On the 28th of April , Canonical Ltd. announced the release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS , lots of people -including myself- were anxious to try it .and let me tell you this; the Ubuntu community have kept their promise and they have delivered one fine Operating System.For those of you who are not familiar with Linux; Ubuntu is one of the most famous Linux distributions out there, it is based on Debian, and mainly maintained by Canonical Ltd. and a large community of volunteering developers.
The main reason behind its fame is because of its strong focus on usability and ease of installation for the average user.
Ubuntu 10.04 comes with many features:
Very easy
to install: The install is nothing more than a few mouse clicks and basic optionslike timezone, language and name. All these are explained well on the way, and the whole process is dumb-proof.
Hardware compatibility: once Ubuntu is installed, the Operating System recognizes almost any driver automatically;webcam, network card, sound, and even Graphics. this is a very good feature because whenever you install a fresh copy you don't have to look around for drivers in order to get everything working properly.
Secure: this is probably one of the most important features of them all , The very way a Linux system is designed makes it very difficult for a
virus to function as it does in Windows. This also applies to spyware,
malware, etc. The fact that almost no viruses are written for Linux also
adds a nicer sense of warmth.Wouldn’t be nice to read the almost
endless stream of security holes in Windows and know it does not apply
to you? Wouldn't it be nice to browse a flash card without having to worry if it contains 80 viruses or not ?
Ready for use out of the box: unlike Windows, Ubuntu comes with Pre-installed software like: firefox web-browser, Open-Office suit to process a wide variety of documents, Empathy chat client that enables you to chat with friends no matter what chatting services they are using... and many other software that you wouldn't find Pre-installed on windows...
Everything you
need is in one place: Ubuntu provides a software center where you can find almost any software you need on any subject; Engineering , Games , Development , Internet , Music and video players you name it ! with a single click you can download and install any software ,and guess what: you can download as much software as you want because it is all free !
Ubuntu can run on almost anything: it only requires a 1 GHz Processor , 512 MB of Memory , and 5 GB of disk space ... and even if these specifications are too much for your machine you can use Xubuntu which is built to run on machines with less capabilities; it only requires 192 MB of Memory and 1.5 GB of disk space.Unlike windows Vista for example which requires a supercomputer to run, compared to the specifications above.Very fast :you have no idea how fast Ubuntu can be, even on a relatively old machine, once you try it you will notice how fast the boot process can be.
Ubuntu is free: Do you know that when you buy a computer, a good portion of the money you pay goes to Microsoft in the form of license fees ? However this is not the way with Linux in general and Ubuntu in particular,because as part of the Ubuntu promise; Ubuntu will always be free of charge , you don't have to pay anything for software and software updates.
Fast development: Ubuntu is being developed at a very fast rate , this is because more people want to contribute and help Ubuntu in becoming more than just an operating system (they like to think of it as a life style).
Large support community: Ubuntu has one of the largest support communities on the web, mainly consisting of discussion forums, and blogs with lots and lots of tutorials . so whenever you come across a certain problem all you need to do is check the Ubuntu forums, there are people who are willing to help you and set your feet on the right track.In my following post I will be explaining the process of installing Ubuntu , and getting it ready for use.
