Making your own kind of music is getting cheaper than ever

I'm writing this post in Ubuntu. But you can read it because Ubuntu isn't an exotic African language, it's a computer language. In fact, it's a dialect of Linux, the computer world's version of Esperanto.

I outfitted my wife's ancient discarded Sony laptop with this free, open-source operating system to make it faster and more secure. ('Upgrading' this old, underpowered PC to Windows XP had made it virtually unusable.)

Why waste a weekend struggling with my inner geek? I'll tell you: I needed a laptop that would work, getting Windows fixed would have cost more than buying a new laptop, and I can't afford a new laptop right now.

Ubuntu is free, like most other Linux systems. You can download it from its Web site or get it on a DVD tucked into one of the handful of Linux magazines on sale at Borders. It installs pretty much like any other software upgrade.

My point, and I do have one, is not that everybody should make the leap and give Microsoft the fate it deserves; my point is that Linux is one of those tools that's changing the face of entrepreneurial business by making the tools of daily life cheap, free and tribal. Quite refreshing.

Today's WSJ profiled five entrepreneurs who either left or were ejected from corporate life by the economic crisis and are trying to make it big by starting small. As interesting as the article itself was the comments section, which included this thought:

"One important factor not mentioned though is that the cost of starting a business has fallen dramatically. Specifically for those entrepreneurs starting technology or web businesses.

Just think about all the open source software that is free and the global talent that technology makes accessible at low rates. This is a huge change and makes entrepreneurship possible for many people. Its one of the main reasons I left my job to start a web business and have not looked back since."

....couldn't have said it better myself..in English, Ubuntu, or Esperanto.

At big companies, I've often felt locked into big, expensive and not-all-that-great technology platforms, not because they were the best, but because of big IT contracts and long-term deals. In the meantime, tools like analytics, content management, blogware, content syndication, video hosting, social networking and more, have all gone tribal: cheap, even free, and subject to continuous upgrades and improvements by a beehive of entrepreneurial engineers who just can't leave problems unsolved.

So if you're starting a business, look at Linux for your PCs. Looke at Skype for your phone service. Look at Salesforce.com for prospecting -- the personal edition is FREE!

I hope these guys are making money somehow, because they're making the world a better place.