Can do - Ubuntu?
I saw in one on my blogs comments something to the effect that you can't do everything on Ubuntu that you can do in Windows. I thought I would briefly comment on this topic.
It's not good to blog about work (so I've heard at the office) but I will keep this corporate neutral. I work for a Fortune 500 company in IT. Specifically in desktop (think PC's) IT. I am not a Windows expert but I can say that in my job I have a degree of oversight over nearly 100,000 PC's. I know PC's and I love Windows XP. Ubuntu will not replace what our company uses Windows XP PC's for. Won't happen .... case closed.
But at the personal level, a non-Windows PC can do everything and then some that Windows XP (or Vista) does:
- Money management - YES (plus if you use online bill pay from a service like WellsFargo.com, you don't need Quicken)
- Office Suite - YES ... Open Office does everything Word, Excel and Powerpoint can do!
- Web development (something I have extensive experience with): Ubuntu has it all over Windows unless you need to do .asp programming. But there are are so many other options. Need an HTML editor - Linux has it; FTP - Linux has it; Want to host a website - Apache server on Linux has it
- Graphics: I use PaintShop Pro on my work desktop. Love it. Linux has something called GIMP
Comment: Ubuntu. Want to have fun ... take an old PC ... say with 256 or 512 MB of memory. And put Ubuntu on it.
Go ubuntu.If you are unsure, I would recommend downloading it and burning it to CD. From there you can boot into it without wiping anything off your drive. Basically, you can take it for a test drive.
ReplyDeleteI run ubuntu-server on a p3 1ghz 256mb ram 30gig hd. Runs flawlessly for what I need. I run an apache server, as well as a mysql database on it. I also have installed a DNS server (so I can have internal domains, very nice to connect to a computer)
As far as a comparison to windows, it far surpasses on so many levels. Sure, it may not have a certain application that you use, but 99% of the time you can find either the same program or a comparable program that will work with ubuntu. In that 1%, some applications you can get to work using an app like wine which allows you to run windows applications under linux. At the very least, you can dual boot your machine for that one application that you have to run.
Beyond the software, you can prolong your old machine by running linux since it tends to run with less resources than windows. Generally a windows machine gets too bloated and starts too slow down. Sure, some people are still running windows machines after years of use, but I would say that is not the norm. You can put ubuntu on an old machine and have it working like new.