Tuesday 7 April 2009

My Ubuntu Experience

About three months ago, I installed ubuntu on my laptop mainly because XP had frustrated me with constant virus problems and slow execution of programs. Initially, I kept both XP and ubuntu, but when the virus problem escalated to such a level that XP became unusable, I totally switched over to ubuntu.

I must admit that there were a few minor hiccups along the way, and there still are, but there are many more problems when it comes to any MS OS. Besides, the only thing that I had to do was to run a simple Google search for the ubuntu forum addressing the particular problem that I was facing, and voilĂ , the problem would be solved!

Apart from the above obvious reasons for switching to ubuntu, there were other tiny factors which cemented my transition from years of MS usage to Linux. The most important was that the OS was very simple to use. I am no coder, and I always imagined that linux was for the geeky coder or developer. Oh boy was I wrong! Even finding applications for any specific need is simple, all you have to do is open up this application which automatically searches for the programs, downloads them and installs them. I simply had to check the box next to the search results and the program was downloaded and installed, absolutely no hassles.

If you are used to the windows applications, fret not. The open source community is constantly evolving to produce amazing new applications which can not only claim their right as alternatives to the windows programs, but can claim to be superior. I guess the advantage is that in the open source community, the everyday user has the capability to modify the program in any way to suit his/her particular needs. This way, many of the programs have ended up with innovative and nifty features which set them apart from the proprietary software. Just take the example of Mozzila Firefox which is an open source project, do I need say more?

Talking about the graphics, all I can say is AWESOME! I even managed to run popular windows compatible games like counter strike on my ubuntu using a windows emulator called wine.

Now when you put all the above things together, what do you get? An awesome computing experience with which you are bound to fall in love with. Trust me, I'm totally smitten!

2 comments:

Akash Verma said...

good post...and coincidentally i was about to come to you to pick up the cd for ubuntu tmmrw as well. I just reformatted my pc and have kept a little partition for ubuntu....lets see wat this thing really is!

As for me...i really appreciated ur point tat ur not a programmer either and yet ubuntu turned out to be a good experience. I had the same fear in my head! thanx for getting rid of it.

Though i must say tat im not ready to drop my Vista completely. There are certain things tat i do on my vista which will take me years of practice to replace on ubuntu! And not to forget the safety zone tat i feel when i run my vista. But i wanna know wat ubuntu is as well. Who knows when i might come across it in the future...dont wanna be sitting there with a blank face...now would i? hehe :-)

Anonymous said...

BHAVIN HERE :)
Vista was a total disappointment... I got UBUNTU too... i ordered for it for free over the net and surprisingly it was posted to me for free last year. I know its good and guess what... even Windows 7 seems to have been adapted to the same kind of OS... in win 7 incase we don't have a software for our old d-cameras it finds one by itself on the net and suggests it to us... its gonna work well with touchscreen too!!! all in all I'm sure you'll find it exciting too... incase u need the win 7 installation disc...i have it OR u can also download it from torrents...