So it has got to this, I am the new Sys Admin here at Quirk. And as most people know us technically minded individuals do not have the knack for writing any sort of articles, blog posts or user manuals and tend to think in binary rather than in ‘human speak’.

So here goes:

"01001000011010010010000001110100011010000
11001010111001001100101001000000110110101
11100100100000011011100110000101101101011
00101001000000110100101110011001000000100
01110111001001100001011011100111010001010
11100100000001010000110011001101111011100
10001000000110111101100010011101100110100
10110111101110101011100110010000001110010
01100101011000010111001101101111011011100
11100110010100100100000011000010110111001
10010000100000011010010010000001100001011
01101001000000110100001100101011100100110
01010010000001110100011011110010000001101
00001100101011011000111000000100000011010
11011001010110010101110000001000000111100
10110111101110101011100100010000001010001
01110101011010010111001001101011001000000
11001010111100001110000011001010111001001
10100101100101011011100110001101100101001
00000011010000110000101110011011100110110
11000110010100100000011001100111001001100
10101100101001000000110000101101110011001
00001000000110010101101110011010100110111
10111100101100001011000100110110001100101
00101100"

- For the not so technically inclined or the ones who only watched The Matrix once: “Hi there my name is Grant W (for obvious reasons) and I am here to help keep your Quirk experience hassle free and enjoyable.”

I was born in Durban, Natal where I grew up and matriculated. After school I decided to study electronics and three years later I had my N6 national diploma. After that I headed to Cape Town where I studied developing (MCSD.Net) and discovered the wonderful world of Open Source.

So what’s been the big hype about open source over the past few years?

Well, the very first thing that comes to everyone’s mind is that it is either free or cheaper than commercial software. Look a little deeper and you will discover the ease of updating software when it becomes available, 24 / 7 online community support, access to source code and the ability to customise, bug fixes are implemented quicker and it has more security compared to commercial software.

Added to this, the cost of hardware is significantly cheaper as an open source based system generally uses less resources than closed vendor software (application specific).

A survey undertaken monthly by Netcraft showed that in April 2008, Apache's (an open source Web server) market share was 54% with +/- 34 million active servers followed by Microsoft (IIS) with a market share of 35% and +/- 23 million active servers.

With recent developments in the desktop arena, open source is becoming more of an everyday term. One distribution – Ubuntu headed by South African Mark Shuttleworth is fast becoming the Desktop OS of choice. A basic installation will leave you with a complete package, which includes office tools, the ability to send and receive email and to browse the Internet. All this opens doors for many new users who could not afford the added cost of software.