UBUNTU
31/07/2010· Category :Things That Go Help in the Night · · 7 Comments
The Sad Story:
Let me tell you a little about my situation. I have been self-employed for the past few months (self-employed= unemployed). I usually design on my iMac G5, which is about 5 years old now. It still runs great, but my Adobe CS4 for PC was a “gift” so I do most of my designing on it. I purchased a Lenovo about 1 year ago that had Vista pre-installed. I am not a big Microsoft fan to begin with, but Vista has turned me anti-Microsoft. I haven’t had any choice but to use it since my current financial situation is in a small slump. If you are a designer then you know how important it is to get into a creative mood. When you are constantly jacking with your OS this can really bring you down. OK, I will stop ranting now and get on with the happy ending.
The Happy Ending:
The other night on one of my lack of sleep spells I happened upon a site that was talking about this thing called UBUNTU. After a little reading i discovered it was an operating system. I was skeptical since I had never heard about this, but considering my current situation I thought what could I loose? I downloaded the ISO and burned it to a disk. I installed it after a short session of running it off of the disk. Now I feel like I need to get the message out to the poor people who think they’re stuck using Windows.
The Benefits of Using UBUNTU:
There are way too many benefits of using UBUNTU for me to name them all, so here is a list of the biggest ones in my opinion.
- UBUNTU is completely free.
- Did I mention it was free?
- You can install it on almost any Windows machine (install over Windows, or install on a partition and run both OS’s).
- It comes with a ton of pre-installed software, and unlike Windows they aren’t trial versions that pester you to buy them, and leave junk behind if you decide to uninstall them.
- UBUNTU is part of the Open License movement that is sweeping the tech industry
- The standard browser is Firefox (not the bug riddled Internet Explorer).
- There is a great deal of free software available, and UBUNTU makes it easy to find. There is a link at the top of the OS window that takes you to available programs. The installation is very simple once you find something you would like to have you just click it and that’s it. They have software from Web Development tools to Games and much more.
- UBUNTU has an educational Operating System (also free). I haven’t installed it but it sound like a great learning tool. I am going to check it out and recommend it to my local school system. In Oklahoma the schools are already behind the times compared to the rest of the nation. With the recent budget cuts things are only going to get worse. The kids are almost stuck here because in other states they don’t stand a chance because they start out behind. UBUNTU could help reduce software cost which will increase the options available to the children, and free up money to increase teachers salary, or whatever they need most.
- UBUNTU offers a version of their OS for older machines. This is perfect for those less fortunate who can’t afford to buy a new computer. It can take an old PC that runs sluggish because the new Operating Systems are becoming more and more Processor reliant and turn them into a useful computer again.
Like I said, I could go on and on about this for longer than you care to read so I will just give you a link and let you discover the rest on your own. I hope this helps you or someone you know, It has helped me. I am writing this using one of the free applications offered by UBUNTU. It lets you publish from the desktop of your Computer.
Here are the links:
UBUNTU
download page: Download UBUNTU
EDUBUNTU an educational version of UBUNTU.
download page: ED-UBUNTU
UBUNTU definition:
A rough translation of the principle of UBUNTU is “humanity towards others”. Another translation could be: “the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity”.