Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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54 of 57 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent alternative, June 3, 2008
For non-technical users, the first thing to note is Ubuntu is not at all related to Microsoft Windows XP or Vista. This means you can't go to the local Best Buy and purchase, any piece of PC software, and expect it always to work with Ubuntu.
The good news is you may never need to. Ubuntu provides, free of charge, thousands of applications including many games, Office applications, email, Web browsing, chat, and the likes. If you have a high speed Internet connection, Ubuntu can install these applications.
Ubuntu also works well with older PCs, since its hardware requirements are much more modest than Windows Vista.
If you want to try out Ubuntu, you can install and run it from within Windows, so you can try it out before dedicating hard drive space to it.
In addition, Ubuntu provides a Windows emulation layer (called "WINE") which can run some Windows applications quite well even including some older Windows games.
Unfortunately, Ubuntu does not always work with newer hardware, because some drivers aren't available. Also, the emulation support is not 100% accurate, so some Windows applications won't work.
Ubuntu is ideal for the typical PC user, who needs to browse the Web, send email, store a music library and so on. It is also an excellent fit for someone who wants to develop software. However, Ubuntu is not a good fit for users who want to use the latest PC games.
Basically, Ubuntu provides an excellent alternative to the ever-increasing hardware requirements and licensing restrictions required to run Vista (since Microsoft is phasing out Windows XP). But it's not for everyone.
Finally, this DVD is excellent if you don't have a high speed Internet connection but want to try out Ubuntu, because it includes a lot of extra software which wouldn't fit on a standard CD.
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39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A safer, faster, and reasonably priced alternative to Windows, July 8, 2008
I had to reinstall Windows XP recently, something I hadn't done in so long that I didn't know where the CD was anymore. I had to go buy a new copy at a local store, and I was shocked that it was $130 for an OEM copy (OEM means that it doesn't come with the retail box). Granted that the Windows operating system is continually updated, but it seemed ludicrous to still be paying so much for an OS that was released in 2001. It's the kind of thing a company can just *do* when it owns something like 90% of the desktop market, and I felt insulted and gouged.
So once I'd put XP back on my hard drive, I immediately went looking for alternatives. If only that local store had had a copy of Ubuntu. You know why? Because Windows didn't recognize the Ethernet controller on my motherboard. The motherboard that's been on the market for years and uses a widely popular chipset. And XP, which as I said has been out for seven years, didn't know what the heck it was. So I had no Internet access. I had to go to an Internet cafe, track down and download the driver onto a USB thumb drive, trudge back home, and install the driver.
So after all that business, I was finally able to get online, and I dived into Linux research. I'd used Mandrake Linux a few years before (now known as Mandriva), so I was familiar with the layout, so to speak. And my research led me to Ubuntu. It is based on Debian but has a much more accessible community, and its website is infinitely better designed, more intuitive, and more helpful (in my opinion) when you encounter a problem. Ubuntu also has arguably the largest desktop community in the world right now, so there are always plenty of people on the Internet, or IRC, who can help you with the quirks and tweaks. So while Ubuntu isn't really much different than Debian, it is ready for the Windows user in a way that the Debian community cannot even touch; the Debian website, for example, does not even had a forum. There's only a mailing list.
But of course, what's more important is how Ubuntu compares to Windows. In a nutshell, there really isn't a whole lot that belongs to Windows anymore. Videogames? WINE has very impressive compatibility, and its website has an extensive, easily readable database. WINE also lets you run many other programs, like Photoshop. Word processing? Open Office. Email and Web browsing? Evolution and Firefox. And all of these come with Ubuntu, free of charge -- forever. Because you *own* your copy of the software, not just a commercial license to use it. The difference is that a commercial license can expire, be revoked, and have limitations on the number of installations that you are "allowed" to do.
Meanwhile, you can install Ubuntu as many times as you like, on as many computers as you like, you can change your hardware all you like, and it will never demand that you prove you're not a thief.
