver sions provided that you include in the combination all of the Invari ant Sections of all of the original documents unmodified and list them all as Invariant Sections of your combined work in its license no tice and that you preserve all their Warranty Disclaimers The combined work need only contain one copy of this License and mul tiple identical Invariant Sections may be replaced wi
161. rs may not advertise their product as compatible with GNU Linux even if it does work Additionally some vendors do not seem to have much interest in opening their drivers to the open source community This means we have to do a little homework Again though in most cases your standard hardware from major vendors should work 27 The Interoperability Challenge 6 THE INTEROPERABILITY CHALLENGE You ll also want to know if GNU Linux is well adjusted socially that is whether it plays well with other operating systems and applications It s important to know the answer to this because ina world where people choose Windows because that s what everyone uses you need to know if you can connect to PC s that run other operating systems and share files between MS Office on Windows and OpenOffice org on GNU Linux The good news is that GNU Linux is superbly adjusted Interoperability Across the Network For starters GNU Linux can connect to pretty much any other operating system across a network Various tools enable users to continue using legacy programs that run under their current system Most of the application software available for GNU Linux can import and export documents and data from and to Windows based application formats Let s look a little closer A system running GNU Linux can connect to other UNIX systems Mac Mac OSX is actually UNIX underneath and Windows Connecting computers this way in your
162. s These actions are pro hibited by law if you do not accept this License Therefore by modify ing or distributing the Program or any work based on the Program you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so and all its terms and conditions for copying distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it 6 Each time you redistribute the Program or any work based on the Program the recipient automatically receives a license from the orig inal licensor to copy distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients exercise of the rights granted herein You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License 7 If as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent in fringement or for any other reason not limited to patent issues con ditions are imposed on you whether by court order agreement or other wise that contradict the conditions of this License they do not ex s a use you from the conditions of this License If you cannot distribute o as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and ny other pertinent obligations then as a consequence you may not dis ribute the Program at all For example if a patent license would not permit royalty free redistribution of the Program by all those who re ceive copies directly or indirectly through y
163. s of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain ASCII without markup Texinfo input format LaTeX input format SGML or XML using a publicly available DTD and standard conforming simple HTML PostScript or PDF designed for human modification Examples of trans 130 Resources parent image formats include PNG XCF and JPG Opaque formats include proprietary formats that can be read and edited only by proprietary word processors SGML or XML for which the DTD and or processing tools are not generally available and the machine generated HTML PostScript or PDF produced by some word processors for output purposes only The Title Page means for a printed book the title page itself plus such following pages as are needed to hold legibly the material this License requires to appear in the title page For works in formats which do not have any title page as such Title Page means the text near the most prominent appearance of the work s title preceding the beginning of the body of the text A section Entitled XYZ means a named subunit of the Document whose title either is precisely XYZ or contains XYZ in parentheses following text that translates XYZ in another language Here XYZ stands for a specific section name mentioned below such as Acknowledgements Dedications Endorsements or History To Preserve the Title of such a section when you modify the Document means that it r
164. s on the right KDE makes the most sense when you want your users to have an environment most like Windows Use GNOME when you want a light weight desktop but want to still offer your users a fair amount of control over their desktops XFce makes the most sense when you have a bunch of non technical users or if you have limited hardware resources There are additional desktops that can be used Some eliminate the task bar in favor of simply clicking on the desktop to bring up the system menu The idea is that wherever your mouse is on the desktop you can click and have the system menu at your pleasure It s a very efficient approach You may want evaluate them to see if they fit your needs When it comes to office productivity most of the concepts are the same In fact many of the toolbar icons in OpenOffice org are the same as in Microsoft Office The tool tips will help with many of the differences Again though different is not more difficult OpenOffice org 2 0 will look more like Microsoft Office but allows users to retain the old look amp feel as well 36 The Usability Challenge Perhaps the Gimp a PhotoShop like image editor is the one program that seems to be quite different in its user interface Even so most of the folks know that have used both prefer the Gimp Apparently even the Gimp is susceptible to getting the imitation look and feel The new version will look more like Adobe s Photoshop OpenOffice org o
165. ses the PHP scripting language and can be used in any web browser making it very appealing for end users Web based solutions like this involve setting up a web server a database server and then running the scripts to configure the application It may take a little work to setup but is easy for users to use in day to day operations InfoCentral s lead developer decided to take InfoCentral to the Java platform keeping it portable and improving scalability This 74 Free and Open Source Software for the Church decision has led to a couple of spin offs from the InfoCentral project such as ChurchInfo and Open Source Church InfoCentral in its current PHP form has been used by a church with 2000 members and is currently in use by hundreds of churches around the world Churchinfo www churchdb org appears to be most like the InfoCentral application and has added new functionality Donations can be automated by bank draft and credit card Pledges and donations can be tracked by family The image below shows part of the form used to add a family in ChurchInfo saa Churchinfo Family Editor Mozilla Firefox EX File Edit View Go Bookmarks Tools Help it EDO As https host216 ipowerweb com churchdb churchinfo 1 1 6 Familyi 8 Gl News O c FOSS U C News Dev Web Accts Software Local Linux Vendors anan _ i Matheteuo Members Page Statistics of matheteuo org ChurchInfo gt Churchinfo Fami
