How I Went From Angry
Windows User To Delighted Linux User In Ten Minutes!
About 18 months ago, I
had another disastrous crash on my PC that caused me to loose a host
of photos, music and documents. Luckily I had a backup of most of my
documents on an external disk. So I wasn't too concerned by this. I
had experienced many crashes on Windows before and usually I was able
to recover most of my documents and restore the system back to normal
without too much effort.
This time was different
however and to my horror, I discovered that Windows had somehow
corrupted my external disk as well. I had lost everything and was
pretty angry about it.
I tried a number of
data recovery programs but most of the files wore gone. Forever. What
a disaster!
At that point I decided
that I would look for another alternative to windows and I thought I
would give Linux another try.
A few years earlier I
had experimented with RedHat Linux but had no real success with it as
it had problems detecting my usb keyboard and mouse. Which was
obviously a bit of a non-starter for me. I knew that big advances
were being made in the Linux world so I decided to do a bit of
research.
Linux is an operating
system that is free. That is, it can be downloaded and copied and
distributed without a fee. It is free in a deeper sense too. Most of
the software is written under a license called the "GPL"
which effectively means that source code is available to everyone for
each and every component of the Linux Operating System. If you have
access to the source code for a piece of software then you can change
the program to fix bugs and make it better. Once you do this you are
under obligation to make your new source code available to others.
This has worked
extremely well and Linux is being developed by programmers all over
the world to make it better and better. The progress is amazing!
In my research I
discovered a website: www.distrowatch.com. This website keeps a list
of the most popular distributions of Linux. A distribution is a
collection of Linux software that together makes an operating system.
Each distribution contains different software and has a different
focus. There are so many to try... Fedora, Mandrake, Puppy,
PCLinuxOS, Debian, Knoppix, and the most popular, Ubuntu Linux.
I downloaded the ISO of
Ubuntu Linux from the Ubuntu website http://www.ubuntu.com/ and
burned it to cd (an ISO file is cd image that can be recreated using
a cd burning tool such as Nero).
I placed the cd in my
drive and booted up my computer.
I was astounded!
Within 10 minutes my
computer was running Ubuntu Linux without even having to install it!
This was a "Live-CD" and it can be used without installing
to hard disk - it can be run from a cd without affecting your
computer at all.
All my hardware was
detected and within minutes I was surfing the web using Firefox and
getting my email using Evolution, chatting to friends in messenger
and yahoo chat using Gaim, writing documents and opening spreadsheets
in Open Office and listening to Internet Radio with RythmBox.
I was delighted with
the easy to use and gorgeous looking desktop.
I decided to install it
straight away and since then I haven't looked back.
There is an abundance
of free open source software just waiting for you to experience. The
package management system - Synaptic, allows you to search
repositories of software and download them. The quality of a lot of
the software is incredible.
Linux is written from
the ground up to be a secure operating system. This means that you
won't have to worry about getting viruses, spyware or any other kind
of malware. My system is as stable as a rock.
Of course, there are
downsides to running Linux. The main one is that there is a learning
curve that can be quite steep. It is not windows so If you are trying
to get something working, your windows knowledge will not help you.
You might need to
troubleshoot problems using the Command Line Interface - similar to
windows DOS, but many times more powerful.
Fortunately, help is at
hand on the incredibly friendly and helpful forums at
www.ubuntuforums.org
I have been running
Ubuntu Linux now for 18 months and can't see any reason now to return
to windows. Once you get past the mind set of using closed source
software a whole new world opens up before you and you realise that
amazing things are possible with linux.
I hope you found this
article helpful and I hope it inspires you to try out Ubuntu Linux as
I did. You won't regret trying it.
Here are some
resources:
www.distrowatch.com
Distrowatch – News on
the latest Linux distributions.
www.ubuntu.com
Ubuntu – Download the
Ubuntu Linux operating system for your computer
www.ubuntuforums.com
Ubuntu Forums – Go
here for help and advice
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux
Linux on Wikipedia
(c) Alan Oliver 2007
Internet Marketing Thinker
alanoliver@sixtfouracresmarketing.com
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