Re: [Trisquel-users] Why did you switch (or use) Free Software?

[jamathis]

I was a "Linux" user for a long time.  I distro-hopped a lot but for the most  
part stuck with Ubuntu or Linux Mint.  A few years in, around 2006 I came  
across RMSs speech from the HOPE conference from that year.  The same year  
gNewSense 1.0 came out so I gave it try.  Almost nothing worked, not even the  
ethernet port.  Later around 2009 I got an Asus eeePC and everything worked  
with gNewSense.  It took some work.  Then two years later, I came across  
Trisquel and found it to be the most usable fully free distro and it just  
worked.

As to what lead me to the path of freedom, several things.  For one, I had  
some cognitive dissonance about leaving a proprietary OS (Windows) for  
another OS still loaded with proprietary software.  Obviously the freedom  
aspect was important, and privacy was another one.  It is impossible to know  
what personal information a proprietary program is sending back to the  
"mother ship".  With free software I can at least view the source code and  
see what it is up to.  Overall, I just don't trust proprietary software and  
to companies that make it at all.  Therefore, I chose to not be a slave to  
that system any more.