The Linux Project – Part 1 Ubuntu

So begins the start of my project. Linux has made a great impression on me, I really like it and most people when they first use it either love it or feel that its unnecisary to replace Windows with it. Although it can replace Windows completely its hard to do so for some users and takes adapting to. Never the less Linux is a great open-source alternative to windows and lets face it 99.9% of people switching to Linux or looking to are probably Windows users (this is just a guess though if someone has actual numbers post em in a comment). So before I start my review of Ubuntu I’m going to state some rules for the reviews of Linux that will be in effect after this review because of certain circumstances. Now shall we begin with the rules?

1.  All reviews will be done based on THE LIVE CD (so this will not be a full review of the OS because I don’t have a spare computer right now to instal each distro)
2. I must have spent AT LEAST one hour using the distro no matter how fustrated it may make me
3. All reviews (excluding the first) must be writen while using the distro
4. Readers are encouraged to suggest I review a certain distro, this way they may not have to go through the trouble of testing it themselfs.
5. Only open-source distro’s that are completely free can be used with all the standard programs on the cd
6. All will be done on the same computer

Now that the rules are laid out I’ll give some information on the laptop I will be using. All the tests will be run on my Dell Inspiron 1300 (unless something happens to the computer) It has a 1.4 ghz Celeron M processor, 512 mb of RAM and a Toshiba dvd-rw drive, mixed with intel gma 915 graphics, and an 80 gig 5400 rpm hard drive.  Now for review one, Ubuntu. One of the most popular versions of Linux and so far the only distro I have used. This one is the rule breaker and the more bias one because I had a Linux computer running Ubuntu 7.10 but only the live cd version was used on this laptop. So I’ll start in an important section which is performance. Even off the live cd which I’ve tested on a few computers I found it fairly fast although Festy was faster off the live cd but only on computers with 512 mb of ram or more I couldn’t even get it to run on a 2 year old budget computer. But any decent computer now a days will run it fine especialy not off the live cd. The programs bundled with Ubuntu are great, you get a multi service IM client, Firefox, Openoffice, The Gimp and a few other good programs. The only program I couldn’t find a good replacement for was iTunes.  Music playback was actualy my bigest problem with Ubuntu for its lack of mp3 support but theres ways around it. Stabality wise, its very stable even off the live cd, and everything runs smothly. Internet, eithernet worked great but wireless no matter what I did I could not get it to even turn on my wireless card let alone do anything past that this is still a major problem making it impossible for me to recomend Ubuntu for people who need wireless internet at all. Games, for the sheer lack of them out there I’ve found that Ubuntu does really well in the gaming department however this is based off of having it instaled on a desktop and therefor gamign performance wont be a part of my other reviews. All in all Ubuntu is a great start for anyone lookig to go into Linux and if your not tied down to any windows or mac specific software I highly recomend it as a start to the UNIX evironment and exploring new OS’s.