I stumbled upon an interesting piece of software, Ubuntu Christian Edition. It is an operating system based on the linux based Ubuntu. Ubuntu Christian Edition is the same as a typical Ubuntu distro, except it includes GnomeSword a linux version of the popular opensource bible software ESword. Also it includes web filtering software (to filter out ‘bad’ subjects such as drugs, profanities, hate, pornography, etc,), Dansguardian.

Having grown up with Christian media around so much, it is funny to me what can be converted to be “Christian” and what makes something so. In this case just adding a bible and filtering software to it makes this linux distribution “Christian”. Just like most politically motivated evangelical Christianity (I speak from experience as an evangelical) Christianity to many is narrowed down to a couple of single issues. The Bible and, primarily, sexuality. I don’t have a problem with either of these rather the Bible is so incredibly important to Christianity and spiritual growth, as well as the need for certain people to be guarded against particular web content, that could be morally, socially and spiritually damaging. I just see that this is another branch of the Christian media that tugs at me, that says to me this is all Christians worry about and that issues of social justice, poverty, war, peace, etc seem to have little bearing the Christian life. This, of course, makes no sense. Christianity is about life in all its forms (even loving your enemey).

However, I will say that the fact that this is based on free and open source software I applaud the developer. Not just because it is freely available to anyone from any socioeconomic class, but because the free and open source software movement seems more like Christianity to me than commercial software. Millions of developers around the world pour themselves into community created software that is distributed freely to anyone. That sounds like Christianity to me.

What could make this more Christian? Maybe it shouldn’t be called Christian at all. Because perhaps calling it Christian, to me, feeds the Christian media monster, which in the end is an industry that seems very single issue minded and can be very unchristian.

In the end I think it is good that a developer has created a relevant (to many) Ubuntu distro this is as is the case with Ubuntu, easy to install and setup.

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