Episode: 863
Title: HPR0863: Tony Hughes Free Cycle
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0863/hpr0863.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 03:43:10

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then we'll see.
Hello everybody, my name is Heather Farm and I'm at Oddcamp and I'm here with Tony Hughes.
Tony, can you tell me how you got into Linux?
Yeah, well basically about five or six years ago I just started getting into building
or rebuilding old PCs from donated equipment and giving them away again on free cycle.
And if you know anything about free cycle, both in the UK and America,
it's a way of recycling equipment or things that people no longer want to use for themselves again.
But one of the rules is that you've got to be legal and to give away computer equipment again that's working,
you've got to have some operating system on it.
And a lot of the pieces of equipment I had didn't have a Windows license or anything.
So I was looking at a way of having a PC that was fully open running and legal and Linux was the way to do it.
So you've gone into this, you didn't even know that there was options available to run another operating system?
Yes, I had heard of Linux. For a few years I've been subscribing to a magazine that had a Linux section in it,
and Micromart in the UK, and they'd had an introduction to Linux page and I'd started reading about it,
but I'd not actually dabbled or tried to install it on anything myself.
I should take a step back and talk about the free cycle project.
What is that and where to start and how do you get involved?
Free cycles, international movement, they've got web pages in both the UK and America.
In England, the free cycle movement's actually split in this free cycle and what they call free goal.
But basically it's a network of local groups that recycle anything from an old astray that someone's thinking about throwing away to cars,
but whatever you want to give away for nothing, you can put a post on the website and if someone wants it,
they'll send you an email and say, can you consider me for this and then you make a choice and give it to whoever you want to.
That's a fantastic idea.
Okay, so you have all these PCs and Maconwell, then what happens?
Well, basically what I did, I started fixing them up, getting them working,
making sure that they were back in usable order and I started to install Ubuntu,
or at that time because the equipment was rather old and low spec, mainly it was extra Ubuntu.
So I'd get them back up and run in, install the software, tweak it so that they'd run the DVD.
If it had a DVD player, it'd play DVDs and MP3s and things like that.
It was prior to the more modern Ubuntu installs where you can press a button and get them installed out the box,
test them, make sure that we're working and then I put a post on the website and say, I've got a computer to give away,
anyone wants it and then they'd email me and I'd make a decision to give it to.
Was it tech people who would get the computers or was it just general people who would like a computer?
Actually, more often than not, it was people who were maybe wanting a second computer for the kids
so that they could get into that access and maybe do a bit of homework on that kind of thing.
So free software was ideal at the time, open office, labor office or whatever.
Few of the games show people that free software could do a lot of the things that Microsoft and other people do and charge your fortune for.
So I guess the main question is, did you get a kickback from the people when the computer arrived on the WASM running windows?
Very rarely actually. I had one person that admitted to me a little while later and it was actually one of the moderators of the local free-cycle group I donated to a PC because there's blue up
and then a couple months later I went around and she'd actually installed windows on it.
But in the large, no, most people, I gave them a five or ten minute introduction to it, showed them how to access things and said,
look, if you have any problems with it, contact me. And no, not a problem.
How do you know if it didn't all be visible to the people at the top of your windows?
I can't say that. All I know is I didn't get many tech calls to say it doesn't work.
I did get one or two emails to say, thank you very much for the PC.
The kids love it, they're enjoying the free self-aware, whatever.
I like how the proves are still running, I guess, yeah.
Job, well done. So what do you have any future plans for the project?
Well, at the moment, I'm not doing so much of it because basically real-life state now where I'm now working full-time again,
but in a way, the offshoot of that is I've joined my local Linux user group in Blackpool and we've now got thriving little community of about eight to ten of us.
And we go around the northwest and promote free software and Ubuntu and various other Linux distributions.
We're involved in UQ in Manchester that that happens once a year.
We've also got involved in other free software projects like on free software day,
they have an event in Manchester and we were involved in that last year.
And only to ask for the initial notes? Anything else that you'd like to share with our head-to-go audience?
I can't think of anything just stuff at the top of my head at the moment, but it's interesting to be able to share knowledge of how you can share your experience of using free and open-source software.
So, you know, it's just a pleasure to be able to pass that back onto the community.
Okay, Tony, thanks very much and thanks for doing the show.
And ladies and gentlemen, you can tune in tomorrow for another exciting episode of Blackpool Radio.
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