1 – Free
2 – It’s HUGE
Its clearly the most used linux distro. According to Wikipedia, Ubuntu passed 100 million users in April 2009 and many vendors started selling computers with Ubuntu pre-installed:
A number of vendors offer computers with Ubuntu pre-installed, including Dell, Tesco, OP3, Gliese IT, System76, and the South African company Bravium Computers.
- Wikipedia
3 – Many resources
It is very easy to find help for Ubuntu. A quick search in Amazon listed 800+ books about Ubuntu. There’s an official wiki with loads of FAQs, guides and manuals all organized in a practical and reachable way. If that still haven’t solved your issues there is the “official” forum with over 7.5 million posts.
4 – Stable
Blue screen of death? Memory dump ? Frozen screen? Unacceptable memory leaks? Need to reboot it once in a while? Ubuntu has nothing to do with that son. I’ve seen reports of up-times as far as 2 years and the system kept smooth.
5 – Secure
Open source is more secure than closed source applications for many reasons. More people can detect and fix bugs on open-source software than in closed-source. Even the Whitehouse and the US Departament of Defense have realized that. Also Linux protects system critical resources without annoying the user.
6 – Commercial support
Ubuntu was born with enterprise mentality and thus is has very good commercial support around the world. Be it for desktop or servers, you can get it at Caonical’s paid support and from its partners.
7 – Faster
Doesn’t need to be reinstalled every now and then to keep running smooth since there is no registry. There’s no DLL hell and no viruses. It also uses less hardware resources.
Ironically like I said bellow on the Wine topic, some Windows games ran faster on Ubuntu for me. You can see a very good benchmark between Ubuntu and Windows on tuxradar.com’s article.
8 – Disk space
Ubuntu vs Windows comparing disk space usage. Altough Ubuntu uses way less disk space, it has more hardware support and comes with Office installed. Image source: tuxradar.com.
9 – No registry
With Ubuntu you don’t get that geek registry which is a big exposure of the system, a mess of system and user software configurations mixed forming a SPOF.
10 – Office for $679.95 Free!
It comes with the free OpenOffice suite which can also open and save in Microsoft Office format.
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- why ubuntu
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Nice article, sums it all up. I wouldn’t be able to go back to windows, even if it was given to me for free. Even knowing how windows works isn’t enough to make the crashes stop, they’ll always happen for some reason.
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Some thoughts:
1. Printing using cheap printer is very slow. It is also hard to print double sided with multiple pages in one side.
2. I still can’t find the best way to backup my Nokia phone, especially the calendar. Can it be done with Sunbird, Lightning or the default Evolution.
3. OpenOffice is not 100% compatible with Microsoft Office.
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Security isn’t the biggest problem of Windows anymore thanks to UAC. Blue screens and a slow pc can be prevented by lots of maintenance tools (cleaners/defraggers). So that is the real advantage of GNU in general.
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I’m an Ubuntu fan - and fulltime user - myself, but I can’t say Ubuntu on Desktop is all that stable. Many basic desktop programs have severe bugs, are resource hogs, and/or suffer from the typical regressions. Evolution keeps to be a huge resources eater, en crashes often. F-spot started crashung since Karmic on importing from my EOS400, my Desktop environment often (once in a month) totally freezes, more than often leaving me to no other option than resetting the PC. Over the years I experienced a specific recurring problem with printing, putting blank space at the top of each page. Sound configuration remains something of dark magic.
I’m sure everybody has other experiens and mine are specific but they are real, and it doesn’t look like that will change soon.
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Selinap: You can back up your Nokia calendar for free at http://ovi.com. I used to boot to a virtual windows for doing that, not any more! Dunno if it works for your phone, at least Symbian s60 3rd edition phones are supported I think.
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@Selinap
Microsoft Office is not fully compatible with Microsoft Office.
I started editing a document and saved to my USB drive, went home and edited it further, saving it in the same .docx format.
When I returned to work, and my boss opened it, there was a complaint that .docx wouldn’t work properly with his Office 2003.
I solved this by giving him a free copy of my Portable Office suite (no need to install, just drag the folder from USB to desktop and run from there).
My boss was angry - he had paid big money for MS Office for what reason???
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Blue screen of death? No! Memory dump? No! Frozen screen? Yes! I still get this every now and then, especially on my netbook when it has been inactive for a bit. It is still better than Windows, but it does happen. Does it not happen to anyone else?
To be honest I think it has only happened on 9.10, which I am finding to be much less stable than 9.04. I have even been thinking about switching back to 9.04. But I would never consider going back to Windows.
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9.10 is a real resource hog compared to other versions of ubuntu. Unfortunately I have to watch steaming videos on windows 7 due to the constant lag and freezing.
Have checked the system most windows 7 uses is 60% of processes while ubuntu many times hits the 95% plus
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I am not at all sure that Ubuntu can handle Turbotax and Quicken. I keep hoping that Ubuntu will be more user friendly, but that never happens. At least it still runs on my out-of-date VA Linux machine.
