5 steps to going open

Is the fear of complexity holding you back from going Open (source)? Or are you worried about where to start and what to use? Read on to find the answers to the questions you dreaded to ask your peers.

Try OpenOffice Suite: The first step is to download the OpenOffice Suite from openoffice.org. It has a word processor, spreadsheet, a presenter (akin to PowerPoint), an illustrator, and a database manager.

Alternatively, if you only need a word processor and spreadsheet application, AbiWord is a fast and lightweight word processor and Gnumeric is its counterpart spreadsheet program.

Go for Thunderbird: The next in line, is your enterprise mail client. The most popular option is Mozilla Thunderbird that lets you do almost everything that Outlook did, for free.

However, you can also opt for Zimbra, the mail client that supports almost all e-mail providers and even works on Windows.

Surf on a Fox: Start surfing with Firefox, which is a free cross-platform web browser that offers greater privacy and prevents pop-ups, spyware and viruses.

It is also customisable to insane degrees. And if speed is your poison, go for Google Chrome, one of the fastest browsers around.

Play Open: The best way to learn is to play. While Sauerbraten is an incredibly fast-paced, first person shooter game, Freeciv is an empire-building strategy task inspired by the history of human civilisation.

A good option would be check target="_blank">happypenguin, the website that tracks games for Linux, most of which are open source, and a good many of which work on Windows as well. BZFlag, a multi-player tank game, is the other most downloaded game with an active community.

Go Ubuntu: Once you are comfortable with open source applications, it is good time to walk down the aisle. Ubuntu is one of the most popular open source desktop OS, which gives a lot of leeway.

It lets you double boot, so you can skip to a proprietary environment in zippy if you flounder. And you can take the transition at your own pace. So, go online, download the file, and be happily open!

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