Free and Open-Source Software for Free Radio I: Operating System

There are a few things that you can say about a community radio stations in general. They are poor and always short of technical staff. What has this got to do with Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS)? The answer is: a lot. FOSS is not only free as in 'freedom' or 'free-speech', a essential part of community radio, but it is also free as in 'free beer'. No expensive licenses have to be bought, no upgrades have to be paid, and one doesn't have to work with crappy, illegal copies, so for this problem, FOSS seem to be a good alternative for community radio. But then the next problem, the lack of technical staff: everyone thinks FOSS is difficult to operate. People know mostly the operating system Linux and think of the scary command prompt. But Linux has changed over the years with the free online distribution of Ubuntu Linux (see: Ubuntu.com). The interface is really nice and 'feels' a lot like working on a Macintosh (interface is the part of a computer program that you see and with which you interact).

There are also other Ubuntu flavours with different interfaces, so is the the XFCE interface for slow PC's (Xubuntu), and KDE interface which look a bit more like windows (Kubuntu). Especially for lower education and the 'one pc per child' project Edubuntu was developed with interface and programs directed at young children.

So Linux seem to have changed into a good alternative for Mac and Windows, but it has another option which is very useful for beginning user environments: permissions. When you login with your username and password you are granted certain permissions. A normal user has access to his/her own directory and programs which are assigned to him/her. He/she has no option to delete system files or change system settings. The only place where this user can do harm is in his/her own directory!

Another important reason for us to use Linux is that is not affected by viruses, even if viruses are opened from an attachment.

These were our reason to look at Ubuntu, in the next post we'll reveal the broad horizons FOSS opens for audio editing and radio automation.

www.ubuntu.org
www.gnu.org