Jumped to Linux and not looking back

I’ve been thinking about making my home computer completely use open source or free software for a long time now. After finding open source alternatives for the majority of the desktop applications that I am using on Windows, I have made the final leap and converted my machine to use Ubuntu Linux.

Before starting down on this path, the first thing that I did was to download the Ubuntu Live 6.10 CD. After downloading and burning this CD image, you can boot your computer in Linux straight off the CD-ROM without making any modifications to your system. This virtual computer automatically recognizes your internet connection, contains a ton of applications like a web browser, office suite, image editor and hard disk partition manager.

Once I was satisfied with what I saw, I made some space on my hard drive and performed the Ubuntu installation. This went very smoothly and I was up and running very quickly. All of the applications that I mentioned in the previous paragraph were automatically installed (OpenOffice.org, Firefox, GIMP and many others) so I did not have to worry about setting all of these up like I would have to on a Windows system.

Once I was up and running, the next step was to install other tools that I need that don’t come as part of the base installation. Ubuntu is great for this since it contains a tool called the Synaptic Package Manager. This tools connects to the internet and gives you a list of applications available for download and installation. You find the tool you are looking for, select it and the operating system takes care of installing and configuring the tool for you. It even keeps track of updates to all of your installed software and tells you when new versions are out! Windows and Mac OS should follow in these steps.

Of course, Linux is still not for everyone. I had to struggle to get my TV output activated on my video card where such an operation would have been trivial under Windows. A few other tools also had their quirks to install and run. But overall, I’ve been able to get everything running smoothly.

Here is a picture of my desktop so you can see a few application that I would typically use and what it looks like.