Ubuntu

There has been much hype about how Linux-based computers will give Microsoft a run for its money in the desktop operating system (OS) market. Many people tout the benefits of Open Source software. Being curious about Linux and wanting to find an alternative and free version alternatives of the software that I currently use, I decided to give Linux a try.  I heard about the Ubuntu distribution of Linux and decided to install it and see how easy it was to use.

It turns out that you can dual boot, that is, have two operating systems, Ubuntu (as well as a bunch of other Linux distributions) on a Windows-based computer and it's a piece of cake to do so. After downloading Ubuntu for free, I made an installation CD according to instructions on the Ubuntu website and then restarted my computer booting up from the CD. Everything from then on was pretty straight forward. Soon I had Ubuntu running on my formerly Windows-only computer.

The one thing that impressed me was the graphical user interface (GUI). I had toyed with UNIX, from which Linux has its roots, during college and the command-line only interface was a bit of a challege for me. If you didn't know what commands to type in, you pretty much couldn't make the computer do anything useful besides have it taunt you with a blinking cursor. Developers in the OpenSource community went and developed an nice GUI to interact with Linux. Two of the more popular ones is Gnome and KDE.

Besides an easy to use GUI, there are tons of free software which are similar to many software packages on the market now for Windows-based system. Popular Open Source software include Open Office , a software suite similar to Microsoft's Office software suite, the Firefox Web browser , the Thunderbird email client and The Gimp , a graphics editing software very similar to Adobe Photoshop.

With Ubuntu, it's easy to update, the operating system and the software you've downloaded and installed. The OS automatically checks for updates to the system and installed software and asks whether or not you want to install them and it does so quickly and effeciently.

I did have some problems at first in getting my connection to the Internet to work. Apparently with the newer releases of Ubuntu, this really isn't a problem. But heck, I really can't complain too much about something I'm getting for free!