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.
Incoming search terms:
- why ubuntu
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- mainframe express for ubuntu
- mainframe express funciona no wine
its nice and I loved it when it came preinstalled with my netbook but I am back to Fedora. Too old kernels, compiling own ones is a mess and debian based package management tries to do more than it can handle well.
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I agree with all BUT, it is not a usable system for my wife or daughters. It could be if it were the ONLY system. What Linux needs is an EASY, STANDARD way to download and UNZIP files, when you download a program, it should have ALL the needed packages included. I have downloaded music players and tried to record and it needed additional packages to do MP3 etc. The downloaded packages should all have GUI installs written because I haven’t had to use text since DOS. It also needs a CROSS REFERENCE for the WINDOZE jumpers to compare commands and meanings.
I love Ubuntu, Kbuntu, Mint…but for the standard USER, it is just to confusing. Names still confuse me, Gnome? All the G’s? They don’t make sense to me but I still love the OS.
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Windows is only easy because that’s what they are used to .If you want to use something you have to learn it quirks and all.
Linux has the easiest way to download programs you do not have to search the Internet or go to possibly dodg sites, just use the package manager
ie: the ubuntu software store which downloads everything you need. Have you ever done a clean Install with windows ,remember that does not come with everything either.
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I doubt about the validity of the first point claimed here. Ubuntu is becoming more and more liberal on its stand against propreitary software. What makes ubuntu and other gnu variants different against other proprietary platforms is that, it belongs to a different world of Free Software. when the community itself endorse propreitary software and fails to take its part in strengthening the free software community, its really a weakening effort from ubuntu’s part.
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Really? @anoni.
One reason that the uptake of Ubuntu is slower than other desktops is that it won’t play things by default - it ships as a free desktop doesn’t it? I’m not quite sure what you’re talking about here. It’s for the user to decide - and if I want to use Proprietory software is that a problem for you? or should I send a message out into the void, to be largely ignored, that I use an nVidia graphics driver because it works much better on my system than the FOSS alternative? or should we keep quiet about that and just shout for freedom?
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@Barry ‘it should have ALL the needed packages included’ = You want a 15GB basic installation? NO THANKS
“I have downloaded music players and tried to record” - I don’t understand why you ‘download’ a player when you already have one, and then expect it to record. Windows can’t do this either can it? You have to use some kind of RECORDER. Try Audacity
“additional packages to do MP3 etc.” Windows needs some kind of codec pack doesn’t it? Is that easier? Stop talking utter crap man! If you want Ubuntu with codecs, start off with Mint - okay?
“The downloaded packages should all have GUI installs written because I haven’t had to use text since DOS” - erm and when you post a reply to a forum, you must translate it into six different languages for the international community okay? I don’t need GUI installer - I can read English, and some things just install perfectly without any kind of GUI - why bother?
It also needs a CROSS REFERENCE for the WINDOZE jumpers to compare commands and meanings.’ - Good point - you can start a Wiki and post the URL back here
or is that going to be ‘somebody else’s problem’.
A year after having both Wndows and Linux installed, I generally find it easier to do things in Linux. I also enjoy opening a terminal and typing ‘get’ and pasting a URL to get somethign with ‘aria2c’ than I di clicking and having a download window appear. It’s cool, makes people think I’m clever, and it’s actually faster and better.
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I have been using Ubuntu for a little over a year and enjoy it greatly. Are there things that are different than MS? Yes, absolutely! But mostly that is a good thing.
The most important part is that I have been running a FREE OS that is stable, works as advertised, and have not had virus one to date (with no active AV program running.
One time I upgraded to 9.04 and my UPS went crazy and shut my computer down in the middle of it all. When I got it back up the OS was only partially installed. Of course it did not work, however, I popped in the live CD, loaded in the previous build (13 minutes), used my back ups to get the system back to the original state (6 minutes), started the upgrade process again and 9.04 was up and running with not a problem in sight. All that I described was done in less time than a normal MS install (and then I would have to load all the other SW that was previously loaded.
You can say what you want about Linux/Ubuntu but I am hooked and will never look back.
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Initially I had problems after my upgrade from 9.04 to 9.10 -- it seemed that the problems were all connected somehow to Javascript interference. All of those problems have disappeared with the continuing updates, and everything works perfectly. I converted my wife over to Ubuntu six months ago, but now that I’ve learned how to use the Compiz Cube desktop, I think I can even convert my daughter!
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Incidentally, I have proselytized for Linux when I’m working over in China (which is often) and the only response I get is, essentially, “Free? Not an issue with us -- all of us use pirated MS Windows anyway.” They don’t even bother with OpenOffice or other Windows-ported open source software -- everything commercial is hacked and pirated as soon as it hits the store shelves in the U.S. Ask the U.S. Dept. of Defense -- Chinese hackers are good! (lol)
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Jon Nicholson
Perhaps you should highlight the lack of virus and spyware problems instead and less chance of being hacked, that might help you never know.
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I have been using Ubutu for the last 5..6 years
There is no way I will ever return to Windows. The only (biggest) problem I can see with Ubuntu is that software developers develop for Windows, and in many cases leave out free systems like Ubuntu. When I was working, I used Mainframe Express and Cobol development. Sadly there is no alternative in the Free and Open world for developing Cobol applications. And be sure, Cobol is programming language number 1 - ONE! And Cobol systems are BIG, VERY BIG or EXTREMELY BIG. And not a single system for that in Linux/Ubuntu
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