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Ubuntu is what you would call an open-source operating system. This basically means that the software can be altered and is meant to be changed.

It is like a clean slate for to people customize their own software.

It is primarily used as a training ground for hackers and coders. So if you know how to "code" than this is the operating system for you. It is the operating system that you see in all the action movies with the guy in the van "hacking into the mainframe" with all of the windows and text flying all over the screen.

You might be better off going with a Mac instead! (I'm a mac guy)


Brice "who thinks Apple will soon take over the world" Thomas

Ubuntu is basically linux with a snazzy user interface. In fact, I left my windows machine to post this from my pc running Kubuntu. Its free, but takes a lot of work to get it the way you want it. If all you want to do is surf the web, it will work, however, all of the things like video plug ins may not work on every page you visit. I'm still working some of the bugs out of mine. In fact, I can't even load my regular home page yet. Printers, cameras and all other peripherals will work great with it (or so I'm told). I had absolutely no problem getting to this site and posting using Kubuntu. In fact, all of the ads are showing up ( I guess you could call that a bad thing). It's not ready for prime time yet. Stick with windows.

I installed my first Linux some 10+ years ago and have never gone back to Windows, although there were times (especially in the beginning) when I was rather fed up with non-functional peripherals. Since then I have switched from RedHat to SuSE to Ubuntu and am very happy with my current setup.

Running Linux, you can use Firefox and Thunderbird for internet and email, just like under Windows (I hope nobody still uses Internet Exploder), there are Office-clones for writing and spreadsheet calculations and music and video playing is more or less trouble free. The only reason for why I would recommend that someone should not switch is if they have to use a specific Windows-only program for accounting, notation or some other vital purpose.

Nowadays, the Ubuntu installation and configuration process is very simple, things tend to 'just work' and you can decide how fancy you want your desktop to look - and thus get by with less CPU power and memory.

In fact, my mother still uses my old desktop machine, a 1997 266 MHz HP with 512 MB of RAM, running xubuntu (which is Ubuntu with a lightweight XFCE desktop, instead of the default Gnome desktop), for internet browsing, email, her digital photos and recipe collection.

BriceT wrote:Brice "who thinks Apple will soon take over the world" Thomas

That's exactly the reason for my growing dislike of Apple.

That's exactly the reason for my growing dislike of Apple.

Once you go mac you never go back!