OrthoDoc

Ubuntu has been the most happening thing in my life in the last couple of months!

All the while I had been hearing about Linux and the way it stood as an alternative to the already popular Windows. I rather call it windoze now, after I came across the name in the Indian version of the Chip magazine! However I rather not like Linux because i hate windoze but for its excellent build and functional qualities. Let me explain.

The first Linux OS’ that I came across was Red Hat Linux and that point in time it was still free. Not ahat it isn’t any more …just that its free version is known as Fedora. The RHL OS is the paid version and mainly directed at the corporates and institutions. The OS was up and I could get it working for me. But it was slow and it hogged a lot of memory, definitely lacking when compared to the Win 98 that I was dual-booting with. I got my hands dirty but slowly my interest started to wane. Then I used a Mandrake Live CD or was it a Knoppix CD, but the fact that it gets hazy there meant that I was not really enjoying my foray into the world of Linux. Not until a copy of SuSe Linux fell into my lap. A particular friend of mine had been harping about it for quite some time, funny that I didn’t pay him any attention. I was very excited with this OS for it worked and worked real good. The best part was the partitioning and installation. Very smooth, so to speak! The accompanying programs were wonderful. It opened a whole new world to me, a world that windoze for so long had hidden from me. I played around with it for such a long time. I even installed it on my dad’s laptop setting it up for a dual boot. The only irritant that kept me hanging onto Windoze was my inability to connect to the internet from the Linux platform. How long could I keep dual booting to access the net? I eventually made the transition to Win XP. With the two Service Packs installed it seemed to be a very reasonable OS except for the occasional blue screen of death.

Two years ago I was browsing the net when I came across this site which claimed to send me as many cd’s as I thought was necessary all the way across the oceans. I could not believe it and simply ordered the cd’s. And they did come in, all twenty of them, packed and sealed. It was not that I didn’t have to pay a dime but the commitment that impressed it. The Ubuntu guys started to rock my small little boat. And to add to it they had a version for my AMD64 rig!! I had it up and running. Pretty impressive line up of softwares were bundled together. But then the internet access remained a problem, and to me that seemed to be a major problem. I joined a few Linux User Groups here and there and tried to make sense of it all but this failed to keep my interest up. I made my way back to Win XP.

Last November again I was web hopping when I chanced upon the Ubuntu site which claimed to had hit the sweet spot again. It was running the Number one spot on a Linux OS review website. That arouse my curiosity and this time I downloaded and had it up and running. This time I could work around in spite of the fact that I had a USB modem, which can be a real pain at times, and logged into the net. I was ecstatic. Here was a system that worked in all ways. At the same time I happened to chance upon Win Vista and the launch of Internet Explorer 7. I could not download IE7. And from then on it has been Ubuntu all the way. Last month we had the latest release of this OS version 7.04. I had to pay nothing again to use it.

This time I around I loved Ubuntu becasue:

1. I could connect to the world wide net out-of-the-box!
2. There were replacement programs for all the important programs in Windoze.
3. All of it was bundled into one single cd which also doubled up as a a live cd. This permitted me to have a peek at the new system even before I installed it. Not only that, I was able to browse the web with the live mode!! Which windoze version could do that!?
4. Then the concept of upgrading the OS through a local repository – a server with the latest versions of all Ubuntu compatible programs.
5. Last but not the least was the fact that all this was the effort of people from all over the world who had put in their time and energy into something they strongly believed in and not worried about profit at all.

The reasons why I think it will last:

1. Ubuntu is backed by a commercial entity named Canonical.
2. Ubuntu offers commercial support on very attractive terms.
3. New releases come every 6 months.
4. They have a good support system – free and commercial.
5. They have a good bug reporting system.
6. Their repostiory system seems to make updating work faster.
7. Canonical supports many of the Ubuntu Core Developers financially.
8. The OS is packed neatly into one little cd of 700MB.

Something, though, worried me a lot. SuSe had already forked into open and commercial versions just in the line of Red Hat Linux. Once a large community base is established, I am afraid the Canonical might come out with its commercial versions. And like all other commercial ventures, that may turn out to be the premium version. I hate that idea especially when so much of it has been built on the efforts of few hundreds. who didn’t care about profit. Hopefully as Ubuntu claims on its front page it will remain free forever!

Have a look at this interesting time map of all the linux distributions (I found it in wikipedia)