166. simply confused about something From here readers can begin to help you out This link contains a helpful if somewhat sarcastic discussion about asking questions in newsgroups and e mail lists It would also apply to web forums http www catb org esr faqs smart questions html It is useful to know that almost every project available has either an e mail list or a web forum available for its users Many offer both 69 Support Options services Typically there is an e mail list for developers and a separate list for users List names may look something like myproject users myproject org Linux Users Groups At the local level you may be able to find or start a Linux Users Group Many larger cities have at least one and others exist in local rural areas Linux Users Groups often involve IT professionals and some of these folks are Christians or willing to help out a fellow Linux user They usually hold a monthly meeting where specific subjects are discussed They may hold other events such as install fests where they help people install a GNU Linux Operating system These groups frequently have a website and an e mail list where you can ask questions You may also find computer hardware amp software items to trade How each group works depends largely on its charter but it s a great way to network with local GNU Linux users While many of the folks involved in Linux Users Groups are not Christians you re sure to
167. sing a distribution you should consider the fact that the commercial vendors actually offer telephone technical support They also make installing GNU Linux much easier than it might otherwise be For instance wouldn t recommend installing Debian GNU Linux until you ve played around with other GNU Linux distributions for a while The price of GNU Linux distributions can vary greatly and can generally be purchased in home or personal editions or in professional editions that include a bigger selection of software Mandrake and SUSE both offer small business solutions and thus are solid candidates for churches of all sizes Xandros offers a solid selection with a broad range of prices as well Linspire is relatively cheap and can be used with Juno s free Internet service Red Hat s Fedora Core distribution is essentially cost free Their business distribution could cost nearly 1300 to setup a server and five workstations You could deploy SUSE s enterprise solution server and five workstations for roughly 1000 Frankly SUSE Linux Professional edition Mandrake and Xandros Desktop with offerings in the 20 200 range appear to offer the best options for most churches The advantage of the non commercial distributions 50 The Cost Challenge is that you can use one copy for your whole office In other words that s roughly 80 for all the PC s in your church office not per PC Of course if you ve got
168. some critical tasks you will need to perform yourself A good place to Start is with the local Linux Users Group Just don t rely on a Windows only expert to be your guide 91 GNU Linux Background 13 GNU LINUX BACKGROUND Richard Stallman started out with free software even though that label had not yet been applied He watched as the free software developer community collapsed and determined that it would be necessary to create an entire operating system so that one could run a computer using nothing but free software He began the GNU Project in 1984 quitting his position at MIT Labs to ensure that MIT could not claim ownership of the work Stallman first wrote GNU Emacs and distributed it for 150 The Hurd was to be GNU s kernel but was not due to be released anytime soon The idea is to deploy several servers on top of a micro kernel The Hurd attempts to fully implement the principles of sound operating system design Although today there are GNU distributions using the Hurd kernel it is not as mature or stable yet as Linux With the Hurd still under development GNU needed a kernel Linus Torvalds a student at the University of Helsinki in Finland began work on Linux in 1991 He intended it to be a hobby operating system never imagining that he would have such a dramatic impact on the world He wanted a UNIX like system that he could run on his 386 computer at the time Minix was available but only for a fee He wrote L
169. sources code means all the source code for all modules it contains plus any associated interface definition files plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable However as a special exception the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed in either source or binary form with the ma jor components compiler kernel and so on of the operating system on which the executable runs unless that component itself accompanies the executable If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code 4 You may not copy modify sublicense or distribute the Program ex cept as expressly provided under this License Any attempt otherwise to copy modify sublicense or distribute the Program is void and will automatically terminate your rights under this License However par ties who have received copies or rights from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance 5 You are not required to accept this License since you have not Signed it However nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative work
170. st approach Running a dual boot configuration is probably best for the early study and preparation phase However if you need to run a Windows program under GNU Linux you will need to use the dual boot configuration 86 Migration Strategies Choosing Your New Desktop Environment You will want to begin exploring your GNU Linux distribution options at the soonest possible time Some distributions can be a little daunting for new users to install but are very easy to keep up to date Others are very easy to install but a little challenging to keep up to date You ll want to consider the bells and whistles included with each distribution including the various levels of commercial technical support If you just want to try out all this GNU stuff you should obtain Knoppix Morphix and or Ubuntu These are live evaluation distributions that run off the CD rather than from your hard drive This gives users the chance to try GNU Linux without actually installing it to their systems You may be able to save documents you create in your Live CD trials to your floppy drive Incidentally many people have used Knoppix to recover their crashed Windows systems Additionally SUSE offers a live CD Sun offers the Sun Java Desktop CD which is an evaluation version For something like 50 per year you can register it with Sun and install it to your hard drive Other distributions may offer live CDs as well You can also order CD sets that includ
