New year – new kind of independence

Last Updated on December 31, 2017, 7:14 PM | Published: December 31, 2017

In the few days leading up to the new year, I’ve been working hard to detach Free Press operations from the Windows sphere and move to Linux.

Linux is a whole host of free (as in beer) operating systems that are open-source, meaning anyone can inspect the entire code source and reuse any part of the system.

Most important is that anyone can completely test any of the operating systems for security risks.

That is not the case with Windows or Macintosh (Apple) operating systems where the OS is the product and therefore hidden from “the competition,” and also you.

After spending some time experimenting with several Linux operating systems, I’ve landed on Fedora 27.

Thanks to those of you who have taken a few minutes out from time to time on the Techlahoma Slack to answer my questions about what you were using.

I’m generally impressed with this OS. It’s a far cry from the complex Linux distros I experimented with in the early 2000s that were definitely not ready for the enterprise.

However, again, I’ll have to get used to looking up fixes for annoying little hiccups. So far, it’s not been that often or that hard, which is a big switch from my early days of taking Linux for a test drive.

After the loss of net neutrality and the further prospect of corporate America looking over our shoulders, I have gone through an intense time of sorting through how Free Press could stay in the game if we started to get edged out by the five corporations that now control the internet as we know it.

More about that in future posts.

As a first step, I have moved all our operations out of the Windows realm to harden our security and give a fighting chance at maintaining as much independence as possible.

So, here I am on yet another steep learning curve. But it’s one that I have chosen in order to provide independent news to Oklahoma City.

New year, here we come.