A couple years back, I toyed with some Ubuntu Linux installations on a couple of PC’s. I liked the idea of getting away from Windows and everything associated with it. My first Ubuntu installation was 7.04, a.k.a. Feisty Fawn. It worked pretty well and I managed to get it all running with a minimal amount of pain. When the next Ubuntu release came out, 7.10 a.ka. Gutsy Gibbon, I ran it on both PC’s for a while.
After missing a couple pieces of Windows software, I reinstalled XP and set up a Wubi installation of Ubuntu 8.04, a.k.a. Hardy Heron, to still get the Ubuntu experience. And life got busy, so I strayed away from using Ubuntu almost entirely.
I purchased an iMac a couple years back and I must be the exception to the rule, because I really didn’t care for it at all. It sat here in the office next to my production PC, but it was rarely used. When Apple released Snow Leopard, I figured I would risk $29 to see if it would spark my interest in the iMac. What’s the old line about a fool and his money?
As I was sitting here grumbling about wasting money on an operating system, I decided to look in on the Ubuntu community forums. And within the hour, I was burning a copy of Ubuntu 9.04, a.k.a. Jaunty Jackalope onto a CD for a quick LiveCD test-drive. That’s a slick trick with most (if not all) Linux distros — being able to boot the computer up from a CD-ROM based operating system. Anyway, the PC and Jaunty seemed to play well together, so I set up a dual boot installation with Windows XP.
And I liked it well enough that I decided to dual boot the iMac, as well. And you know, the iMac has become my primary system, as a result. This is what I was hoping to find when I bought this computer. A sleek, well-built piece of hardware with an operating system anyone could love.
But I wasn’t ready to quit tinkering around, so I went back to the PC today and upgraded the Ubuntu install from Jaunty Jackalope to Ubuntu 9.10, a.k.a. Karmic Koala. that was a bit of a stretch for me, as Karmic is still a Beta developmental release and won’t be officially released until 29 October. But it upgraded nicely and runs even better.
If you’re like me and you’re tired of spending money to upgrade operating systems, let me recommend Ubuntu Linux to you. A totally free and extremely stable operating system that works incredibly well and has thousands of free programs available for it. And when your friend forwards that e-mail with the malicious Windows virus in it, you won’t have to worry because it won’t have any effect on your Linux system.
If you’ve got a spirit of adventure and want to use a solid operating system, take a look into Ubuntu. They have a really huge support forum and the community is always willing to lend a hand if a problem crops up. Just download one of the ISOs and burn it to a CD, to test how well it works. Before you know it, you’ll be converting to Linux too!
