For Us Computer Geeks


Steve H

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Since I have been too lazy to do any car postings lately, I thought I might make some my fellow computer geeks and wannabee geeks familiar with a fairly new FREE operating system to compete with Windows.

 

The system is call Ubuntu. It is a debian based Linux operating system that is completely free and runs on most computers. I just built a new home computer and wanted to experiment with something other than Windows so a fellow coworker/lab rat/computer geek told me about Ubuntu and even brought me in a disk with the program.

 

One of the nice features about Ubuntu is that you can run it off of the disk without having to install it onto your hard drive. This is nice for those of you that don't want deal with dual booting computers and partitioning nightmares. By inserting the disk into your cd/DVD drive and then telling computer to boot from disk (Usually obtained by pushing the pf11 key during boot up) your computer will go through a series of steps and then BAM you are at the Ubuntu desktop. It is a graphical windows/mac type interface that is very user friendly and stable. Not only this, but, after hearing of various Linux horror stories I was afraid that the software would miss 90% of my systems peripherals. NOT!! It sensed my printer, external hard drive, video card and sound card all without having to install specific drivers. Additionally, it offered upgrades/updates at the click of a mouse button.

 

Ubuntu comes with-

-Open Office (A full feature office suite with Word Processor, Spreadsheet,Database, and Presentation program fully compatible with MS Office. It even opens MS documents and lets you save them in MS formats)

- Firefox web browser and Email

-Gimp which is a photo/graphic program which falls between MS Paint and Adobe Photoshop

-Bunches of games

All the features you generally want and or need in a PC. Again all for free and all open source so if you are a programming geek (not me) you can tweek programs to your liking.

 

Again what I like the most about Ubuntu is it is totally free and has a huge groundswelling of enthusiasts who work dilligently to add tweeks and enhancements. If you are looking for a new OS or wanting to build a cheap PC for someone...give Ubuntu a look. :groupwave[1]:

 

Postscript: I also downloaded an older version of the program and it ran just fine on my 6 year old Pentium III-667 computer.

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