Ubuntu (Linux); my first experience of...

....is good.

I bought a minimum "barebones ASUS mobo" with AMD64 plus one DVDdrive
graphics card and did this:-

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/comp.os.linux.setup/browse_frm/thread/af66b27496dd89dd/0d47eaa0681fefd8?lnk=st&q=author%3Arobin.pain%40tesco.net&rnum=1&hl=en#0d47eaa0681fefd8

That hardware cost just under £500, that would probably equate to half
the price in the States i.e. $500. The timecost was half a day - from
scratch, including downloading the .iso image (6.10) and burning the
CDrom.

The desktop is similar to XP except that it is snappier and simpler
and Firefox is the default browser.

The downside is that it connecting my Binatone ADSL 500 modem is
"...possibly difficult - USB types generally are..."

I ignorantly assumed "the command line" was some ancient throwback
thingy but it is actually brilliant because you can automate
everything with scripts i.e. a hassle to make it work but after that
it's a one-touch as opposed to Windows where it is always a hassle to
e.g. select all the .cpp and .h files by hand and not the .bak files
before copying.

To get a get-feel for maintance and dependencies see:-
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/InstallingSoftware

If I crash it tomorrow, no worries, I can insert my .iso disk and re-
install the whole lot from scratch in under an hour, maybe thirty
minutes (I have no other software installed on it so far) And this is
the real reason for changing to an open source operating system:
reliability - the mutli-platform software I am involved with has
exposed two bugs that otherwise do not show on the main development
platform.

In fact the app I use most on my PC is Firefox. My favourites for
sheer ergonomic brilliance are Cdex and MD5summer. All of these are
free-spirited. I had to abandon Nero6 for the free InfraRecorder
because only the latter would sucessfully make the bootable
Ubuntu .iso CDrom.

I thought that the future would be the Mac but now I am not so sure,
even Linux stands a chance. No way is it going to be Vista.

Cheers
Robin

.

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