171. stand the various network services and can configure them in Windows all you need in GNU Linux is to find the right tools and the rest should be easy 38 The Usability Challenge Instead of the System Console with its snap ins and add ons you ll have to get used to using different tools For instance SUSE uses a tool called Yast Yet Another Setup Tool to accomplish most tasks Red Hat and Mandrake offer different tools that accomplish the same things These tools allow administrators to manage their hardware software networking and users from a single interface YaST Control Center tuke i aa so Lf Ha Es os sy s Bi m ss r Ipc Ei s gt d _ O network Services Illustration 3 SUSE s Yast eases system management tasks The image above shows Yast Novell SUSE s system configuration tool Users can install RPM packages via standard console commands using a graphical RPM tool or Yast Yast maintains a database of your RPMs and you can tell Yast where to find RPMs not on the installation media Yast On Line Update YOU keeps your system up to date with the latest security patches and bug fixes Webmin is another system administration tool available It runs in a web browser and works with pretty much any of the GNU Linux systems Because it uses a web interface it is relatively easy to use The CUPS printing system the most popular of two such systems also has a web interface by
172. stributions typically enable users to rescue crashed systems even crashed Windows 55 System Resources systems experiment with GNU Linux or provide a limited set of applications that can be used when they don t otherwise have access to a complete GNU Linux distribution They re also great for demonstration purposes Of course for churches the ability to run GNU Linux on older hardware could be very important The hardware often donated to churches is sometimes as useful for a doorstop as anything else With GNU Linux Emacs a powerful text editor and bc a console based spreadsheet even the worst situations might be improved Again you might rather have a Graphical User Interface GUI but GNU Linux is better than DOS when it comes to the command line GNU Linux actually uses free RAM as a hard disk cache to help reduce the number of times it has to go to your hard disk for data Because going to the hard disk is relatively slow this speeds things up a bit It offers an efficient journaling filesystem ReiserFS which would be the Windows equivalent of NTFS NT Filesystem ReiserFS can handle upwards of 17TB Terabytes of data not that your church will ever use that much space GNU Linux Applications generally require less disk space less RAM and create smaller files than their Windows counterparts The MS Word version of this document is a full 100k larger than the OOo version The Free Software Consortium s web
173. subject to such challenges A number of modern Bible translations and scholarly texts are locked due to a lack of permission from the copyright holders These folks should be encouraged to make such materials available even if for a fee Even if you or your ministry choose not to use free and open source software you could certainly support those who do by encouraging manufacturers retailers and copyright holders to open their doors to the free and open source software community A concern for fairness and customer service should prevail No one is asking the vendors to give away anything but simply to make their products software and services available to those who use a different platform Information about e mailing copyright holders of biblical and other texts can be obtained from the CrossWire Bible Society website http www crosswire org sword copyright Users can learn about a good e mail campaign from the FreeBSD folks who orchestrated a successful campaign to obtain permission to distribute proprietary hardware drivers with FreeBSD All that is needed are a few Christians willing to produce a good e mail template and help recruit people to send out the e mail Another way Christians can help improve free and open source software is by participating in the application development projects Even if you are not a programmer developers need feedback from users to help them improve their software Applications that are not
174. t and will likely include many of the tools churches would use most esux You may run into references to Jesux This was revealed to bea hoax a fairly long time ago but some people still don t know that Essentially it s made out to be a fundamentalist Christian distribution The link below will take the curious to the site still up as of the time of this publication http www geocities com ResearchTriangle Node 4081 106 Resources 16 RESOURCES Although there are numerous resources I have here included the most pertinent and useful to the uninitiated I have also refrained from listing books geared toward specific distributions Most of the web sites below sites offer links to other useful and more specific sites I have also included a listing of the most recently available prices of the operating systems and applications discussed in this book Taran Rampersad has done an excellent job of discussing the differences between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice org This article can be read at http www fsc cc and responds to a document that apparently used to exist on the Microsoft web site He points out the differences in system requirements functionality and interoperability Books IDG Books Worldwide Sybex Wrox Press and Osbourne McGraw Hill publish excellent books in my experience understand O Reilly is a solid publisher as well although have not actually read any of their books Installing and
175. t analysis did not account for the cost of anti spam anti virus and anti spyware utilities Additionally for every educational application you need say for Bible study or after school programs you ll have to purchase a license for each copy used Count up the cost and you ll begin to realize how the cost of proprietary software impacts the cost of computing in your organization 51 The Cost Challenge Installation and Configuration Time The time it takes to install and configure software should be considered in the equation With proprietary platforms users purchase a basic operating system with minimal utilities and no other software included In order to have a productive workstation additional software usually must be purchased and installed separately Barring the ability to copy the hard drive images to multiple hard drives the time required simply depends on the software involved The typical GNU Linux distribution already includes the vast majority of the software you need including the office productivity software Performing the CD shuffle to install CD burning software office productivity software audio recording software and so on is reduced dramatically It s all included with GNU Linux Thus setting up a GNU Linux workstation comparable to the typical proprietary system probably takes less time However because you can add so much more software setting up GNU Linux could take more time installed SUSE Linux
