It’s the time of the year for the tradition to make a promise to do an act of self-improvement for the coming year.

Besides the standard resolutions for better health living etc, this year my technical based resolution is to escape from all the proprietary, controlled environments, services, tools and software that I have depended to used to over decades of computing.

In July last year I replaced my aging Apple Mac Mini with a ASUS VivoMini running Linux (Ubuntu):

At that time it did not cross my mind to switch for all my work to Linux, as I still did all my day-to-day work on my other Mac Mini running OS X (El Capitan).

I started to think about it during the writing of my Personal Update posting just before Christmas. As I mention I was still taking my daily photos and upload them using my new ASUS Laptop which also was running Ubuntu:

During that time at UCSF I had time to evaluate Linux (Ubuntu) and its photo application. Since Christmas I have evaluated applications that I was using on my Mac Mini, in the end resulting in my New Year’s resolution.

BTW, this entry was composed on my ASUS Linux Laptop using ReText, a Markdown Editor, and Firefox. I plan to blog more about it in the upcoming weeks.