No doubt many of you will have already followed our example and traded your expensive, fuel-guzzling, environmentally irresponsible automobiles for a motor scooter — a strategy we first mentioned 18 months ago. We've already saved many hundreds of dollars on fuel and maintenance costs and parking and tolls since we sold the Edgemobile, an ageing Mazda MX6 which had developed an expensive infatuation with the local garage proprietor.

The fact that we now weave a path around the lines of frustrated drivers who experience the benefits of our government's transport planning – we can't help but wonder whether Robert Mugabe might be involved there too – and generally park on the footpath outside our destination, means we also have much more time to think about other ways of satisfying the frugal gene.

We've been putting some of that time to good use in learning more about Linux, which is an essential plank in our strategy for providing readers with sufficient extra cash in the coming years to buy the occasional loaf of bread to share with their starving neighbours.

As we would have explained to Queen Cate and her courtiers at the 2020 celebrity summit, we can no longer afford to contribute such vast sums of money to Microsoft, sundry software millionaires and the hardware manufacturers who've been profiting from the ever-increasing demands that the Windows operating systems make on hardware. For that matter, we can't go on contributing to Apple's profits, the most recent of which was announced just last week, adding another $US1.05 billion to the company's coffers. That means we have to make a national shift to Linux and the open source software movement.

Readers may recall that about a year ago we made our first significant investment in Linux when we bought an Australian Dragon media centre. Assembled by Mike Williams, at Torquay-based Better Access, it uses the free Myth TV-Knoppix "portmanteau", Knoppmyth. Before that, we'd used Linux mostly as a firewall, although we did play around with SuSE, and more recently, the past few versions of Ubuntu.

Having the Dragon in the lounge room has gradually introduced us to the sheer power and peace of mind of Linux and open-source software. The Dragon has handled all our television viewing and recording in HD or standard definition, and all the DVDs and CDs and music and digital image storage and viewing jobs we care to throw at it. It never crashes, and it does everything we ask of it with so little fuss that until recently we completely overlooked its important contribution to our new frugality. We've since added a permanent Ubuntu box, on which we run a growing number of free, powerful Linux programs.

The experience has convinced us that failing to come to terms with Linux and open source systems is a financial extravagance that many more computer users will have to tackle if we're to avoid a miserable 2020, or possibly even 2010.

Compare our experience with the Knoppmyth box with that of the average Windows Vista user. We bought the top-of-the-line model at the time: an Intel Core2Duo D6320 CPU, dual HD TV cards, 500GB SATA hard drive, digital sound card, DVD drive etc in a small, amplifier-like Silverstone LC17 case, which, with the Dutch-designed Nexus NX-4090 400-watt power supply was virtually inaudible.

The price for that configuration has dropped from around $2000 to $1649 in roughly a year. But now we could have almost the same basic functionality – the ability to record two HD channels simultaneously, in the Better Access Bunyip, which costs $999. You'll only get an 80GB hard drive for that price, and we'd recommend adding another $50 or so for a more practical 320GB, but even then, you'd be well ahead of the hardware costs for a PC capable of running the Windows Vista media centre editions, which add another $319.95 for the Ultimate version, or $259.95 for Home Premium. Along with the higher price tag, you'll have to accept fewer features and more restrictions on the use of digital media.

Among numerous other advantages, the ad-skipping features you gain with the Linux version are far more useful, you can get a free electronic program guide for all channels, and you can access the drive over the Web to record programs etc. It works perfectly well as part of a Windows network, using the Samba networking protocol originally developed by an Australian programmer, Andrew Tridgell.

There's a good source of information on Knoppmyth at mysettopbox.tv, including the information you'd need to build your own. But if you're not a skilled assembler, and you lack a good understanding of Linux, the pre-assembled route is a better alternative, in our opinion.

Knoppmyth is essentially a collection of scripts which automate the setup of the open source MythTV home theatre package, and additional utilities, on a full Linux platform, in the form of the Knoppix distribution of Debian. Mike Williams has contributed to those scripts, and put together a selection of additional scripts that automate all the procedures necessary to get the best out of a Linux media centre in Australia. All of them are, however, publicly available. That commitment to an open exchange of knowledge is one of the great things about Linux. While it is unfamiliar territory for the average Windows user, all the answers are out there on the Web.

A good starting point – if you don't want to invest in a Knoppmyth media centre — might be the Puppy Linux distribution developed by Perth-based Barry Kauler, at puppylinux.com. It's a fast, tiny, but powerful operating system that gives you all the applications you need for daily use in a tiny package. You can run it from an 85MB live CD or USB key. The whole thing usually loads completely into RAM.