www.singingfalls.com/seine

Back in mid 1990's the wife and I moved back to semi-reclusive environs of Oregon after ten years off the grid in Montana. We were dirt poor but had no debts on our holdings. A place to be, a good garden and only the tax man to worry about was working out just fine. We purchased nothing unless we could afford it, fixed it ourselves when it broke, had more time than money and gave when and how we could.
Ours is an agricultural lifestyle sustained by a home grown mohair natural fiber cottage industry.
When awareness of the Internet entered this remote corner of the world the first task was to build our own computer. Windows 95 was the only OS that seemed available at the time. A long time friend had two hacker sons that lived in the Bay area. They were college students at the time and were amazed that their "uncle" had built a computer to enhance the cottage industry business. They generously sent me a box of CDs filled with all the software imaginable at the time. What amazing stuff!
By chance the very same copy of a certain proprietary software package contained in the bundle happened to be for sale at Costco for the low price of $640.00 US!!! There must have been multiple thousands of dollars worth of software in the box the kids had sent---all pirated. 0_0
That wouldn't do at all. What kind of example was being sent? But I had nothing to do with stealing this stuff. It was GIVEN to me,right? That dark "gray zone" was intolerable. In a short while, compelled by a pang of conscience, the first copy of Red Hat Linux (5.3 I think it was) made its way to Singing Falls. It was hard to use. Couldn't get on line and dialup (24000 baud) took forever to deal with updates and software usage.
Now fourteen years later I use Debian based Ubuntu. It's been over 10 years since anything MS has been used in the house. We have even been able to contribute to the open source community in several ways and are avid promoters of its use.
After hand coding and cutting and pasting code all from on open source software we feel our lowly economic status during those hard years has paid off through the Singing Falls website. GNU/Linux and open source software have made our time and effort bequeath freedom and generosity into our lives. Don't be afraid of the economic slow down. Let it become your teacher to learn a better way. Use it to teach others a better way.