As I’ve stated before, we ditched Windows on our desktop computer in favor of Ubuntu Linux. Since I’ve started using it a little over a year ago, Ubuntu really has come a long way. Ubuntu is readying its newest release, and this one looks to be better than ever.

My first experiences with Linux were over ten years ago, when loading X Windows took about five minutes so I browsed the web using the text-browser Lynx. Since then, Linux has become an incredible tool that excels at what it does. The fact that it’s free still amazes me, but I’ve come to the point where I can do things in Linux that I just can’t do in Windows or Mac OS X, though that doesn’t mean I’m giving either of those up any time soon.

The hard drive in our laptop died a few weeks ago, which was bad news for our household. We could see it was coming, so we made sure to back up our data, but after it happened we had to find a way to replace it. In the meantime our computer was without a hard drive, but it wasn’t out of service. We inserted the Ubuntu CD and and the computer just worked! I was pretty impressed. I had used Knoppix and similar boot CDs, but Ubuntu detected all our software and booted rather quickly. The other boot CDs didn’t detect our wireless ethernet adapter, which meant we couldn’t use the Internet. Ubuntu found the wireless adapter, and established a secure connection with our network. We were even able to use it to buy our new hard drive. Thanks, Ubuntu! You’ve come a long way. Be sure to check it out! The newest version even has a Windows Migration Assistant, so I may be loading it onto our laptop again soon.