Moving to Linux? No fear, help is at hand

By Sam Varghese
Monday, 07 April 2008 22:01

Opinion and Analysis

To some people, the increasing number of Linux distributions serves as a disadvante when it comes to attracting new users. To Christopher Smart, it's a plus point - the way he puts it, if he had not been able to roll his own, he never would have achieved the level of understanding of Linux he has today.
Smart is among the few users who has gone the whole hog and developed his own distribution. Based on Gentoo - the distribution which lets you customise everything based on your hardware - it is called Kororaa (Maori for a species of penguin found in Australia and New Zealand). Development has been on hold since November last year for a number of reasons, chief among them being the fact that Smart has cannot put out a binary distribution on his own.

Having gained much from Linux and free software, he decided to spread the word last year and set up his own website called Make The Move. Though the existing site is quite good, he's not happy with it and is looking for a major upgrade so it can meet the objectives he has in mind - to provide easy-to-read information that will help people to move across to Linux.

All this may make you think that Smart is some teenager with stars in his eyes who wants to start the next revolution. Nothing of the sort. The country boy from rural New South Wales is a few years shy of 30 and now lives in Canberra where he works for the National Archives of Australia. His interest in free software is fed at work too. The Archives has its own digital preservation software called Xena - no connection with the warrior princess of TV - and he can take comfort in the fact that he is helping preserve the work of this generation and those past in an open format for the benefit of those who come after us.

Smart has always been a bit of a computer geek. "My father is a computer teacher and so I grew up using and learning about them," he says. "Throughout my school years I always found myself fixing computer issues for people. I don't do much of that these days, unless it's helping people make the move to free software."

He has no letters after his name to define what he has learnt or not learnt in computing. "Everything I have learnt about computers has been 'self taught', having never done any formal training. I was accepted into Computer Science at the Australian National University after Year 12, but decided instead to work in the industry. I worked for a few different local computer stores and eventually started my own on-site computer support business."