{"id":26,"date":"2007-01-08T11:58:15","date_gmt":"2007-01-08T11:58:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.tola.me.uk\/blog\/2007\/01\/08\/open-standards-and-free-software-are-making-me-os-agnostic\/"},"modified":"2007-01-08T11:58:15","modified_gmt":"2007-01-08T11:58:15","slug":"open_standards_and_free_software_are_making_me_os_agnostic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tola.me.uk\/blog\/2007\/01\/08\/open_standards_and_free_software_are_making_me_os_agnostic\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Standards and Free Software are making me OS-agnostic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I use three different operating systems on a daily basis &#8211; Windows, Mac and GNU\/Linux &#8211; yet my data is always the same and I often use the same applications. Here&#039;s what I use on a regular basis:<\/p>\n<table>\n<tr>\n<th>Task<\/th>\n<th>Open Standard(s)<\/th>\n<th>Free Software Application(s)<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Email<\/td>\n<td>IMAP<\/td>\n<td>Thunderbird<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Calendar<\/td>\n<td>iCalendar over WebDAV<\/td>\n<td>Mozilla Calendar<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Contacts<\/td>\n<td>LDAP<\/td>\n<td>Thunderbird address book<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Documents<\/td>\n<td>OpenDocument<\/td>\n<td>Open Office<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Music<\/td>\n<td>Ogg &amp; MP3 over HTTP<\/td>\n<td>VLC Media player<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Pictures<\/td>\n<td>SVG, PNG, JPEG<\/td>\n<td>The GIMP, Inkscape<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Code<\/td>\n<td>Subversion<\/td>\n<td>Eclipse &amp; Subclipse<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>News<\/td>\n<td>OPML, RSS, Atom<\/td>\n<td>Thunderbird news reader<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Chat<\/td>\n<td>Jabber &amp; IRC<\/td>\n<td>Gaim<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>Sometimes I&#039;ll use an OS-specific app if it provides a better experience, but still uses open standards. For example, I use iCal, iChat, iTunes and Address Book on the Mac with iCalendar, Jabber, MP3 and LDAP respectively (I know, MP3 isn&#039;t entirely open). I can easily chop and change which application I use, or even use different ones at the same time because my data is stored in such an accessible way.<\/p>\n<p>Although I believe that desktop Linux is very important and Ubuntu is my first choice of OS, what&#039;s more important is the open standards it uses for managing data. Free software won&#039;t fend off proprietary software by building a better desktop, it will win by making the operating system a user is running almost irrelevant.<\/p>\n<p>What I&#039;m working towards at the moment is hosting all of my data across web servers and having a web application to manage each type of data. That way I can access my data on any device with a web browser &#8211; including my phone and Internet tablet. I&#039;ve had a web server at home for a couple of years now which I store some of my data on.<\/p>\n<p>Web applications I&#039;ve been using include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Horde IMP<\/li>\n<li>GMail<\/li>\n<li>PHPiCalendar<\/li>\n<li>Google Calendar<\/li>\n<li>Google Docs &amp; Spreadsheets<\/li>\n<li>Ampache<\/li>\n<li>Flickr<\/li>\n<li>Gliffy<\/li>\n<li>Trac<\/li>\n<li>Gregarius<\/li>\n<li>Google Reader<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Some of these are hosted by companies, some are hosted on my own server, but what&#039;s important is that they use the same open standards.<\/p>\n<p>One of the aims of <a href=\"http:\/\/moya.hippygeek.co.uk\">Moya<\/a> is to create a home server which manages all of these types of data and provides a web interface, making the client operating system irrelevant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I use three different operating systems on a daily basis &#8211; Windows, Mac and GNU\/Linux &#8211; yet my data is always the same and I often use the same applications. Here&#039;s what I use on a regular basis: Task Open Standard(s) Free Software Application(s) Email IMAP Thunderbird Calendar iCalendar over WebDAV Mozilla Calendar Contacts LDAP &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/tola.me.uk\/blog\/2007\/01\/08\/open_standards_and_free_software_are_making_me_os_agnostic\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Open Standards and Free Software are making me OS-agnostic<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tola.me.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tola.me.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tola.me.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tola.me.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tola.me.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tola.me.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tola.me.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tola.me.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tola.me.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}