Off and on over the years, I’ve tried various incarnations of Ubuntu, the free replacement for Windows. The latest version, Karmic Koala, finally feels like a finished operating system.
Installation was easy, as always. It boots up incredibly fast on my laptop, and when the desktop appears its ready to go–as opposed to Windows, which seems to need grind the hard drive for another few seconds before its ready to do anything. It’s not a huge difference in actual time, but it makes a world of difference in how it feels.
Ubuntu automatically recognized most of my laptop’s hardware, which was a pleasant surprise. Previous versions have had problems; for example, my desktop’s old wi-fi card was not automatically recognized in previous verions of Ubuntu. The only things that didn’t work out-of-the-box were the TabletPC bits. Fortunately, there are some relatively easy to follow instructions for fixing the pen and the screen rotation buttons.
I love how easy it is to install most software. When I needed an onscreen keyboard program to use with the pen, installing it was as easy as typing “sudo apt-get install cellwriter” into the terminal. You can install most software this way (or using the Synaptic Package Manager).
And it comes built-in with most of the software you’ll need, like a web browser (Firefox), email (Evolution) and chat clients (Empathy[1]), free versions of word and excel (OpenOffice), and even Photoshop (GIMP Image Editor).
You can give it a try without changing anything on your computer–just download and burn their CD, pop it in your hard drive, and reboot. It’s really pretty neat free software, just a pleasure to use.
[1]. Empathy is really very nice software. Talks to AIM, Google Talk, Jabber, MSN, Yahoo, and several other chat networks. Could not be simpler to use.