176. t each project supports a wide range of features but not necessarily all of the features BibleTime supports the personal commentary and those that have not yet built in support for that will be doing so in the near future sae Personal BibleTime Eile View Search Window Settings Help a Gai Bibles B Josephus Ban en ooN r Nr Raf alr gt BEnglish f Luke Ja JG J Ge Antiquities of the Jews Book sf Basy Forasmucn as many nave taken Th nano th Araw Ta FT z pese up a narrative concerning those matters which g Li S ai oe have been 1 fulfilled among us 1 sy Kav tabitshed n as they deli d them unt i i iGreek y a E E E A clea Antiquities of the Jews Book I Beyz us who from the beginning were eyewitnesses Pixx and ministers of the word 1 it seemed good to me CONTAINING THE INTERVAL OF THREE 3Korean also having traced the course of all things THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED AND THIRTY THREE YEARS Wkorean accurately from the first to write unto thee in a Bookmarks order most excellent Theophilus 4 that thou J js Paenglish B Pilgrim Icix a nglis f yay o ay hay yO gee H Josep APOLOGY FOR HIS BOOK J Genesis 9 0 Yu YS Sii gt H piligrim Pilgrim THE A POLOGY FOR 2 sans Serif A 10 i Practice fi A number of believers had already undertaken to Commentar TROR produce written accounts of the ministry of Jesus English
177. t getting started with computers You need to consider which distribution and what application set you want to use Ultimately your strategy will depend on the size and technical abilities of your organization as well as how much you have invested in proprietary software In this chapter we ll provide a brief overview of the gradual approach most recommended by those with experience in software migration We ll also examine the most important facets of the migration process including user comfort We will address new ministries and other organizations separately We ll also discuss the use of outside consultants or other experts as there are some things you should understand about IT experts Whatever you do it might be a good idea to create a fairly small team The team should consist of the most capable person in your church where computers are concerned at least one staff member and at least one non technical person who has an open mind and is willing to do a bit of research suggest the non technical person because this person will help your migration team understand how the new software will impact them Additionally your team could include any outside consultants you choose to hire to assist you Incidentally your team may need or want to work at a personal level that is without much support from the church to study the issues involved initially If after all the homework has been done the church chooses n
178. tation Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of incidental or consequential damages so this exclusion and lim itation may not apply to You 9 Acceptance and Termination If You distribute copies of the Original Work or a Derivative Work You must make a reasonable effort under the circumstances to obtain the express assent of recipients to the terms of this License Nothing else but this License or another written agreement between Licensor and You grants You permission to cre ate Derivative Works based upon the Original Work or to exercise any of the rights granted in Section 1 herein and any attempt to do so except under the terms of this Li cense or another written agreement between Licensor and You is expressly prohibited by U S copyright law the equivalent laws of other countries and by international treaty Therefore by exercising any of the rights granted to You in Section 1 herein You indi cate Your acceptance of this License and all of its terms and conditions This License shall terminate immediately and you may no longer exercise any of the rights granted to You by this License upon Your failure to honor the proviso in Section 1 c herein 10 Termination for Patent Action This License shall terminate automatically and You may no longer exercise any of the rights granted to You by this License as of the date You commence an action including a cross claim or counterclaim against Licensor or any licensee
179. tem and then choose which one to load at the login prompt However this may not be suitable for your system especially if you have limited hardware resources The needs amp tastes of your administrator and or users will dictate which you need to use The fact that the graphical shells are separate from the underlying operating system makes it easier to offer users a choice between several shells The graphical shells basically take different approaches to managing applications and windows As we look at these graphical shells briefly you should know that most applications run on all of the various shells and that just because an application is designed for KDE doesn t necessarily mean it won t run under GNOME or another desktop One difference users will have to adjust to is the idea of mounting and un mounting removable media Floppy disks CDs and USB devices all need to be mounted manually This is automatically handled by Windows but is very much a manual process in GNU Linux Ordinarily you can simply click on a pre defined icon on your desktop by right clicking on the desktop to see them listed in the context menu Still it does take some getting used to KDE one of the most common desktops in use is the most like Microsoft Windows in its look and feel Users will find the system menu Start button in Windows in the same place the lower left corner of the screen There s usually a launch bar to launch certain c
