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As I'm writing these words, DELL has
decided to ship some of its new models with Linux's UBUNTU's 7.04 “Feisty Fawn" distribution. (Windows have OS releases or versions like XP or Vista; Linux
has “distributions" like Fedora, Redhat, Ubuntu and many others.)
Go DELL!
A perfect choice because I've been
using UBUNTU on one of my machines for over a year now and I have
nothing but qualified praise for it.
Qualified? Yes. Because I cannot run some of my favorite Windows application (like Photoshop, Illustrator,
FrameMaker, GoLive) on Ubuntu.
GIMP comes close to doing what
Photoshop can do (at least at my level of graphic competence) but
other Windows applications do not have their Linux-counterparts yet.
There is nothing over the horizon, for example, to match the
reliability and power of FrameMaker in a Linux environment.
So why do I still like my Ubuntu? Let
me count the ways:
1) It's FREE.
2) OpenOffice that comes with it is
also FREE and it can match MS Office in every category, except in
mail management. (NOTE: You can download and use OpenOffice on
Windows and Mac machines as well.)
3) No viruses. Period. I have not used
any anti-virus programs or firewalls with my Ubuntu system yet. Knock
on wood.
4) No system crashes. And when I crash
my system (a rare event) while trying to open 10 different
applications or files at the same time, Ubuntu recovers beautifully,
restoring each crashed file one by one when you restart the system.
5) Auto updates... when you click this
great little "you have updates" button on top of the
screen, UBUNTU automatically downloads (after your approval of each
item) whatever updates are developed by hard-working Linux volunteers
around the globe.
6) An ever-growing collection of free,
new and interesting software available for instant downloads through
Synaptic Package Manager. (For example, it's free CHESS program - one
of the hundreds of Linux games available online for free - is one of
the best I've ever played against.)
I do all my writing, for example, on my
Linux machine. Since OpenOffice also has a free PDF conversion
utility built right into its word processor, I'm writing my new book
("Copyright-Free Content for Your Web Site and Newsletters")
also on my Linux machine. (YES - you don't need to buy Adobe Acrobat
Pro to generate PDFs!)
One shortcoming of “Feisty Fawn"
distribution – it's energy-saving screen- and machine-sleep modes
are not perfect and don't work well. When the machine goes to sleep
after remaining idle for a configurable time period, it shuts itself off
when it comes back to life. If you get Ubuntu 7.04, do not use that
energy-saving option. I hope they'll fix that pesky problem as well
in a future release.
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