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Awesome article but no 10 should be something else. You can easily install open office in windows as well.
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@BacLit
Yeah, but getting someone who already has MS Office to install OpenOffice just to read your document? No.
Getting them to install Sun’s MS Office extension is even asking too much (people are lazy).
Many people still ask for resumes to be submitted in .doc format (seriously? Get with the times. Some won’t even allow you to send it as a .pdf!)
OOo needs to strive to make it 100% compatible.
You shouldn’t work on a OO document forever only to have its formatting all messed up when you send it to someone using MS Office.
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@ben2talk - *.docx is a format introduced in Office 2007, so Office 2003 won’t be able to use it without a plug-in or something (in case you didn’t try this, do a search for “office 2007 compatibility pack”).
Though I don’t think OpenOffice needs to be 100% MS Office compatible to be a viable alternative. It just depends on which formats others you are working with use, and what formats you have saved in.
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ben2talk says: that .docx wouldn’t work properly with his Office 2003.
That’s because docx format is a later format than Office 2003, you should have saved it in .doc format.
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“Its clearly the most used linux distro. According to Wikipedia, Ubuntu passed 100 million users in April 2009″
Clearly? Yet your only source is…Wikipedia? Which cites absolutely no reference for its number. I can’t actually see the 100 million number anywhere in Wikipedia’s article; the highest it states is 13 million, and that’s just a claim reported from a newspaper article which itself cited no references. I’ve never found any Ubuntu user number count which cited any kind of reliable counting mechanism at all. See http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics for a discussion of the difficulties involved in counting Linux ‘users’.
Your ‘clearly’ also seems to entirely disregard the widespread use of Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the enterprise.
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Nice article but you forget the first and main reason: Ubuntu is here because Debian exists
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Regarding drewsus’s comment that some companies will only accept a resume in .doc format and not .pdf. Do you really think that you would be happy working for such a short-sighted company?
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I call number 6 an invalid point. Run gconf-editor and see what you get.
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Open Office is ok. Gets the job done, but it’s but ugly. The database app is a far, far cry from Access. The Office 2010 Beta is a huge improvement over Office 2007 in looks, and the functionality been streamlined. I use Ubuntu a lot, and prefer it in general over Windows, but if you spend a lot of time in Office app’s, it’s just not as pleasant. Hopefully, the Ubuntu music store will bring improvements to a usic player for linux that is remotely comparable to iTunes or the Zune player.
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Since I upgraded to 9.10, I’m getting occasional freeze-ups. I first notice that the mouse is getting jerky, then it gets worse, then finally freeze. I also notice my hard drive access light blinking excessively after the freeze-up. Also in 9.10 -- I have to use no Visual Effects. If I use Visual Effects, eventually my windows controls will disappear, and then I have to minimize, maximize and exit using the lower toolbar. I’ll stick with 9.10 -- probably these problems will get fixed by updates later.
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i am a ubuntu fan,i have used it for more than a year now. Just like you say, it’s stable and have a good support. Stable is my love.
But ubuntu 9.10 let me down, i met many troubles when i installed it,and after that met the NM problem.
BTW, i think “No registry” isn’t a good reason.
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@Jon Nicholson: “Since I upgraded to 9.10, I’m getting occasional freeze-ups.”
I have the same problem. It’s because pulseaudio. It is countinously eating up my memory. About 1 Mib in every 5 secs.
Here is the related bug report on launchpad:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pulseaudio/+bug/424655
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My comment - Office 2003 and Office 2007 are incompatible - stands. Where I work, there is NO INTERNET.
I can use Portable Office to edit and save .docx or .doc files, and this makes me compatible across machines with MS Office 2003 and 2007. I can load .doc and save as .docx and vice versa.
Where’s the incompatibility people are telling me about? I think Open Office is pretty much 100% compatible, whereas MS Office is maybe 75% compatible - or are we in a world where we only judge software by the state it reaches when we’re all administrators and are connected and can download plugins to make it work?
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I personally prefer OOo over MS Office. OpenOffice ships with Solver on major Linux distros, and MS Office just gives me headaches with updates (sometimes it insists you install some update, otherwise it just won’t run!!). I don’t mind MS Office if my employer is dealing with the technical difficulties so much (well, I only mind if hiring a technician to deal with MS Office means they can’t pay me as much), but seriously…at home I just can’t be bothered with MS Office nonsense. Granted MS Access does have a few more feats than OOo database, but people don’t generally use that for personal use, and even then I’d rather rely on OOo with my databases than find out that I can’t launch MS Access until I insert the MS Office install disc to look for some cab binary in order to install some dependency from MS via Interweb!!
I rather the gconf-editor over the windeuce registry. The registry in windeuce gets bloated by 3rd party apps and such, whereas the gconf-editor doesn’t seem to get that way.
Ubuntu has its faults (the latest kernel build won’t load ALSA on my primary laptop, so I have to restart alsa whenever I boot that computer), but it’s still a really good distro!
