I’ve been a Linux fanboy since the age of 12. I installed Slackware on my top of the line Pentium 75 mhz computer and my life was forever changed. I became a coder and a geek and fell in love with the idea of an open source operating system. I learned 4 different programming languages and really got to know the insides of the computer.

Linux, was a great learning tool for me, but it’s never been a very effective working tool.

You see, I used to do a whole lot of programming work in Linux. The LAMP architecture is the quickest, cheapest way to learn programming on the web. Being able to run your own webserver with built in MySQL and PHP on a home machine makes testing so much easier. But now that’s all been ported to Windows, and it works with a whole lot less headaches from broken libraries and esoteric drivers.

But I started doing more graphics work than programming, and graphic programs in Linux pretty much suck. The GIMP has one of the worst user interfaces ever. Just so counterintuitive, and such a hassle to get things done. I used to think that if Photoshop and Illustrator were ever ported to Linux, it would be the perfect desktop environment. But now, even if Photoshop and Illustrator are ever ported over, they still wouldn’t be the killer apps for me to make the switch back to Linux.

In Windows, all my hardware works, and I don’t have to worry about broken packages. I can even still view (and write to) my Linux drive (ext3) in Windows using this driver. There isn’t the time draining process of installing 8 libraries so I can install my one program. Everything in Windows just works.

And that’s what’s most important to me, as a business owner and entrepreneur. I don’t care about the purity of my tools, I only care about the end result. I don’t spend hours wondering why this package won’t compile. Working within a Windows environment is the quickest way for me to achieve the end result I need, at the lowest cost.

And after spending a while doing graphics in the simplicity of Windows, I started looking around for replacements to the awesome development environment that is LAMP. And I’ve found I can get rid of my Linux partition completely.

With WAMP I really have no reason to go back to Linux ever again. I can develop and code and then switch back to graphics work without a reboot. Sure, there’s no bash in Windows, but I can do just about everything bash does with Perl. Voila, a stable, aesthetically pleasing development environment without the headache of packages.

Wait a minute, am I saying I like Windows now? Yes, unfortunately. Getting things done and producing top notch work comes before any software ideals right now. In a perfect world, I would have the time to fix all of Linux’s problems. But I can’t spend a few hours every day implementing fixes, especially if there isn’t even a real place for them to all go. So for now, Windows it is.

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It’s a fact, winner takes all. The top three megasites on the internet (Yahoo, Google, and MSN) each get seen by about 30% of all web vistors. Between the three of them, they control what the vast majority of internet users see, their browsing information, and their email accounts.And that is a recipe for trouble.

Each of these companies are building and run massive datacenters. They’re investing millions (billions…?) in the future of a centralized internet. Each wants to provide your email service, your scheduling service, your office experience, and basically every service possible over the internet. In order for this to be possible, they’re buying up and creating supercomputers capable of storing every document you’ll ever create, every email you ever write, and every video or picture you post to the net. Do you see a problem?

The biggest problem is the one most people refuse to look at. With government’s history of illegal wiretaps, illegal internet backbone snooping, and just all around disregard for the law, a datacenter containing millions of people’s every document ever written or photo ever taken is just too good for them to pass up. And they don’t even have to go through the process of signing a law to force everyone’s every word written into a mega database. All they need is a homeland security wiretap from a judge on Google’s datacenter, and wham!, they’re snooping legally on millions of users. Scary.

Or, just as dangerously, a government entity decides a certain segment of information (democracy, for instance) is dangerous to its citizens. It blocks the big sites from presenting any news unapproved by the government and creates a firewall to stop any other potentially threatening sites. This is already happening. (China)

In the coming years, there’s going to be a huge need for decentralization of information on the internet if freedom of thought is going to persist. The internet was built on Open Source and freedom of information via peer to peer software. If it’s to remain a beacon for freedom of speech and expression, we’ve got to start supporting smaller search engines, and build a more distributed internet. The concentration of information can only lead to abuse.

There are solutions out there, like the Freenet, but what do you think is the best way to combat the centralization of information on the internet?

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