About 6 or 7 years ago I played around with a fun little freebie called Ubuntu, which I acquired by logging onto the site and ordering the CD to be posted to me absolutely free. "Thank you, come again." as Apu Nahasapeemapetilon would say. So I installed it, had a fiddle, but the novelty soon wore off and Windows XP (which perfectly fits the definition of a virus) once again ravaged my PC.
Years of frustration later Windows XP is still here to torment. Luckily I've just installed Ubuntu 10.10 on my other hard drive... ***For Dual Boot to work with PATA/IDE in this situation the XP drive needs to be set as Slave and the drive Ubuntu is going on as Master when installing*** ...for the second time in a week.
There are pros and cons of both Commercial Software and Open Source Freeware. But the pros are fast stacking up in favour of the latter. For a start, those who have ever bothered to read the licence agreement of their Microsoft Windows would know that all that money spent on XP, Vista, 7, etc, only bought you the right to USE the software and Microsoft remains the proud smug bastard owner who wants to know exactly what you are doing with its software every step of the way.
Enter Linux. The Unix based open source operating system released under the GNU General Public Licence which allow users to not only view the source code, but to make changes to the source code and release their own distributions under the same Licence.
What's so great about being able to edit the source code? For a start, if you don't like the window buttons being on the default side you can move them to the other side with one simple line of code. Something went wrong and the top menu bar doesn't display correctly? No sweat, one simple line of code resets the bar.
Ok fair enough, not everyone is comfortable screwing around with the source code due to fear they may break it. This is the beauty of Ubuntu; you have the option of entering code in the terminal or using the GUI menu's, installation wizards, etc.
Ok fair enough, not everyone is comfortable screwing around with the source code due to fear they may break it. This is the beauty of Ubuntu; you have the option of entering code in the terminal or using the GUI menu's, installation wizards, etc.
But what about all my office programs, are they going to work on Linux? Yes, most windows based software will work in Linux after installing Wine including your MMORPG fix of WoW.
For those of us who want to save money by not spending any there are open source alternatives to most commercial software. Can't afford Adobe Photoshop? Try using GIMP. What about all my saved office files? Don't stress! There's OpenOffice. While it has its own file format it will read, edit, and save in the Microsoft ones. I'm not sure it does the post 2007 MS Office file formats yet but due to the amount of people still on 2003 it's bad practice to be saving in the new format anyway.
The best thing about Linux from a consumer point of view? Variety. There are shit loads of free to download, install, use, and change, distros floating around cyber space. Just to name a few:
Ubuntu | Puppy Linux | Red Hat | Debian | Linux Mint | Ututo | Fedora | Chrunchbang Linux | FreeNAS | SuperGamer
Install Linux as a stand alone OS, Leave windows where it is and use a Live CD, Install Linux inside your currant OS, run it from a USB disk. Whichever option you chose, you should all chose Linux!
You know it's true.
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