I’ve just received Ubuntu “Breezy Badger” by mail at absolutely no cost. It is great that a free software project can offer this: in this way the project can be used by low-bandwidth Internet users or given to friends who would never have considered Linux. I’ve actually written this article using gedit on the Ubuntu Live CD; unlike other distributions Ubuntu has accurately detected my laptop’s wireless card and connected me to the wireless network; it also shows battery usage and the plethora of system information expected from a Linux system.
I am almost tempted to switch to Linux: the only draw-backs would be the lack of software, especially Photoshop and Games, and incompatibilities with friends' machines. Currently I’m trying to print this text document using my Epsom C66 printer; Ubuntu has a lot of Epsom drivers C60—C64 and I hope one of them will work. C60 didn’t work but the C64 driver is printing clearly and correctly. I am really impressed with Ubuntu. Isn’t it awful that Microsoft has such a monopoly over Schools and Businesses: I’m sure things will change soon as Linux takes over.
Interestingly enough, I have just installed Ubuntu onto one of my friend’s old computers. It is going to become a 600 MHz server powering a revision control system, database and web-server. This is not very fast compared to my laptop and my family’s desktop but it is going to be far faster and stabler than my ‘shared’ hosting with 1and1 — there must be hundreds of websites on each one of their shared servers — which probably dedicates approximately 10 MHz to me. As I become more experienced with Linux, I may convert the Ubuntu Gnome-based server to Debian command-line for better performance.
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