I'm a Ubuntu faithful and believe that this operating system has such great potential that we can very well see it in all of the desktop user space (home/corporate) in the very near future. I'm currently using Ubuntu Gutsy(version 7.10) and I absolutely love it; I can pretty much do everything I use to do on my Windows PC but I no longer have to worry about the hassles such as the constant freezing due to some outrageous virus or just dare I say bad code within the operating system (could have been driver issues as well). Regardless I am now an extremely happy camper as I can now use all of the applications Ubuntu provides(free of charge) and not have any issues what so ever.
So what's so good about Ubuntu?
Well other than what I just mentioned above Ubuntu can be what ever you like; a server to host your databases, web sites and files or simply serve as your desktop PC. As I mentioned before Ubuntu comes with pre-installed software such as Open Office, GIMP, Fire Fox, Pidgin(instant Messenger), Evolution(Email Client) and Rhythbox Music Player. You can also install software that is available through the software repositories; Oh yes what is that? Repositories are software channels which basically give you access to install most of the open source/free software that is out there on the web, simply do a search for a particular type of software or if you know the name you will get results (if its available) then you click the check box and then apply and that is it. So no more *.exe installs and broken registry(OS failure).
Let me give you a quick rundown of all the pre-installed applications I mentioned above.
Open Office
This free robust office application gives you the power to create/edit documents just like Microsoft Office 2003 does but the only catch is that it is free to use meaning no licensing fees from you know who. Open Office has all the MS Office 2003 tools and some additional ones too. The only issue with Open Office is that it does not have a very good grammar checker. But the best thing about it is that because this is an open source product new extensions are being developed all the time which can be freely download it here http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/ . You can also save the documents you create straight to PDF files and you can also read/write to the MS Office 2003 format. There is one thing I should mention when opening some files that were created in MS Office 2003 some formating is lost depending on how complex a particular document is, other than this issue everything works great.
For more information visit: http://www.openoffice.org
GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program)
Think along the lines of Adobe Photoshop with a twist. The GIMP has most of the functionality that PhotoShop has meaning that you can create all sorts of graphics and manipulate your photos as you like. For more information visit: http://www.gimp.org/
Fire Fox
Need I say more, ah you are probably reading this blog with the Fire Fox web browser(let's hope).
Pidgin(Instant Messenger)
Pidgin is sort of what Trillian use to be or is. With Pidgin you have have multiple Instant messeging accounts such as Yahoo, Google, MSN, Jabber, ICQ and yes even IRC chats.
Evolution
If you need to have an email client which lives on your desktop and not on the web Evolution is such a program. It is very much like MS Outlook in terms of functionality, you can create task, memos (notes) , manage your calendar and contacts. The best part about Evolution is that you can use it for your Google Account and pretty much all web mail services that give you access to POP3 or IMAP.
Rhythmbox Music Player
Media in Ubuntu is very straight forward meaning no DRM(Digital Rights Management) to worry about, no activation and again no hassles period. Ubuntu gives you a choice to install restricted software from the restricted repositories which contain proprietary codecs and other software a quick search in Synaptic(repositories) can get this accomplish, but you can aslo try installing the Medibuntu packages (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Medibuntu). Rhythmbox is very basic and straight forward which is what a music player should be. It is very similar to Apple iTunes and has lots of plugins for online music stores, radio and LastFM. You can also create plalists and burn cds right from it and it also supports most MP3 Players and I think Ipods too.
Eye Candy in Ubuntu
This new version of Ubuntu gives you Compiz Fusion by default and how sweet the eye candy is. You think Vista looks pretty(nope) Ubuntu desktop effects blow it out of the water and to my surprise most of it is very useful to navigate on your desktop. Speaking of desktops Ubuntu gives you a choice between Gnome (http://www.gnome.org/) or KDE (http://www.kde.org/) desktops. I personally like Gnome as it is more along the lines of Windows XP and it is very easy to get accustomed to but you can always choose between the two and change it any time you like without any activation or hassles.
This about sums it up, there is more but if I type it all up you could be reading for hours. So many features so little time.