180. th a single copy If there are multiple Invariant Sections with the same name but differ ent contents make the title of each such section unique by adding at the end of it in parentheses the name of the original author or pub lisher of that section if known or else a unique number Make the same adjustment to the section titles in the list of Invariant Sections in the license notice of the combined work In the combination you must combine any sections Entitled History in the various original documents forming one section Entitled History likewise combine any sections Entitled Acknowledgements and any sections Entitled Dedications You must delete all sections Entitled Endorsements 6 COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS You may make a collection consisting of the Document and other docu ments released under this License and replace the individual copies of this License in the various documents with a single copy that is in cluded in the collection provided that you follow the rules of this License for verbatim copying of each of the documents in all other re spects You may extract a single document from such a collection and dis tribute it individually under this License provided you insert a copy of this License into the extracted document and follow this License in all other respects regarding verbatim copying of that document 7 AGGREGATION WITH
181. th four partitions the CD DVD would be drive G The root directory of the first partition on the hard drive would be denoted as C Windows is always installed on the C drive Beneath that most Windows systems have a few other folders C Documents and Settings username My Documents C Program Files C Windows The additional partitions can have whatever folders you create GNU Linux considers most hardware to be devices of various sorts Because GNU Linux treats these devices as files information about them is stored in the dev directory The first hard disk is referred to as hda and the second hard disk is referred to as hdb The first partition on the first hard drive is hdal Thus dev hdb1 is the first partition of the second hard drive Now keep all this in mind for a bit while we examine the filesystem proper The GNU Linux filesystem takes a more flexible and informative approach than the Windows system Whether a particular directory resides on the first partition of the first hard disk or the sixth partition of the second hard disk may not be apparent to the end user This flexibility is transparent to the end users To them it all looks like one single filesystem Typically the GNU Linux filesystem is broken up into various directories all of which serve a purpose Before you get too concerned about where to put your documents users can t generally 57 System Resources
182. th the operating system 58 System Resources proc The process directory is really a virtual Filesystem and does not take up hard drive space Most system monitoring software gets information from here root This is the home directory of the system administrator a k a Root or root user sbin The system binaries directory contains binary files used by the system and programs used only by the system administrator root user SIV The services or server directory is a fairly new directory that contains services such as the Apache web server For you web developers it may also contain CGl scripts Be aware that different organizations may employ different schemes for this hierarchy tmp The temporary directory contains temporary files usr The user directory contains user programs and also the documentation ust doc or usr share doc var The various directory keeps logging and spooling data among other bits of useful information While each directory is designed to store certain information administrators have tremendous flexibility to use their own judgment For example some distributions install OpenOffice org into usr local or opt Others may install it into usr lib instead All of these locations are valid and a matter of preference User documents should be stored within the realm of home Software Maintenance amp Upgrades When developing software
183. the program for any purpose Freedom to study the program to see how it works Freedom to redistribute the program to help others Freedom to modify or improve the program and to release the improvements so that the whole community may benefit tete The Open Source Definition expands on these four freedoms and is included in annotated form in the back of this book There are numerous licenses that are approved by the Open Source Initiative Many programs included with a typical GNU Linux distribution include one or another of the available licenses There is a subtle difference between free software licenses and many open source licenses So called shared source is recent reaction from certain proprietary vendors and falls woefully short of being open let alone free Shared Source allows external developers to view and even modify the source code However they still must sign non disclosure agreements and their modifications belong to the original developer not them or their employers This still prohibits the freedom of the external developers to modify software for their own internal use in most cases source code is restricted to academic or non commercial use At any rate shared source is not free or open source it is too restrictive Christians need to wrestle with a few questions long and hard Does the owner of the computer have the right to control that computer that is when where
184. the world in those days Then people decided to make the code proprietary that is they held back the code In holding back the code they brought an end to the sharing community Source code is the code the programmer actually writes when developing a program As it stands source code just sits there When it is translated into binary format which the computer understands the computer can run it aS a program In the beginning people simply passed source code around to help each other out They shared it gave it away Anyone who received it could modify it for their purposes But interest in the software is growing faster than awareness of the philosophy it is based on and this leads to trouble Our ability to meet the challenges and threats described above depends on the will to stand firm for freedom To make sure our community has this will we need to spread the idea to the new users as they come into the community Richard Stallman The GNU Project http www gnu org gnu thegnuproject html That changed when folks got clever and decided to distribute only the binary program while keeping the source code Companies began to require developers a fancy word for programmers to sign non disclosure agreements NDAs and end users to sign End User License Agreements EULAsS This prevented the users from being able to modify it It also gave developers greater control over the program Many end users who
