Pioneer is freely downloadable as well as available from many partners nationwide who can assist you from training to installation and conversions. The question is should I purchase or just download. It's not as simple as one may think. Pioneer is free to download for consumers, while businesses may not download and install. In other words, the free version is for end-users while companies must purchase. As for individuals, should you buy or purchase is the main question, if you purchase you get support from a Technalign Partner or even from Technalign directly. Partners can provide a walk-through as well as training for you on how to use your new operating system.

What should I do as an individual user?

As a user the question becomes one of what's best for "me". While some people move to Linux without any issues, others do not have the same pleasant experience. You can download an ISO image, burn it and then run Pioneer from the CD to see how you do with it. Run one of the Pioneer versions and see how you do. Many users will move to Pioneer in a week or so and start running. If you experience problems, or if you can't find things you may want to consider visiting a Partner to purchase Pioneer and get the system installed and some training. Partners vary in charges, but you cannot bring your Pioneer Community versions to a Partner and get assistance, you will need a boxed set. When you think about it, it's what pays for support, development and so on. So it's the right thing to do also!

If you're adventurous, you can use our forums and knowledge base. The community will answer questions for you and help you work with Pioneer. It's not as simple as walking into a store, but it's pretty easy nonetheless.

What should I do as a business?

As a business, you should purchase a copy of Pioneer and not pirate it. Commercial users get assistance as well as training from Partners as needed. See our services pages for more information on how Partners and Technalign work with you and your employees. Pioneer is a leap in ease of use and operation, Technalign will continue development of these products and make changes as users demand.

The Pioneer Lineup

Pioneer comes in three flavors, two community and one commercial as we will detail for you. Pioneer Basic, Explorer, and Renegade are all excellent choices you may use. Below we explore (no pun intended lol) the three editions.

The Pioneer Basic products (Commercial and download)

Pioneer Basic comes with the longevity that many of us want It brings a 7-year lifecycle to your desktop or server. This means that you can run the operating system and get updates as desired for 7-years. All repositories are maintained by Technalign and community members on the team. Community member work on the community, but their work often appears in the Explorer and Renegade distributions. This doesn't mean that your system will remain stagnant, but will get updates. The bullets below demonstrate what you can expect:

• Both KDE and Gnome desktops will be maintained
• 7-year product lifecyle for workstations and servers
  • Security updates, driver updates, and application updates
    • The application updates are provided on major releases for products, for example you won't find hundreds of OpenOffice updates only major revisions such as going from 2.4 to 2.5 and so on unless there is a security update for the application
    • Driver and utilities are only updated when everything works out of the box as they say. You'll receive your updates when required and only after testing.

Who should use the Basic Lines?

Anyone who wants a rock-solid operating system with a longer lifecycle including consumers and business. For example, my mother is in her late 60's and wants to turn on her computer and just use it without worrying about upgrading. In business, you should be using Basic. Basic is free for download and use for evaluation by business and consumers, however you will need a serial number to get your updates from the Technalign repositories. We DON'T capture the MAC address of any user system, but do validate Technalign Serial Numbers. Commercial users should be using a boxed set of Pioneer to not break the Technalign agreement.

Pioneer Explorer and Pioneer Renegade

Pioneer Explorer (KDE) and Pioneer Renegade (Gnome) are both community editions. Being community, support is provided via the forums and Knowledge Base by community members. Remember that the community wants to help you be successful with Pioneer, so they are there to assist you when you need help!

The Pioneer community editions are free for use by Nonprofit, education, and the community. Business should not use Explorer or Renegade and only the basic lines. We strongly believe in education using our products for teaching Linux, so we provide these versions to education. IT departments within an educational institution receive excellent discounts on Pioneer Basic products.

Lets look at some bullet points:

• Both KDE and Gnome desktops are in community editions
• Pioneer provides a 1-year lifecycle for consumers, education, and nonprofit
  • Security updates, drivers, and application updates are provided for all community editions
    • Updates will be larger since they include security updates, application updates, and utility updates
      • All maintained by Technalign
  • Bug reports should be sent to our bug tracking tool

Who should use the Community Editions?

Anyone who wants to run cutting edge technology that doesn't cut you! Explorer and Renegade are the latest and greatest from Technalign for the community, nonprofit, and education. We believe the community will love the systems. Our CEO actually runs Basic at the office and Explorer at home! You pick what you feel is the right solution for you based on the factors that are important to you. Explorer and Renegade are not to be used in production in any commercial or educational IT departments. Explorer and Renegade are not to used for paid support and is a violation of our agreement. Explorer and Renegade are truly community projects and if you make money with these products, you are in violation of our agreements.

How can I contribute to the Pioneer Community Projects?

It's an excellent question and you can find the answer on our community Website at http://www.tapioneer.org! We do hope that you will donate to the Technalign Scholarship fund!