My Thoughts On Ubuntu.

Many of you must have heard of the Linux based operating system Ubuntu. In case you haven’t, it’s a Linux based operating system developed and sponsored by Cannonical since 2004. Cannonical on its own, is owned by South-African entrepreneur, Mark Shuttleworth. Ubuntu is an open source alternative to the more popular and common Windows.



Many things have been said about Ubuntu (good and bad) in many circles by different folks. Some say Cannonical is moving away from its original FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) roots due to its commercialization efforts (Ubuntu One, Ubuntu Music Store etc). Others say its no longer listening to its community and users and instead taking decisions without consulting with or checking if it’s ok with the community/users. Another issue that always come up is that, Ubuntu doesn’t contribute much code to upstream projects like Gnome and Linux kernel.

These issues and others (I can’t list all of them here) being raised have got me thinking lately about the whole thing. What is being said about Ubuntu could be very true but, at the same time, many fail to see the various ways where Ubuntu has done marvelously well in the promotion of FOSS. I am not really a fan boy of sorts so don’t think am about to blindly advocate Ubuntu without being aware of its shortcomings. Instead, what am going to do is to list the various advantages/benefits that I have come to enjoy through this distro.

1. Ease Of Use. I can’t seem to stress this enough. I have heard of Linux for a long time but never had the zeal nor know-how to fully test it until a friend of mine gave me a copy of Ubuntu 6.06. I found that it wasn’t so hard or cli-intensive (lol) as I was thinking. Most hardware I tried on it worked and the few that didn’t could either be fixed in a jiffy or just couldn’t work under Linux then. Most people (me inclusive for a time) used to think its all cli for Linux, that was until I got to try Ubuntu.

2. Free CD Delivery. Now this is one thing I really love about Ubuntu and for those of you that wouldn’t understand why, let me give you a little background info about myself. i reside in Nigeria, and internet access is not only expensive and inadequate, but also very slow when you do get it (maximum speeds are in the range of 30-40kbps). I know that most Linux distros are free to download but who in his/her right senses would try that with the kind of internet access we have down here? So, you can imagine the joy of having CDs shipped straight to your doorstep for FREE. Am yet to see a distro that does that and I know not all distros have the backing of a billionaire so that point is moot. You can visit this site to get your own free copy shipped to you.

3.  Free Alternative To Windows. As you can guess, Windows is the dominant OS in Nigeria (and the rest of the world as a matter of fact, lol), Mac OS X is usually seen among the elite and within few organizations. To use Windows, you must have purchased either a brand new system that came pre-configured with Windows or , you guessed it, pirated copies of Windows. Don’t get me wrong, am not an advocate of piracy but down here, no one is willing to shell out 30-40k to purchase a copy of Windows cd that you are legally entitled to install on only a single system. So, if you are not willing to go down the pirate avenue and not willing to spend so much either Ubuntu could save you a lot of stress there.
 

4. A Wider Reach To End-Users. This is kinda tied in to #2, the face that the cds can be shipped to the end-user free of charge to any part of the world means that people like me that don’t have broadband speeds can actually get the OS as well.
These are the few reasons why I personally love Ubuntu, I have tried a couple of other distros (Fedora, Open SUSE, Linux Mint, Mandriva,) over time but I usually end up coming back to Ubuntu. In my next post, I will point out some things I don’t like about the distro.

My Ubuntu Desktop

The same desktop with one of the default wallpapers

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