If you are using our Picture Mixer tool to create pictures, animations, or webcam effects, but would like to change the result in some way we haven’t thought of, you can just download the design from our site and tweak it yourself in Blender, a free and open 3D graphics program. For those who haven’t used Blender before, we’ve prepared a list of tips and tutorials for getting started. It is definitely a skill worth acquiring, even if just for the fun of it!

Richard Stallman speaking on an MIT mailing list (public archive here), responding to the implicit characterization of GNU/Linux as an alternative to Windows.

Calling GNU/Linux an “alternative” to Windows
is like calling democracy an “alternative” to dictatorship.
It’s not wrong, but it’s a drastic understatement. (*)

This paragraph is nicely phrased. It does not state that GNU/Linux equals democracy and that Windows equals dictatorship (although the rhetorical implications are there). It does suggest that there is probably more to this “alternative” than the choice between, say, different breakfast cereals, or hair products. Democracy is an alternative to dictatorship, but it posits a completely different set of “rules of the game.” Alternative products on the marketplace are not usually different in that sense. Different types of shampoo will not radically change how you live or work. Democracy did, and so does GNU/Linux.

(*) small grammar fix made, see original text.

Ian Murdock expresses how package management changed everything, a point I’ve often tried to make to friends who don’t quite “get” Linux. One of the key benefits Debian has brought to my life is the time and effort the developers spend getting package dependencies just right, so I don’t have to. Working on a Windows machine feels like being dragged back into the past, when you had to walk 10 miles to school with no shoes, and jump through a series of idiosyncratic vendor-specific hoops to get anything serious installed. Not a pleasant development environment at all. Underlying the whole experience are the free and open licenses on the core software involved, which allow a coherent integrated system to be built without mind-numbing complexity. You can get away with having some proprietary software on the “leaves” of the dependency tree, but it is just stunning how much complexity they introduce if you try to build on them.