Some people would rather build a heathkit tv so they can be “free of vendor lock-in” by the likes of the evil magnavox empire.
Linux is great for single function servers but as a desktop solution is still badly lacking.
As an IT professional my love/hate relationship with Microsoft often bubbles over and I and my IT buddies try to replace it with a Linux solution.
I really like Linux and run Ubuntu on a PC at the house. It is NO WHERE NEAR READY for mainstream useage.
Too many things require ActiveX to work, and that is all Microsoft.
My family has teased me about using Linux for years. Since I started dual-booting our main home PC with Windows and Ubuntu and they’ve used both, I find that they all prefer Ubuntu.
Ubuntu boots way faster than Windows. It’s ready to surf the Internet in about 25 seconds. Windows takes almost 3 minutes to load all the crap before it is surf-ready.
We have a HP All-In_one printer/scanner/copier/fax. The HPLIP Linux drivers just work, and were only about 2MB in size. HP’s drivers for the Windows system: 200+ MB, and they still don’t work worth a crap and are always using up CPU cycles and memory looking for updates.
Ubuntu worked just fine from the moment of installation, including the wireless network adapter.
Open Office will open and save everything that MSOffice will(sometimes better—especially if you have an older version of Office and don’t want to spend $300 on a newer version with little to show for the cash outlay), and actually has a few nice little features that MSOffice doesn’t (like the handy “Export to PDF” button).
I once had a good laugh while on the internet when a “Windows Security Alert” popped up to tell me that Windows was infected with a virus and that I had to buy this software to fix it. I was on Ubuntu at the time. Yes, there is a Linux virus scan on Ubuntu, just in case. But I don’t really worry about viruses and such.
The only thing that Windows can do that Ubuntu can’t is run most video games. I think that’s the only reason I keep it on my computer. Now that I think about it, I believe I’ll migrate all of the data, pictures, and music on my Windows partition to Ubuntu, purge it of everything but games, and resize it accordingly. Windows has become the red-headed step child of my family’s PC.
Don’t understand all the folks with anti-business linux posts.
I’ve run my business on almost all linux based pc’s for several years now. There’s not a client I have that can detect that my “.doc and .xls” pages are generated from Open Office and not a Microsoft product.
Almost every person that’s worked for me in the last 5 years has asked me “how much would it cost” to put our office OS on their home system.
The single drawback for businesses like mine (< 20 employees) is the lack of a drop in replacement for quickbooks. We’ve got one legacy windows box (off network) for the single purpose of running quickbooks.
Other than that, I’ve been quite pleased with ubuntu on my laptop, and OpenSuse on the desktops. Actually I’m sitting in a coffee shop right now and have already had someone ask me how I can “spin” my desktop and “wobble” the windows when I move them. I can hardly imaging working on a lame windows “single desktop” environment anymore.
The fallacy inherent in all these arguments is that in this day and age of computers and devices everywhere all plugged into the same net that it’s necessary to make a choice.
Fact is that we live in a heterogeneous computing environment and that trend is likely to stay in place for a very long time. I’m typing this on a Windows7 laptop, sitting right next to my homebuilt dual-boot Fedora Core/Windows 7 desktop. A few feet away are (currently out of service) XP and Fedora boxes. If I was a smartphone geek (I’m not) I could easily have an Android phone in my pocket but that’s not the case.
All these either/or arguments make as much sense to me as someone having a tool chest in it with only one tool. Hardware is (relatively speaking) cheap! OS’s are either free (linux) or at worst affordable (Mac/Windows). Embrace the clutter, pick the right tool for the job! If I want to run Quicken or Turbotax I’m going to run it native under windows and not mess with WINE or Vbox etc. Why bother? If I want to run photoshop - same thing. If I want a web server it’s going to be apache/linux. Web surfing can really be either. The trick is to build a net/cloud so that it doesn’t matter which device you come in on, your experience will be roughly the same. My employer is already doing this - they now are supporting both Windows and Macs as supported machines and there already has been a cadre of people who have linux on their laptops.
This PC is already outdated. It’s very very expensive, 387 EURO ! It’s very bulky, it’s using a PSU with 180W too much power, and the cost to ship stateside would be prohibitive.
On top of that, using an Atom dual core for a situation like this (thin client) is less energy efficient than using an embedded CPU with integrated GPU. These systems became available 2 weeks ago...
For that price range, get these little suckers for US$200:
http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/p-40-guruplug-display-devkit.aspx
GuruPlug Display - DevKit
110mm (L) x 69.5mm (W) x 48.5 mm (H)
Consuming under 5 Watts of power
I’m thinking about buying one as a testbed for a very small Linux home media server.