DesiPundit

Patrix, thank you for highlighting this post here—not because it is mine, but because an exceptionally good, free and open source software, from which people can benefit from, needs to be heard; and because open source projects don’t come with marketing budgets.

And, err, a minor clarification—I have been using Ubuntu since Nov 2007 full time on my primay home computer, so this isn’t a test drive per se. Let me also add this: since I have been using it for about 6-months now, I am willing to answer questions that any potential switchers might have. At the least, I can say this with a lot of confidence: Ubuntu sure is a safe upgrade—for everybody (yes! everyone and without skills bias), and it works right out of the box. To take away last morsels of doubt, I’d recommend that potential switchers should ideally make a copy of the live CD (download and make an Ubuntu live+installer CD)—just so that they can test their computer like: sound, video, and all attached peripherals before going ahead with the install—that would be the best and the safest way to do it.

I’m a non-techie non-developer — sort of. I’m a scientist and write scientific code, mainly for my own use. I don’t know C/C++ well enough to debug the typical linux desktop program. But I’ve been using linux since about 1995, when the competition was Windows 3.1, and therefore I have always been more comfortable with Linux than Windows, so I’m probably not a fair example… I’ve been using ubuntu for about 3 years now and love it. Most of the time it “just works”, and when there’s a problem, it’s easy to google for a fix and go “under the hood” and do it yourself. (Maybe that’s easy for me because I’ve been using linux so long.)

Don’t expect to be instantly as comfortable as you are on your windows machine. Obviously you aren’t going to adjust to a new system immediately. But if you’re willing to read a little and play around with the system a little, you won’t go back. As linux users have been saying for a decade, using a closed system like Windows is like using a car whose hood is welded shut.

The big bottleneck with linux used to be hardware compatibility, but it’s improved greatly and now Vista has levelled that playing field: you’d have better luck on Linux with quite a few peripherals, and the requirements for whizbang 3D effects are much lower on ubuntu than on vista.

The only major remaining issue is if you must use certain proprietary software that only exists for Windows. In 99% of cases there are functionally equivalent free replacements, but file compatibility can have minor glitches. In a few specialised cases there is no equivalent program on linux (I can’t think of examples offhand, since I don’t use windows).