Free Software I'm Trying Out - Ubuntu

Ubuntu calls itself "Linux for Human Beings". My brother-in-law gave me a disk and suggested I check it out. I downloaded the latest version today, burned it as a disk image and am running it from memory on my laptop right now. What that means is, I put the CD in my CD-ROM drive, booted my computer and it booked into Linux...Ubuntu more specifically. The program is running from my computer's memory instead of from the hard drive, so it is a bit slow, but it's a good chance to check it out.

Right now, I am connected to Yahoo, MSN and AOL chat, I'm browsing the net, and I even downloaded and edited the Ubuntu clipart that I used for this post. The file will disappear once I turn off the computer since I'm just running the OS from memory, but I guess I could e-mail it to myself to save it if I wanted to.

Ubuntu is open source...so it's free. The desktop looks and works very much like Windows. I've been doing some research on the Internet this evening to see how much of my current Windows software I could replace with open source, Linux software. It is amazing what is out there for free. I could replace Outlook with a free PIM that is very similar, I've already told you about OpenOffice, there is an alternative sync program for my Palm Pilot (I actually have a Sony Clie), free home/small business accounting programs, image editing software, HTML editors...lots of stuff.

I'm not really thinking about dumping Windows because, as I tell my Mac friends, there's just so much more software for Windows. But I really would like to install Ubuntu on a computer, download some of this software and see what I could do with a Linux system. I tried installing it on two old computers I have around here, but they would not work.

Hey, if anybody has a computer with a 486 processor and at least 256 megs of RAM laying around you are not using, could I borrow it a while for my experiment? When I say "borrow", I mean I would format the hard drive and put Ubuntu on it. Hey, if/when you wanted it back, at least you could legally keep everything downloaded onto it!

So far, I've encountered two problems. First of all, I cannot get this to recognize my wireless network card, so if I'm not plugged into the network, I cannot go online. I'm sure this can be fixed, but I don't know where to go to do so! I also hit the INSTALL icon on the desktop thinking I was going to see some more software I could try out. Almost made a BIG mistake. That is the icon to install Ubuntu on your hard drive erasing everything else! Fortunately I was able to stop the process, but I cannot get the install windows to close now.

Well, I'm going to try out some of the other software that came with this. Let me know if you've got a computer laying around, and I'll let you know more about Ubuntu.

- Rob