Dell to introduce European Ubuntu PCs

As may well have been apparent in my last post I have, in the past month or so, become a huge supporter of open source software & the Ubuntu distribution of Linux in particular. This has already reached the point where I recommend Ubuntu to a great many of the people who come to see me regarding computer problems, partly because I believe it will help these individuals but also so that the operating system can gain wider importance & recognition. Such recognition could lead to many needed improvements in the system such as increased hardware compatibility & the production of professional games for the Linux platform (gaming computing currently being an area in which Microsoft holds an absolute monopoly). Thus over time the strength of the system will increase & all software will improve thanks to the greater stability offered by the Linux kernel as well as the open source nature of Linux operating systems.

The spread of open source software will however be very slow if it depends heavily upon local advocates, such as myself, helping people change from Windows. A much more effective manner would of course be for Linux to be sold preinstalled on computers so that hardware compatibility is ensured. In the past there have been small companies which have indeed dealt in such systems but given their modest market share they've gone unnoticed to all but those who actively seek them out.

However a few months ago now Dell in the US began to offer Ubuntu as a preinstalled option on a number of systems. Whilst these systems did not account for a great proportion of their range this showed a notable change & willingness to explore the business possibilities of offering free software. It would seem today that this move proved to be quite successful, yesterday I heard Lenovo was set to follow suit having done a deal with Novell & just an hour ago I heard from the Ubuntu UK mailing lists that Dell will announce tomorrow (August 8th) it intentions to sell its Ubuntu based products in France, Germany & Britain. Surely this can only be a good thing & true example that Linux is now ready for the desktop?

A month with Ubuntu

About a month ago I found myself finally seeking an alternative to Windows. I had before tinkered with a Linux distribution but I found myself somewhat lost & soon reverted to Windows. The reason I wished to try again was simple, disgust at Windows Vista.

The reasons for my not liking Vista (and Windows in general) were manifold. Firstly I greatly disliked the way Vista used a huge chunk of my system resources just to run. I upgraded from one gig to two gigs of RAM in order to stop my hard drive thrashing every five minutes but still found that this was not really enough. Furthermore I was shocked to find that my processor would almost constantly be running at between 20% & 35%. Furthermore there are several more general reasons for me disliking Windows such as the additional cost of just about everything, its massive instability, all the viruses/registry errors & the validation process which causes me to feel like a criminal or at best a man who cannot be trusted.

So it was that a few months after "upgrading" to Vista I found myself actively seeking an alternative. Given that I use a 64bit processor OS X, whilst just about possible, was never really an option. This left me with two real options, both of which were open source, namely Linux & free BSD. Having used Linux before I felt that this was probably more sensible than attempting something completely alien to me.

Of course Linux itself is not, strictly speaking, a complete operating system in its own right. Instead Linux refers to the kernel at the centre of the system & there are several hundreds of different complete operating systems, based on that Kernel, available - each called a distribution or distro. The question then became which distribution to use.

In the past I had chosen a distribution called Dream Linux, which I believe had been created in Portugal, simply because it looked more impressive/attractive than other distributions. Since then however I had learnt that the appearance of Linux based systems is almost completely customisable as the GUI is simply a module. So I instead chose to look for a distro which was simple to use & had a large community for support. For the sake of simplicity I decided a debian based distro was the best choice due to the ease with which it allows the user to install & upgrade applications, through the debian package system. Then came the community support requirement. In the past Linux forums had been known for being highly technical & none to fond of those they deemed to be "noobs". I had however heard that the Ubuntu community prided itself on being helpful to new users & that the entire Ubuntu operating system was itself geared towards ease of use.

Thus I chose to install Ubuntu as my operating system just over a month ago & since then I have had nothing but good experiences. It took me just over two hours to learn the basics of using the system & since then I believe that I have probably become more skilled with Linux in a month than I ever could've been with Windows.

Furthermore open source software is something you can actually be enthusiastic about & over the course of the past month I have found myself promoting it more & more to anyone who will listen. Not only is open source free but it is also completely without viruses & far more stable than Windows thanks to all the work that goes into it. A week ago I convinced my brother to try using it & he too was thrilled with the results claiming that his ancient machine had never worked so well. All in all changing to Ubuntu Linux has really helped me get more from my computer & what's better is that I no longer feel exploited by the monopoly power of Microsoft.