The first day I was shipped a Ubuntu 6.06 cd, I was impressed, just by the service though. Didn't have any idea what worth the cd was. When I first installed it and ran, I was surprised really. I was always impressed by Fedora before that, but then ubuntu, by far, was quite amazing for a number of reasons. They are many, I would just name the most important one - the ubuntu community( eg. the ubuntu forum ). Though the 6.06 lacked several useful features that we now have in ubuntu, but the promise was there. And today, I have not been booting in windows for about a month...
There's a pride into that, the pride of not using pirated softwares, the pride that the open source community has to offer. Its an amazing feeling to be one of those millions of users who are one way or the other contributing to the development of this community. And guess what, using these softwares is one of the ways!
So why would anyone ever need to keep windows? Well, some reasons are just too good to be ignored( for now that is ). Ubuntu currently does not support my Plustek Scanner. That gives me a reason to run windows now. For a general user, this is not the general problem. Keep it aside, and find out why you would go for the expensive or pirated windows when you have equivalent, or even better options in linux.
Why? Well, Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint are some of the most successful projects of Microsoft, being the favourite of numerous users. Do I hear you tried OpenOffice.org Write, Spreadsheet or Presentation? Give the recent versions a try, I don't think you need any reason to miss your Microsoft habits. Its free, customisable, and growing!
If you are worrying about media players, Ubuntu has some quite better players to offer, eg. Mplayer. There are many more, I have a dozen listed in my menu, and some of them outruns any windows players now. Even more, some of these players support codecs that must otherwise be bought if anyone needs them to work on windows players. There's more to learn about which media player's the best; just go to the ubuntu forums and search for posts related to media players.
As a programmer, what I still miss( now a little though ) is the MS Visual C++ IDE. Its the best IDE so far I have seen for C++, unless ofcourse I dont start talking about KDevelop and NetBeans. The latter two IDE's are hugely popular among the linux developers, especially KDevelop, supporting all the features, and even more than what MS Visual C++ IDE has to offer. Moreover, I would personally suggest all the programmers to try NetBeans. SUN developed this IDE with the aim of creating an all-purpose all-language IDE for development, including C++, Java, Ruby, etc. They are also offering free dvd's now, and I already got my one !
Yea, you might argue that Yahoo Messenger is far better than Pidgin we have now, but its just a matter of time when Pidgin gets much better, and who knows, the developers of Yahoo Messenger might also create one for Linux distros too! There's quite a good chance of everything being Linux compatible soon judging how fast this community is growing. And I say again, its just a matter of time...
Much more, the security and personal flavour that Ubuntu( Linux that is ) has set is quite remarkable, now that MS Windows itself is trying to learn from it!
Its actually in the feeling of using a completely my own kind of softwares, the greatest feeling for a computer engineer like me, or those who love to have things in their own distinct ways. Why not just forget Windows and use Ubuntu( or any other distro of Linux ) for a try? Be desperate to learn, and you would soon forget how your C:\Documents and Settings\you\Desktop looked like!
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