There are also pretty much no viruses to deal with, because Linux uses a completely different architecture than Windows, and one that can be viewed and changed by anyone in the world. All they have to do is download the source code, which is also available for free. Thousands of people pore over the Linux programming code every day, so it is exceedingly difficult to take advantage of a hidden vulnerability. In fact, so reliable is its security that it's used heavily by the National Security Agency to safeguard sensitive information and systems.
I won't lie, though. As awesome as Linux is, the current version of Ubuntu has pretty flaky support for wireless cards, and getting sound to work can be equally frustrating. As these are pretty important elements of the experience, I can't in good conscience give the OS a full five stars. You can work around both of these flaws, but sometimes, for some reason, nothing will work, and you're left with a computer that can't connect to the Internet or play any music. I'd hate for anyone to buy Ubuntu on the basis of my review and get stuck with potentially nasty surprises, so these things have to be mentioned.
Ultimately, at this price, it's at least worth a look, in my opinion. You can keep both Windows and Ubuntu on your computer, and remove Ubuntu if it doesn't work out for you. Personally, I had problems with sound, but I refused to give up until I got it to work, because I was so irritated by Microsoft. Now everything works swimmingly, and I think my effort has been rewarded. My computer feels more secure with Ubuntu, it feels faster, and I save money. What's not to like?
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Top contender in the personal computing market, August 26, 2008
For years I have wished to replace Microsoft on my home PC with Linux. It seems every new version of Microsoft software required more and more memory and greater CPU horsepower. I had used Linux at work and knew it was generally faster. The problem was always a bad experience in the past where I attempted to install Red Hat Linux on my home machine and had problems setting up my computer to be useful again. In the end, I gave up on Linux and went crawling back to Microsoft again. I did go ahead and replace MS Office® with OpenOffice.org and was very pleased with that product. This is not a reflection on Red Hat at all, I know many have had success with it and I am glad. And, I am sure it has improved since those many years ago. But, the initial problems made me afraid to try again.
Finally, I kept hearing about Ubuntu of late and decided it might be time to try and swim in the deep end again. I downloaded the CD image and requested this CD through amazon just in case I ran into problems with the download or CD imaging. The imaging had no issues so I went ahead and gave it a try. At first I had hoped to try a dual partition rather than jumping in with both feet but the partitioning process had errors and it only gave permission to continue with Ubuntu as a full partition or not at all. I did not want to make that leap so I tried booting from the CD just to see how my PC would do with Ubuntu. After trying all my usual tasks in Ubuntu (surfing the net, working on some OpenOffice documents, etc) I was very pleased and decided to go ahead with the full partitioning after backing up some important data files. I would have preferred the dual-boot option at least for a time but Ubuntu is easy enough to learn and OpenOffice can convert MS documents so well that I realized there really was no need for a dual-boot configuration.
After the automated installation, which was as easy or easier than any Windows® install I have done in the past, I plunged right into personalizing the preferences. I had some difficulty in that the automatic install did not recognize my display monitor or video card and so it was stuck in low-resolution; but after a quick glance at the online support forums I found a lot of help figuring this issue out and had that resolved. All this took several hours altogether but probably did not amount to much more time than a Windows install would have taken in reality. I was not locked to my desk for much of that time and only came back to check progress from time to time. The time spent looking for answers in the forums was the main delay but the wait for answers was brief. The Ubuntu community is very active and very helpful.
Several days have passed using Ubuntu and I am very pleased I switched. I was able also to set up accounts for all the kids so each can have their own environment to work in. I also set up a guest account for when the kids have friends over who want to use the computer. OpenOffice and Firefox are essentially the same between Ubuntu and Microsoft versions so the learning curve is very shallow. The ease of use and installation are much better than Linux versions of the past making Ubuntu a solid contender for the PC market. The minor glitches I encountered are a very small price to pay for free software that performs better than the costly memory-hogging alternative.
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