Review of Ubuntu 8.04 Linux

I have an old computer here that was running Windows 2000 very slowly. It’s a Hewlett Packard Pentium something or other with 256MB RAM and 10GB hard disk; it's a plonker. One of the girls had given up using it and I was getting ready to toss it in the rubbish (environmentally sound recycling of course...yeah).

But I am working on a Rugby Scoreboard project and I needed a computer with a parallel port built into it for programming the microcontroller (more on that in a later post). My laptop doesn’t have such old school stuff as a parallel port so I thought I'd keep this PC just for the scoreboard project, but how to make it go faster?

I had heard that Ubuntu has gotten pretty good and so I thought I'd give it another go.

I downloaded an ISO image of 8.04 straight from the website and burnt it to a 700MB CD on my Vista laptop with no problems. Stuck it in my HP boat anchor and booted. Within a few hours and having only answered a few questions (about ½ the questions you would answer to install XP) Ubuntu 8.04 was all installed and connected to the Internet and running very nicely.

Now I am very impressed with this release. Not only is it working fine on this old hardware that will not run Windows, but it behaves like Windows. Step aside all you Linux bigots, whether you like it or not the Windows system works reasonably well and everybody knows how to use Windows so why not replicate it? Well that's exactly what the blokes at Ubuntu have done. Right down to the drag and drop and right mouse operations. I am even writing this in the Open Office word processor which is very similar in features and user interface to Microsoft Word / Office 2007. To be sure I grabbed a few large Word and PowerPoint documents from my work laptop and checked that they all read fine and could be modified. The PowerPoint presentation was full of animations and graphics and they all presented exactly as on Windows and Office. It's not perfecf though, I couldn't get the spell checker to work in Open Office so this document was checked on my Vista machine before posting!

Everything is built in or free and easy to download. It comes with an iPod/Mp3 player jukebox program, torrent downloader, the equivalent of Office and of course FireFox.

Ubuntu have also taken a leaf from Microsoft's book and incorporated an automatic download and update system so any new security fixes are applied with the click of a mouse.

Not once have I had to read a manual anywhere. Everything just works and works well. One application that wasn't there was a standalone RSS reader but within minutes I had located one and downloaded it for free.

MP3 splitter, not problems, downloaded for free. AVI/MP4 ripper and converter, no problems and free of course. You usually have to pay for these on Windows.

All in all I reckon Ubuntu is as easy to use as Windows, as reliable and even simpler to install. With all the free built in applications and the ease with which you can add applications I would say there is no reason whatsoever that everyday users can't use Ubuntu instead of Windows and on the latest hardware it will probably scream.