Monday, February 2, 2009

My first six months with Linux

It's been six months now that I've been using Linux instead of MS Windows. A colleague at work mentioned a Linux distribution that anyone could install and use: Ubuntu. Curious as I am I downloaded the latest version (Hardy Heron) from http://www.ubuntu.com. Installation turned out to be very easy as the site has a very good documentation in a wiki format.

And for all those critics that think Linux is just for nerds, buggy and difficult to use: think again!
This youtube movie gives a good impression of what the interface of Ubuntu can look http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QyyC4LRoYI

So what are the advantages, I hear you think. Well how about:
  • Free software (incl. a complete office suit called OpenOffice)
  • No (or very little) viruses. Also the possible damage they can do is way less.
  • Simply no Microsoft ;-)
  • A very friendly community that is willing to help you if you've got a problem (try that @microsoft)
So please, if you got an (old) spare computer: try it! I bet you'll be positively surprised.

In next posts I will describe some other features of Ubuntu and some other open source projects.