My Computer -- My Way
As shown on the bottom of the page, this site was built with John Cardinal's Second Site™, using my genealogy database which is created with The Master Genealogist™ from Wholly Genes Software™. My thanks go to the authors of those excellent software packages for the capability to bring this information out in public. Second Site is a powerful site-building engine, with many themes and customization features, that really spares the user the need to develop proficiency with html. This site is designed and built entirely of standard user selections from Second Site, except for the wallpaper which I made for it. This entire site -- the tens of thousands of data records, indices, and dozens or hundreds of images -- some 2000 html pages in all, compiles in about 5 minutes on my home desktop computer. I still find that amazing!
Now, for the non-obvious part. While TMG and Second Site are both MS Windows™ applications, I actually use Linux as the operating system for my computer. Why, one wonders? And how is this possible?
Leaving politics aside, there are some technical aspects of using the MS Windows operating system that leave me underwhelmed -- the never-ending struggle to avoid virus and spyware corruption, the expectation that every bit of self-defense software necessarily involves spending yet more money for yet another software license or subscription, and the periodic experience of throwing up the hands and re-installing everything, just to get the computer working again. I've been following the development of alternative personal computer operating systems for some time - I actually owned and used IBM's OS/2 for a couple of years, in the early 1990s, and regretted its demise. In 2005, I gave Linux a try, found it quite functional, and have been using it exclusively since 2006. Linux (actually "GNU/Linux" is correct terminology) is provided by its developers in "distributions", and I have been a happy user of two distributions, Kubuntu and aptosid, for several years. Both are cutting edge implementations of the Debian branch of Linux.
The politics -- Microsoft has a long history of using its operating system licenses, and technical features to intrude on your prerogatives, as the owner of your computer, by controlling and limiting your options to add hardware and other software. Going back to 1991, they incorporated the AARD code into Windows 3.1 in order to cause installation to fail on DR-DOS, a well-designed alternative OS to MS-DOS. Their predatory use of Internet Explorer to corner the browser market, claiming it was inextricably embedded in their OS, got them convicted and fined. Some Win 95 and Win XP licenses limit the number of hard drives you can use in a personal computer, and include features to "break" the OS if you make certain hardware modifications. All in all, not a consumer friendly history, to put it politely. For all the benefits they brought to consumer computing, my view is they have abused their market dominance and could well use a healthy dose of competition.
A computer running GNU/Linux, behind a consumer-grade router, is far less susceptible to external virus attack, as well as from malicious attempts to use or control your computer. The reasons get quite technical very quickly -- but it has to do with the fact that the Linux system does not permit "write" access to its system files by anyone other than the "root" user, with password, whereas any Windows user (or user-impersonator) can freely modify any and all files on a Windows system, and can insert a malicious file anywhere on the system. Among other benefits of running Linux, all the well-known "exploits" of Internet Explorer, compromising the Windows system running it, are not applicable to a Linux system. Of course, a Linux system/user can still be an inadvertent "re-transmitter" of e-mail that has virus or spyware attached, so handling of e-mail is always a security concern. And of course, as in the case with a Windows OS, the Linux user is still probably the worst threat to the security of his own system.
So, how do my Windows software applications run on Linux? The answer is, they don't. They run on a Windows "virtual machine", an actual Windows operating system that runs on a virtual hard drive under VMware Player™, from VMware. VMware Player is an application that runs on Linux, and creates a virtual environment, including virtual hard disk drive, where I installed Windows, and then on this virtual Windows system I have TMG and SS installed, along with some other useful items, such as John Cardinal's TMG Utility™, and an old copy of Corel Paintshop Pro™, with which to convert old scans that are still in proprietary formats.
At this point, your Windows-accustomed mind is probably wondering "what would that look like"? It looks like this (you'll recognize a Windows 7 desktop screen on the right):
I call it "Bill in a Box" ... 
As shown this graphic, my Linux system display has four desktop "faces" arranged on the sides of a cube (this is a Linux software package called Compiz). The user can rotate the cube with the mouse or a key combination, and each face of the cube can have open windows with different applications running. The Windows window looks and acts just like a computer running that OS, even though to Linux it is just another application. In this window, I run TMG and do my database entry and maintenance, and I run SS and do my web site engineering. VMware provides a network bridge on my system that connects the Windows session to the Linux OS, so when my web site is ready to upload, I copy it over to the Linux filesystem, and from there I run a ftp package and upload it to the host site. The Windows session does have Internet connectivity, via the Linux bridge -- I could do the upload directly from Windows. But, the copy of the updated website that ends up in the Linux filesystem also serves as a backup, and we all know that there are never too many backup copies of important data.
Except for the Windows applications required to support my genealogy hobby, I do all of my computing with GNU/Linux software packages. All the images you see on this site, including my Buckeye leaf wallpaper, were sized, and enhanced if needed, using the GNU Image Manipulation Program, "gimp". LibreOffice is a perfectly functional office suite (also available for Windows, by the way). Music and video players abound for GNU/Linux users, as do browsers, instant messaging programs, and utilities of all kinds.
By the way, the Windows virtual machine, if (foolishly) used for Internet browsing or downloading, is just as vulnerable and quickly destroyed by malware as a native Windows installation on an unprotected computer. But, in my case, the underlying Linux system is not damaged in any way. I can simply restore my Windows virtual machine if bad things should happen to it, and be back in business in 10 minutes.
That's the technical "how" story behind this web site. The Master Genealogist is available here:
Second Site:
If you are interested in learning more about Linux, there are a wealth of resources on the web. General information:
Ubuntu:
Kubuntu is Ubuntu Linux, but with the K Desktop Environment (KDE) instead of Gnome:
aptosid is Debian Linux, built on the unstable branch, with added scripts and utilities to make it more manageable: