It is a well known fact that I am a huge supporter of free and/or open source software. I regularly use such software wherever I can. I utilize OpenOffce, Mozilla Firefox as well as Thunderbird, and Gnu Privacy Guard. But I took a leap over the holidays and installed Ubuntu onto my wife’s computer. There were a few things that I considered when making this decision and they are:

• I wanted something that “just worked” without the need to go out and buy a Mac.
• I wanted something that was almost completely virus/spyware free
• I wanted something that my wife could learn easily and not feel weighed down by having to learn a new OS.

Ubuntu meets most, if not all of these goals. I can install it, set up the user accounts, and go. The system took me about 2 hours to set up, just because I wanted to ensure she would have most of the stuff she would need from the get go (Flash, PDFs, and music). If I had not gotten all of that set up then I probably could have gotten away with a 1 hour install time. The idea here is simplicity. I wanted out of the box workability. And I think I got it. I just need a set of speakers to finish up the computer and all is well.

Over the next couple of months I will give reports on the progress of my wife using the computer. Hopefully the wife will get use to Ubuntu and continue to use it.

[Technorati Tag: Technology]
[Technorati Tag: Linux]
[Technorati Tag: Ubuntu]