It also taught me the value of enthusiast built software. A nearly blind friend of mine was able to use Linux for music recording in Ardour (thanks again Ardour

It also taught me the value of enthusiast built software. A nearly blind friend of mine was able to use Linux for music recording in Ardour (thanks again Ardour/Paul, you rock) with the ezoom function in compiz! The only problem was that it had a limit of something reasonable like 8x, but my friend often required a bit more than that. I emailed the maintainer and he added it within an hour! We were both so used to dealing with the various exploitative zoom software providers on Windows that charged an arm and a leg for support, and new features were only added in future expensive upgrades that our minds were totally blown. Thanks again, Kristian! If you ever read this, you really made our year.