Monday, June 10, 2013

Ubuntu - What a Gem

When I was off sick and lying on my back, I decided to really explore Ubuntu on my computer, I found myself falling more and more in love with it. When I was better and able to move around, as my favourite sport, field archery, had to be put on hold for the rest of the year, I decided to buy a new laptop, an Asus K55VD SX696H with 8GB of ram.

This is a very nice notebook and well within my budget, obviously I had no choice of Operating system thanks to the collusion between Microsoft and computer manufacturers, so I got my nice new laptop with one of the worst Operating Systems since Vista.

Because of the new EFI and GPT system I could not easily install Ubuntu alongside Windows 8, but after 5 days of trial and error I finally managed to load Ubuntu 13.04 alongside Windows 8.

Since then I have been playing and exploring Ubuntu and my verdict is this is a Gem of an Operating System, but it takes some effort and a willingness to learn, but once you get into the swing of it you realise just how flawed Windows really is.

The amount of software that is available is huge, from excellent smooth scrolling first person shooter games, platform games, to quality office programs and technical stuff. VLC movie player works well and my favourite programs are Krusader, a wonderful dual pane explorer similar to XYplorer, Deluge bittorrent works well with Tor and a simple sticky notes program called Xpad.

Libre office comes free and is simple and a joy to use, Live Mail for hotmail is available, and apart from Tom Tom everything seems to be supported, including my Ipod Classic. It seems to be blindingly fast and as stable as a rock, everything a good Operating System should be.

This does not take long to become intuitive, and if you get stuck just do a google search for what you want or are trying to do and there is usually an easy tutorial or help available. Ubuntu is improving at a fast rate, far faster than Windows, and the following of Ubuntu is growing is growing at the same pace.

I cannot recommend Ubuntu highly enough and recommend more people try it. If you have a new 64 bit computer and want to try Ubuntu and are prepared for a sharp learning curve the way I managed to install Ubuntu is here.

My scores are as follows:

Windows 8   3/10

Ubuntu13.04  10/10

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