I have tried Mandriva and it wasn’t as easy to use…EasyStroke isn’t available in the repos and Specto, though “available” in the repos, won’t install due to a dependency issue. I also find their Gnome menus have more hierarchy than in Ubuntu (something that’s just starting in Ubuntu, now they have a sub-menu for certain games…I don’t play games often enough to care), but I find having too many sub-menus annoying. I’d say Ubuntu is fairly easy to use, it’s fairly polished and ready for most people. Fedora Core makes installing codecs really tricky apparently, and OpenSUSE just doesn’t have nearly as good repos. Ubuntu seems to strike the right balance on most things, between stability and use of new software, for instance.
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I have been using Ubuntu since 7.04 and it is awesome. My home computer and two web-servers use 9.10. I think Ubuntu and Linux in general are great environments to develope programs in. I use Python and c++ mainly. In the near future I might submit some stuff to the developing team (I am very supportive). Hey Bill! The Penguin is going to get you!!
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@Adam Williamson - sure, 100 million is unfounded, a pure guess.
My answer’s “many more than yesterday”, and that is a good thing. Another good question is,
“How many have purchased a PC with Microsuck 95/98 2000, XP, or Vista, and then wiped it off and installed Linux instead?”
In my case over the years,
3 Desktops, and this month another 10 computers where I work have completely gone over to Linux.
So just for me, MS is counting 13 Licences that don’t relate to a desktop being used.
Up to you what you want to believe isn’t it?
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@ “irony says:
DECEMBER 13, 2009 AT 6:24 PM
ben2talk says: that .docx wouldn’t work properly with his Office 2003.
That’s because docx format is a later format than Office 2003, you should have saved it in .doc format.”
DOH!!! No, I should never save anything in DOC format. I can open and edit and resave .docx format documents, and I can also save them as Open Documents and export them as PDF.
Personally, using OOffice, I can open and edit and save any kind of file I like - it’s just so much more friendly than MS Office. Don’t be a dick and tell me what I should and shouldn’t do!!! I generally leave a copy of Portable OOffice (dragged from my USB drive) on any computer that I use, so the open format is gaining popularity where I work and play nowadays.
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Karmic is the Vista of Ubuntu releases.
They have bugs and do arbitrary changes and it has been getting worse.
I am zero for 4 karmic upgrades via ubiquity. Two were recovered by apt-get dist-upgrade after some fidgeting, two were reinstalls.
polkit-1 is broken so you have to edit the xml to disable constant authenticatoin for mounting and a gconf editor to disable automounting which I don’t want for backup image disks. Same as regedit - Ubuntu requires registry hacks just calls it something different. And they are getting worse. The stuff I need to change moves to the registry, but they now give me more wallpaper or funny themes to select from.
Bluetooth pairing is broken, grub2 doesn’t detect DOS bootable partitions…
I think they fixed the ext4 partition corruption (read: lose all your data) problem.
I could go on, but why bother? They don’t fix anything I report, keep throwing less stable beta trash into new versions, and make arbitrary but annoying changes (the notify can’t be dismissed but flashes if you mouseover and has NO configuration).
No transition, no explanation, no bugfixes once the breaks are discovered.
I would be willing to start with a Lucid Alpha and provide myself a patch that would fix every one of my complaints, but they have ignored serious problem reports for releases and their attitude is if some upstream project has declared it to be some way - even if broken, noisome, incompatible, faulty, loss or crashprone, then they have to be nice to THEM instead of to those who actually might want to use Ubuntu.
Windows is a lot more popular than any linux - perhaps there is a lesson in that.
Maybe Ubuntu is here to stay. I hope not in its present decaying form.
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I agree with TZ. I am not very good at the Linux command set, so instead of Terminal, I usually rely on the graphic interface. Since upgrading to 9.10, I’ve been struggling to mount and unmount my USB drives, but it seems like even if I chown a drive, mounting is out of my control. Even the Disk Utility that is automatically installed will not allow me to control mounting. I have finally discovered that I can use the Storage Device Manager (pysdm) program, I can mount and unmount drives. Usually, I have to first “Remove” the drive on the Storange Device Manager window, then click on it to get it to reconfigure. At that point, I can mount or unmount. I never had this problem with 9.04. Most people are not going to want to go through this tiresome process. This kind of stuff should be configurable by clicking on check boxes somewhere, not by editing configuration files. I love Ubuntu -- 9.04 solved all of my problems that I had with earlier versions, but 9.10 is going in the wrong direction.
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9.10 has been the best for me
If you are not willing to put up with a few problems you should stay with the Ubuntu LTS 9.04
don’t upgrade just for the sake of it.
If you like windows use windows , if you like fedora use fedora, if MS office is your thing use that.
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USB drives have been superb for me since 8.04 - and on my home computer, the Storage Device Manager quickly set up the partitions I wanted automounting at boot time. I don’t understand where these complaints are coming from!
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