So, I am wanting to start a conversation about Linux, us, and the future of our planet. Only recently have I begun open-sourcing my computer-lifestyle, though I have rapidly become excited about linux in so many ways. Antix and you, the users of this fabulous distro, seem particularly exciting to me, as antix very much emphasizes all that makes linux so amazing.

Firstly, we are choosing a side in one of the most important decisions that will be made in this century: open-source or closed-source. Since the industrial revolution began, people have faced similar technological choices repeatedly; sometimes for the good, though usually, with regrettable results. We watched Thomas Edison battle Nicola Tesla; power went to the corporations, not the people. We watched hybridization challenge open-pollinated crops; Monsanto is now guaranteed cash each year, the people are starving. Chemical pharmaceuticals or herbal remedies? The governments give patents to drugs, discredit and illegalize the natural, the sick can rarely afford medicine. The list of these choices goes on and on.... Capitalism usually wins, society gets used to it, and we live with it, life is tough. However, now we are making this tremendously important choice again; it is Bill Gates versus anticapitalista. In 30 years, all of our technology (voting machines included) will be secrets owned by corporations, or if we're lucky, we'll be in charge of our lives.

Secondly, many of us are using this minimalist distro to revive an old machine. This offers an extraordinary opportunity to eliminate techno-trash, help the environment, and keep a few dollars our of corporate holdings. This maneuver needs to be appreciated. We are integrating technology into our personal, professional, and social lives in a relatively responsible way.

This leads to a third attribute of antix that I especially love. Antix truly is a community. We are coming together to work on this project and let it see where it might take us. This is rad. I sense that this forum and its people have some awesome power, and many amazing things can be born here. One way we can change our future is on cooperative foundations.

What do you all think? I invite you all to post your ideas about linux, antix, etc. Furthermore, I think it would be amazing if we post our reasons of using open-source and goals we have in mind from using linux. Lets hear it.

NVT

I'll single out a word from your post which will be the focal-point of my reply: lifestyle.

All the things you enumerate (anti-establishment practices from the industrial revolution to present-day biotech woes, responsibility in using technology and its products/by-products,even the truly imaginative 1v1 between Bill and Anti __{{emoticon}}__ ) are lifestyle-choices. And precisely as choices they tend to overlook and obfuscate objective material (dare I say class-)divisions in people.

You and I are part of a small minority that has access to and enough education to be able to own and use a computer. Our specific choices have no effect on the current economic system; capitalism will still 'win' as you put it, regardless of our Operating System of choice __{{emoticon}}__

I agree with n2j3.
Lifestyle choices are important, but not the key to either understanding the world or changing it.

The vast majority of the world's population have little choice. Their material reality doesn't allow for it. This is true in the so-called"Third World" as much as it is in the"First World".
I believe that our material circumstances on the whole determine consciousness and not the other way round. Now the fact that some of us are able to make limited choices in for example antiX V M$ (I love that one, envytea __{{emoticon}}__ ) is obviously a good thing and one which in a small way helps the environment as you point out.
However it is small scale. Real change comes about by the actions of millions, not hundreds or thousands. And it will have to attack the whole economic, social and political foundations of capitalism in its entirety, not just small parts of it.
Only then will we (a global we) have real choice.

anticapitalista wrote:I agree with n2j3.
However it is small scale. Real change comes about by the actions of millions, not hundreds or thousands. And it will have to attack the whole economic, social and political foundations of capitalism in its entirety, not just small parts of it.
Only then will we (a global we) have real choice.

Linux is an amazing animal. It provides common ground between a"right winger" (I am just guessing that, might be wrong) in NC and a guy who goes by the name of Anticapitalista and me, a retired US military officer (who is more in line with Anticapitalista than with the right-wingers).

What we share is"stickin' it to the man" ... if only because Bill Gates is, in this instance, The Man.

anticapitalista wrote:I agree with n2j3.
Real change comes about by the actions of millions, not hundreds or thousands. And it will have to attack the whole economic, social and political foundations of capitalism in its entirety, not just small parts of it.
Only then will we (a global we) have real choice.

You never said what course(s) you teach. I am guessing not history. Or perhaps it is.

My reading of history is that real change doesn't come about by the actions of millions, but instead by the actions of one or two who have the power to effect sudden change, as the surrogate for millions, be it for good or for evil.

Παραδείγματος χάριν: Hitler, Στάλιν, ο Μπους.

