Do we really need Windows for desktop computers ?

As a humble member of the global teaching fraternity, I do a lot of work on the computer like accessing the Internet, download papers, write blogs, papers, cases, read articles from high quality resources of the web and so on.

All the while over the past five six years, I have been working on a Linux based USB on Ubuntu distribution, to log from my office windows machine through Linux OS and access the Internet. The experience is cool. 

No worries of safety, security, unauthorised access and so on. With double security checks for my Google cloud, it has never failed me the last twenty years, no fears of unauthorised access to the Google cloud. Everytime I access the net, a different IP address is automatically assigned, so it is the most safest way to access the net.

For all personal and office work yours faithfully uses only the Google office suite and access the Google cloud for storage of docs, 15 GB free and for Institute files  access the 100 GB One Drive, Linux based cloud from MS to store and access official files.

Anyway you look at it, yf has not accessed the hard drive on my local machine at College at least for the past 4 years, all the time working on Linux USB. (usually carry four USBs in my bag having four different distros, just for the fun of it). All important files are on my personal Google cloud or the MS office cloud. 

Perhaps yf is the only teaching faculty from Alliance University to work on Linux all the time, a practice  continuing  from my IIT Bombay days, thanks to my mentor and guru, Prof. Uday Gaitonde, a die hard Open Source Linux fan.

Using the Google cloud and Google AI for academic purposes have overnight, improved the quality of my understanding and research, better and more effective delivery of teaching material and finally effective student understanding and feedback monitoring mechanisms.

The cloud storage and working has actually simplified my access either through my mobile while travelling, a 10 year old HP laptop at home or the latest desktop machine from office. Thin client technology very much in action.

It is high time the University authorities start slowly discontinuing MS licenses in the uty asking faculty to work the Open source way, install Ubuntu or any Linux distros on all machines, or even use Linux on USB as the learning curve is so fast and steep. It is my sincere request to the uty authorities to use the money thus saved (Institute license for MS may be draining a couple of crores of rupees every year from uty funds) to buy better quality hardware, 3D printing machines, AI capability and so on.

George.