LeeMobile

Studying Computing Science implies that I’m quite the computer geek. This also means that I love to tout Linux distributions as the operating system of choice. WinDoze? Not for me, no thanks.

Truthfully though, I had never touched Linux until university, and even to this day I’m not a “power user” and can’t do all the hardcore customizations. However, I still love to tout Linux. Not because I have to uphold the geek stereotype, but because it is superior to WinDoze in so many ways.

My affair with Linux started a few years ago. A school mate introduced me to Mandrake so that I could program more efficiently. Our school has mainly Unix/Linux operating systems installed on the lab machines, so we were accustomed to using them for doing our assignments. For good reason too: if programming was like surgery, using Linux would be like working with a scalpel compared to the rusty butter knife that is Windows.

So it was like a godsend to have a machine at home from which I could work on my projects. At the time, installing it wasn’t so hard, but getting new programs installed was difficult. Compile and configure source code? Missing dependencies? If you don’t understand what I just said, neither did I at the time. Also, there were tons of things I couldn’t do on Linux easily, like watch videos, in which I could do on Windows. So after installing it, it just sat there unused.
Fast forward a few years and I’m back in university after being away for amost two years on internship. With my brand new PC I give Ubuntu a chance. I’d never used it before, but my friends kept on telling me that Ubuntu would revolutionize the Linux experience. For me it did just that.

It’s very user friendly. It’s graphically gorgeous, and it has software to do almost everything that Windoze can do. Not am I happy to ditch Windows, but the software on Linux runs better than the Windows counterparts. It’s seemingly immune to spyware and viruses, and installing new software is even EASIER than in Windows. Not to mention that almost all the software is free. Yes, legally free.

Ever since installing Ubuntu on my machine, I’ve been using Windows a lot less often. There was a bit of adjustment at first, because after years of Windows I’d become accustomed to its interface. But after using Ubuntu for a few short weeks I dreaded ever having to come back into Windows. The only shortcoming is that the Linux distributions out there right now can’t handle the latest and greatest games all that well, so that’s mainly the only reason I boot into Windows nowadays. But that’s to change too over the next little while.

Why am I writing all this? Well, the latest release of Ubuntu, codenamed “Dapper”, has just come out. It’s been 8 months since the last release, and the developers have made a lot of fixes and improvemnts. I have been excitedly anticipating its release, and tonight I’m going to give it a go. At the same time, I just wanted it to be known that there is an alternative to Windows out there that is superior. Why get stuck in the clutches of M$? Give the happy penguin a try, you won’t regret it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 7th, 2006 at 6:15 am and is filed under G33k. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.