You seam to be very pure in heart and care for this world. I do know exact what are you explaining here and I see your pure deep love worries for this world. Most of the time we worry about the world, people and anything that has to do with the outside. We tend not to spend this time in looking into us as well.

I belief that real true changes in society are to be done only through inner evaluations, honestly looking into the mind..

So far no system, Political revolution or party's, religion, health system, ideas, laws, societies have been able to fix human suffering.

Each of us is also this society, we can't separate from it, we can't be isolated from it, because society is us and we are society. The main responsibility in each of us should be very similar to nature. Nature moves freely, always offering and giving without expecting anything in return. Without judgment, Nature is always alive, fresh, wise, perceptive, sensitive, not limited, and full of love, by giving life without thinking about the past neither the future etc...

The real revolution is a thing from the inside of each individual, when the individual is completely free to think without past programing or future desire intervention on his mind. A change is out to be sensitive, not limited, full of perceptions, and without limited observation capacity, then the expression becomes a reality of the present been more pure in heart and mind without holding anything from it's past.
It is a gift that allows to only observe with compassion and realizes that we are all one and it is this one, that can really change society by producing and creating a pure state of inner peace that helps others to also acknowledge it and hope for changing.

Nothing material has been known to really give happiness to humanity but only through is superficiality.

Materialism has been use to set humanity into thinking like an instrument that condemns and separates masses into individualist ideas, which only discriminates between society and individuals.

This or that, good or bad, rich or poor, etc... these are the tools that have create a separated world.

Never anything from outside, neither materialism, will bring you happiness, except if the world is at peace within each individual inner heart and mind.

Greed comes from the separation mentality syndrome and is this mentality that has a license to kill and destroy, but also it is each individuals fault to accept it inside themselves, therefore until we don't realize this, we will continue in the same path.

Humanity is not bad, but it is ignorance that kill or destroys the beauty of humanity and all of us have a responsibility to try to change inside ourselves so that we can show the path to others, that like us, were in darkness without condemning judgment them. A honestly offering of compassion, love, and real understanding without allowing the past or the future to intervene in the present, allows something that was born to be fresh, natural, with no limitations and total freedom to express purely.
We can change systems etc... but we will continue in arguments because we think we are all different, by have accepting the idea of individualism, which will only bring future conflicts and separation. The individualist mind never has or can have inner peace. It is a mind that comdemn, separates and destroys, always limited into see reality, never free from the continual struggle between the images and doctrines of this or that.
Leaders, revolutions, systems etc..are never to be at peace and will not attain it, because they are not different from our daily struggles of continual judgment.

We are all in total limitations, struggles and disturbances cause inside each of us. Therefore our trust, real happiness real freedom and real changes can only come from inner honest prosperity.

Thank you and If there is bad English here, I am sorry is not my first language but I hope you can understand.

I understand you care and I want to let you know that there are others that also like you care.

Best Wishes!

dieselbenz wrote:
You never said what course(s) you teach. I am guessing not history. Or perhaps it is.

My reading of history is that real change doesn't come about by the actions of millions, but instead by the actions of one or two who have the power to effect sudden change, as the surrogate for millions, be it for good or for evil.

Παραδείγματος χάριν: Hitler, Στάλιν, ο Μπους.

Good on the Greek!

I mainly teach English as a foreign language nowadays, but I still teach sociology and history if there is 'demand' (You can tell I work at a private institute by the language they use)

Certainly the role of the individual in history is extremely important, but I think that our society overemphasises this importance as a way to make the masses feel they are incapable of effecting real change in society. Lenin would have been a nobody if there hadn't been a Bolshevik party, and the Bolsheviks would not have taken and held on to power without the active role of the masses and, it is true to say, Lenin's leadership. Stalin would have remained a 'nobody' if the Russian revolution had not degenerated due to civil war, famine, disease etc. Without the bureaucracy, Stalin would have been powerless.
Hitler depended on the 'petit-bourgeoisie gone mad' through economic despair and the 'mass' support and mass movement of the Nazi party.

Bush is a poor leader. He is a puppet. There are great and powerful forces behind Bush, basically the military-industrial complex. Even in the USA Bush's popularity is on the wane and so is support for the war in Iraq, now it has become clear that the reasons given for going to war were fraudulent (just like that election victory!)

Back to linux and antiX. Sure a distro can unite its users from whatever political background and that is a good thing.