185. throughout the book A Little Background for Non Techies There is a subtle distinction between free software and open source software The distinction lies in the fact that free software propagates the freedom of the end users and essentially forces developers to offer derivative works under the same license Open source software allows the developer to release derivatives under a proprietary license This means that while all free software is open source not all open source software is necessarily free software In most cases have used the term FOSS or free and open source software to refer to the whole category Where the term open source software is used in this book free software should be considered a sub category of open source A Legal and Moral Dilemma 2 ALEGAL AND MORAL DILEMMA The pastor needed to upgrade his church s office computer A deacon suggested he had a copy of a popular proprietary operating system as well as a proprietary office suite that he could bring in and install suggested giving Linux a try after all it comes with Star Office 5 2 had been using Mandrake Linux 8 0 and even offered to install and configure the system The deacon responded that he had talked with an IT guy on his job and he didn t think Linux was quite ready just yet The pastor settled for his deacon s assessment and solution This encounter raises some important issues pertaining
186. ting platform It is the ideal opportunity to get started and save serious money in the long term As your ministry grows you ll be able to focus on better hardware for the lyrics display and recording aspects of your worship ministry Whatever ministry challenges you face you can still have quality software while focusing on your ministry If you re about to buy new computers simply head over to Wal Mart and order their Linspire computers These may be available only from the website www walmart com but you can check with your local store for more information You can also check local custom computer shops many of whom will be able to pre install one distribution or another for you It is a great opportunity to establish a relationship with a local business that may be able to provide a certain level of local support Perhaps the real challenge for smaller ministries is the typical lack of members with computer skills Typically whoever can do the word processing becomes the computer expert by default even when they only know a little about word processing Your only computer literate member may barely know Windows and has probably never even heard of GNU Linux If you happen to be one of the few ministries that do have a GNU user in the midst put them to work 89 Migration Strategies If you don t already have a GNU Linux user in your church you ll need to find someone willing to learn about it and play with it a bit H
187. to GNU Linux At the very least you need someone who has used both operating systems fairly extensively Anyone who has not used GNU Linux for at least a full year really cannot say much You should look for folks who know the desktop workstation aspect as well as the server aspect of GNU Linux Ironically most GNU Linux users do know Windows as many started with it Of course many still run GNU Linux and Windows in a dual boot configuration if only to keep abreast of Windows developments Preferably your expert would be able to help you determine which e mail client would provide the best solution Evolution and Kontact are equivalents to Microsoft Outlook On the other hand there is Thunderbird which will soon have a well developed calendar function Sylpheed Claws is an excellent e mail client that may be overlooked Your expert may not know all the software you need For example some folks may be able to help you install Audacity even if they don t know anything about music reproduction Your own music expert will likely be able to pick up on Audacity quickly and may even know it already Yet the expert should be able to help you determine which programs will best suit your needs Finally if you sign an agreement with a professional consultant you should ensure that they show you how to perform several maintenance tasks on your own Backing up your system checking your logs and maintaining any network security in place are
188. tware that came with my CD Writer Naturally the CD burning software s installation program was time limited was prevented from being able to write CDs in Windows unless upgraded Browsing to the vendor s web site discovered that the upgrade was a whopping 70 00 Many people I know experienced Windows technicians included experienced recurring nightmares from having installed so called plug n play modems The night operator at one corporate office has to reboot some of the Windows servers every morning before he leaves There are numerous horror stories and you may have a few of your own All am saying is that even the so called easy to use systems offer challenges When taken in perspective one might be hard pressed to say one system is easier than another Some people seem to think that GNU Linux only offers a command line interface a scary prospect for many But it also has several graphical interfaces You won t be forced to stare at command prompts all day The important issue is that GNU Linux has kept the graphical shells separate from the underlying operating system thus making it more stable We have to bear in mind that the command line interface does offer some distinct advantages Many people fear command line interfaces considering them old and arcane When think back to my early experiences with DOS 6 22 it s not difficult to imagine why If you realized at the end of a long command that y
189. ux who appears to have just had his fill of fish Tux is intended to convey friendliness to new users Tux is represented a bit differently by each distribution and Linux User Group LUG There are even depictions 93 GNU Linux Background of Tux based on nationality You may of course purchase all sorts of accessories from t shirts to ties that show off your Linux pride The GNU Project also has a mascot the gnu wildebeest The gnu is not as widely recognized as the penguin but certainly symbolizes a break from the herd mentality The GNU Project sponsors many software projects all in various stages of development and sell software CDs The Free Software Foundation is the GNU Project s sister organization and handles the legal and political issues The Open Source Initiative is an organization similar to the Free Software Foundation and approves open source licenses It started as an effort to clarify misunderstandings about free software thus coining the term open source However as explained earlier in the book that term is not completely synonymous with free software Notwithstanding the Open Source Initiative offers a strong business case for developing open source software It was the folks behind the Open Source Initiative who helped bring about the Mozilla and Firefox web browsers While there are philosophical differences between the Free Software Foundation and the Open Source Initiative they remain a strong
