FREE FOR ALL
I should mention that I’m not new to this. I’ve been tinkering with Linux for the best part of a decade. Back in the mid-1990s it was primitive stuff. I regularly had to use the command line (a text screen where you manually put in commands) to resolve problems. Installing new software was a painful exercise. And the graphical user interface, such as it was, was butt-ugly.
But all that’s changed in the past few years. Based on Unix – the operating system that powers server computers from the likes of IBM , Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard – Linux has come along in leaps in bounds in the past decade, to the extent that it is now almost as easy to use as Microsoft Windows.
I’m running Ubuntu , a distribution spearheaded by SA Internet billionaire Mark Shuttleworth. In a short time, Shuttleworth has created the world’s most popular desktop Linux distribution. The latest version of Ubuntu, released in June, is called Dapper Drake and it’s the version I have on my ThinkPad. Some reviewers have complained about Dapper.
Jason Norwood-Young, one of the founders and editors of the excellent online open-source magazine Tectonic, says Dapper "sucks". His criticisms are probably fair, but I personally haven’t had anything to complain about.
Linux is not yet suitable for everybody. But in my line of work – I spend a lot of time doing e-mail, researching using the Web, and writing – Linux is entirely usable. It’s more stable than Windows and it does almost everything I want. Plus it’s free.
Ubuntu, like most distributions, ships with a very capable free office suite known as OpenOffice.org. The suite’s word processor, Writer, is just as good as Word for writing and editing. OpenOffice also includes a spreadsheet (Calc), a slideshow program (Impress), a drawing tool (Draw) and a database (Base). I’m not an accountant, so I can’t comment on how Calc fares next to Excel. I’m told Gnumeric, an alternative to Calc, is also good. You can find it at gnumeric.org. OpenOffice can be downloaded from openoffice.org.
Linux Web and e-mail tools are also excellent. Mozilla Firefox, a free cross-platform browser which evolved out of the old Netscape, runs circles around Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. It runs on Windows, too, so check it out at mozilla.com. It’s the only browser worth using, in my view. (Opera fans, I’m donning my flame-resistant gear now.)
Mozilla’s Thunderbird is a great e-mail client but if it’s a Microsoft Outlook-type experience you’re after, with calendaring and task management built into the app, Ubuntu and many other distributions ship with Novell’s excellent Evolution client.
It’s not all sunshine and roses, though. Linux does still fall down in some key areas. The biggest challenge is convincing hardware manufacturers to supply software drivers with their equipment.
There are a few other niggling problems, too. Many distributions don’t support MP3 and other proprietary media formats. You can get around it, but it takes a bit of fiddling to get your music and videos to play.
Ubuntu users should check out EasyUbuntu at easyubuntu.freecontrib.org.
There they’ll find software that makes it easy to install the most commonly requested applications, media codecs and tweaks that are not found in the base distribution.
According to the website, EasyUbuntu is so simple to use that "even your grandma could be playing encrypted DVDs, streaming Windows Media and sporting the latest [graphics] drivers in minutes".
So, if you enjoy tinkering and aren’t intimidated by software, Linux is ready for you. Give it a bash. Let me know how you get along.
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