Anyone who wants to use Plant Base on Linux can get a free licence by simply asking for one.
This offer is available right now and probably remain at least while the Linux edition is in the Beta phase. Once issued, the licence is permanent, will never expire and may be used for all future versions of Plant Base. The licence registration code will only work for the Linux edition – unlike the full paid licence it will not enable the Windows or Mac editions, or in certain cases Android.
How to get it? – send an email, for instance via the Contact page, requesting a licence for Linux and saying which Linux distro(s) you will be running under. Please include the distro version number and unless obvious, the type of desktop environment (Xfce, KDE, Gnome, Cinammon or whatever). A user-name and valid email address is also needed for the licence code. This can be your actual name or something you choose, up to 20 characters. The email address of your request will be used unless you specify a different one. All details will be treated with total privacy and never shared.
Why? – with the recent release of the last Beta, the program should run on most, if not all, popular Linux distros and it would be valuable to know if that is true in the real world. Also, I expect interest in the Linux edition to be very limited. So I’m happy to encourage its use, at no cost, by the small number of users involved.
Why bother at all with a Linux edition? – several reasons!
- It is proof of concept – Plant Base can run on pretty much any type of system!
- The same programming language used for Windows and Mac also supports Linux – so why not!
- Perhaps a more serious reason – although the percentage of desktop computers running Linux remains very low, I believe around 2%, it is still the most obvious alternative to the two dominant commercial operating systems. With increasing concern about data privacy and the level of control exerted by big business, more and more discerning users are looking for greater choice.
- Modern versions of Linux will run on old, obsolete computers no longer supported by software from the big companies. Tech hardware wastage is excessive and appalling – reuse and recycle. Plant Base runs fine on old computers!