190. vant Keeper 250 for small churches over 1000 Logos Management 500 5000 http www logoslbe com main cfm id 100 Faithful Steward 199 http www church software com fs index htm Red Hat Linux Workstation 179 Enterprise Server 349 http www redhat com software rhel purchase index html 111 Resources Linux Mandrake 199 Subscription 3 versions 345 S TID re SUSE Linux Professional 9 0 80 http www suse com us private products suse_linux i386 prices html SuSE Linux Desktop 5 workstations 598 http www suse com us business products sld prices html Xandros Desktop Business Edition 129 5 Pack 495 http www xandros com products shopping html 112 Resources GLOSSARY Client Server A technology in which one computer or program provides services to other computers workstations or programs clients Database program that stores data allowing users to add edit and retrieve that data Desktop A graphical shell The starting point from which users launch applications GNU Linux makes use of virtual desktops to allow users to better organize their tasks GNU GNU s Not UNIX a recursive acronym that plays on the proprietary nature of most UNIX systems It is a set of tools that with the Linux kernel comprise a complete free operating system Kernel The operating system s kernel provides the interface between the application software and
191. ve encouraged and supported this endeavor Thanks to folks like Troy Griffits the New American Standard Bible module is now available for the Sword Project applications It is my prayer that you will find this book intriguing informative and compelling hope you will come to see as do that free and open source software is the best software for your church If this book does nothing else hope it at least helps you to understand that it is not necessary to spend hundreds of dollars on software or worse use illegal software when there is a perfectly good alternative available to you What the Messiah has freed us for is freedom Therefore stand firm and don t let yourselves be tied up again to a yoke of slavery The Complete Jewish Bible Don Parris Charlotte NC vi ABOUT THIS BOOK This book is intended to introduce church and non profit leaders as well as Information Technology consultants who work with such organizations to the idea of using the GNU Linux operating system as well as free and open source software solutions in general within religious and non profit organizations While intended for the folks involved in their church s information technology ministry the rest of the Christians in the pews stand to gain much as well While I have endeavored to make this booklet easy for the non technical church leaders in the crowd many will probably find at least some technological background helpful If
192. ver and the client programs such as the MySQL database server and its clients In another case one workstation can store files for another and vice versa In other words Joe may give Sally access to files stored on his computer A Little Background for Non Techies while also being able to access files on her computer This is typically called a peer to peer setup Are you thoroughly confused now If so don t sweat it too much Some of this stuff is just hard to picture Just know that in client server computing one computer or program provides services to another computer or program This book will refer to servers and workstations client computers when referring to the hardware and to servers and clients client programs when referring to software Many organizations around the United States refurbish old computers and load one version or another of GNU Linux on them to give to low income families Some churches are already using GNU Linux to provide network services to Windows workstations Others are using it to host websites or intranets Some are using it for the cost savings alone One church denomination s headquarters in Germany uses SUSE Linux Open Exchange Server to serve more than 20 000 users One major difference between GNU Linux and Windows is the filesystem For starters some non techies may be confused by the term directories if they ve been using folders Folders are typically referred to as
193. which it can be managed And for those who need to the text files in the etc directory are much easier to manage than the Windows Registry When it comes to file and print services Windows uses the SMB protocol GNU Linux uses the Network filesystem NFS Frankly it s pretty easy to setup using SUSE s Yast You can run NFS with the Light weight Directory Assistance Protocol LDAP or the 39 The Usability Challenge Network Information Service NIS to centralize user administration NIS is older but still widely used LDAP offers certain advantages and is likely to be better understood by Windows administrators To setup GNU Linux machines to work with Windows machines you ll need to setup the Samba service through its web interface We have dispelled some of the myths about GNU Linux being too difficult for non techies to use We have shown that the better distributions offer graphical administration tools You should have some idea that a GNU Linux based graphical desktop is just as easy to use as Windows as are most applications Before we address the costs involved with migrating to GNU Linux you may wish to have a list of applications that would replace your current legacy software The tables on the following pages show the Linux equivalents to the well known Windows applications you use every day You ll find a column for the task then a column each for the applications that run on GNU Linux and BSD and Windo
194. ws The applications listed that run on GNU Linux are simply the most popular in the free and open source software community Thus this list should not be considered complete Additionally some applications Firefox Thunderbird and OpenOffice org also run on Windows Air Traffic Control Shutdown http www techworld com opsys news index cfm NewsID 2275 40 The Usability Challenge Office Suites MS Office OpenOffice org WordPerfect Koffice Siag Word Processing MS Word OOo Writer KWrite AbiWord Spreadsheet MS Excel OOo Calc Kspread Presentation MS PowerPoint OOo Impress KPresent Database MS Access OOo Base Desktop Publishing MS Publisher OOo Writer Scribus Image Editing MS Draw OOo Draw Project Management MS Project Mr Project Text Editing NotePad EMACS System files Context VIM jEdit jEdit VIM Kate gedit File Management Windows Explorer Konqueror Nautilus Midnight Commander Church Management ACS InfoCentral Power Church CHADDB Servant Keeper Financial Management Quicken GnuCash QuickBooks MyBooks PeachTree Accounting Commercial 41 The Usability Challenge Task Windows GNU BSD E Mail Outlook Evolution Outlook Express Sylpheed Claws Thunderbird Thunderbird Web Browsing Internet Explorer Konqueror Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox Netscape Netscape Opera Opera Image Photo editing PhotoShop The Gimp Paint Shop Pro OOo Draw Database
