There seems to be a lot of confusion about whether or not to implement Vista or Ubuntu for your computing needs, which is something that I would like to clear up. First off, Ubuntu is yet another Unix distribution, unlike Windows, Ubuntu is built off of a familiar, open source kernel that can run any other application for any other OS built off of that kernel, it is not platform dependent. With emulation, Ubuntu can run software for most other OS as well. If you are up to running software for Red Hat or Fedora you are free to do so but you will not receive the technical support from Cannonical’s Open Source community when doing so and the package manager will not assist you in doing so. It is completely at your own risk.

In contrast, a Vista user cannot use applications from earlier versions of Vista; the only slight compatibility is that between the 32 bit and 64 bit versions of the software. There are rare circumstances with XP drivers will work on Vista, but that is about it. Microsoft has not and will not built legacy emulation support into the OS, the goal has always been to advance users forward and to acculturate them to using more sophisticated software, to wean them off of outdated methods of programming. Both OS have the same look and feel, and I actually feel that Ubuntu is on par if not better than Vista when it comes to screen savers, 3d special effects, and the like. Ubuntu has a smaller kernel (the registry to Windows users) than most OS and can effectively with 512 mb of ram or less. You do not need a high powered CPU to run Ubuntu.

When you receive Ubuntu you receive a package manager with over 20,000 programs you can install and run (the majority of which are online that you can download), Open Office, a smooth answer to the Office Suite, and a few games. All updates are done online and web browsing is done through Firefox. Your computer will shut down in 10 to 15 seconds, primarily because Ubuntu does not have thousands of drivers installed into the OS at start up, and doesn’t employ many of the sophisticated security measures and memory management features that Vista does. It is stable though; I haven’t had a virus yet and having different programs and up to 50 tabs open on Firefox is no problem. When it does slow down it is because I am using a memory intensive application like Blender, a 3d modeling software I found. Surprisingly, playing multimedia content, such as streaming video, or playing back CDs, does not slow down the system either.

Ubuntu does not have built in support for floppy disk drives either; and it appears that most peripheral support is done through standard open source means, such as Postscript drivers for printing, so it may not be compatible with peripherals from companies that employ proprietary communication techniques, though almost any HP printer would work well I would assume. The bottom line is if you are a lightweight user that has no reason to do anything other than email, Internet and Word Processing Ubuntu is the OS for you; there is support for anything and everything you would pay for on Windows (if it were not preinstalled), and of course it is free. If you use memory hungry applications on PC and are more of a power user Red Hat or some other flavor of Linux would be good for you if you weren’t interested in using Windows anymore. Anyone using Macintosh will immediately be able to adapt to Ubuntu, for PC there is a greater learning curve, since Mac OS is based off of Debian in the first place …