195. y Doo and Star Wars Attack of the Clones Many non profits use GNU Linux and other free and open source software in their organizations Likewise the NASA Space Center in Houston Texas uses GNU Linux in a variety of ways School systems across America are migrating to GNU Linux because of the ability to better control security in addition to the cost factor This includes private as well as public schools The Linux Terminal Server Project is being deployed widely SUSE Linux has a SUSE In Schools program TechMission a Christian organization that funds Christian Community Computing Centers around the United States offers a free software CD to member organizations Johnson C Smith University in Charlotte North Carolina uses the Moodle educational portal that runs on multiple platforms Christian missionary Support organizations are deploying Moodle as a way to provide educational material to their missionaries GNU Linux is not just for organizations Many of the people who use it are home users Parents report that their children love the games There are programs for just about every task you need to accomplish One young guy know watched T V on his SUSE Linux computer CD and DVD burning software are included Accessing the Internet is what GNU Linux is made for And whatever else you need that is not included in your distribution is almost surely available for download from the Internet Linux has a mascot a penguin named T
196. y when run you must cause it when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty or else saying that you provide a warranty and that users may redis tribute the program under these conditions and telling the user how to view a copy of this License Exception if the Program itself is in teractive but does not normally print such an announcement your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole If identifi able sections of that work are not derived from the Program and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves then this License and its terms do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License whose permissions for other licensees extend to th ntire whole and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it Thus it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you rather the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collec tive works based on the Program In addition
197. ychological pottage Stallman similarly seems to be wondering where the Church is at the precise moment in history that we most risk returning to the Dark Ages According to Stallman I ve always believed that free software is a moral imperative for Christian communicators Christians and people of other faiths cannot morally condone the control of human knowledge or the limiting of development that proprietary software causes http www wacc org uk wacc publications media_action archive 24 5_jul_2002 stallman_free_software_is_a_moral_imperative_for_chri stians Whatever your own views it is important that the Christian Church wrestle with questions like this We should all acknowledge that to some extent we are still maturing in our understanding of our faith As long as we can continue to respect each other in the midst of such debates we will surely be fighting the good fight Therefore let us demonstrate grace and love even as we strive to answer as Stallman has sought to do the question of morality and software licenses How Christians Can Improve FOSS Free and open source software has much to offer Yet much remains to be done You and your church can help support FOSS in a number of ways even if you choose not to migrate Many Christians only use GNU Linux or BSD Many others would like to but feel stuck with proprietary systems for a variety of reasons Perhaps if we examine some of the issues that prevent
198. you already have an idea of what an operating system is or does as compared to a particular application such as a word processor you ll probably be o k If you understand any networking or system administration issues you ll be even better off That said am including a glossary and notes within the body of the book for those who may not have even a basic understanding of many of the terms used We start off by examining a situation that many organizations need to consider licensing and the moral issue of using software in violation of typical proprietary software license agreements We then get a brief overview of the various challenges an organization might face in migrating to the GNU Linux platform Each challenge is tackled individually followed by a discussion about getting technical support and developing practical migration strategies have expanded the Linux background and also included a discussion of the state of the Christian FOSS community which is growing ever larger and more vocal Thousands of Christians from various denominational and national backgrounds are discovering and deploying free and open source software solutions and hundreds are participating in the active community Many of the Christians involved in the community are home users or simply desire to help their church For this reason even the average Christian will find this to be a useful book vii Ultimately readers will discover what free and op
199. zed by 29 The Interoperability Challenge government entities and used by other office suites The truth is that KOffice Sun s Star Office IBM s WorkPlace a web based collaboration suite and other office productivity software already support the OpenDocument format The proprietary competitors that do not support it could leave themselves out in the cold Several products exist that allow users to run Windows applications such as Microsoft Office Quicken and a number of others under GNU Linux This software typically requires a dual boot system Other products allow users to run the Windows operating system under GNU Linux and thus any applications that run on Windows Most of the offerings in this arena are commercial though there may be a free gratis version available WINE Wine Is Not An Emulator is a free distribution and is the basis of Codeweavers Crossover Xandros SUSE and other GNU Linux vendors make use of the Code Weavers Crossover distribution to enable users to continue using their legacy Windows applications Win4Lin allows users to run Windows 98 in a window on a GNU Linux desktop such as KDE Doing some homework including checking out reviews of these products might help to save a little heartache at the end of the day Whereas GNU Linux attempts to adhere to readily available open Standards and with proprietary products it is difficult to find proprietary software that adheres to open standards and wo

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