Linux or Windows?

As I'm writing these words, DELL has decided to ship some of its new models with Linux OS. They have selected UBUNTU distribution of Linux.

Go DELL!

A perfect choice because I've been using UBUNTU on one of my machines for over a year now and I have nothing but qualified praise for it.

Qualified? Yes. Because I cannot run any of my Windows application (like Photoshop, Illustrator, GoLive) on Ubuntu.

GIMP comes close to doing what Photoshop can do (at least at my level of graphic comptetence) but other Windows applications do not have their Linux-copunterparts yet. There is nothing over the horizon yet, for example, to match the reliability of power of FrameMaker in a Linux environment.

So why I still like my Ubuntu? Let me count the ways:

1) It's FREE.

2) OpenOffice that comes with it is FREE as well and it can match WS Office in every category, except in mail management.

3) No viruses. Period. I have not used any anti-virus programs or firewalls with my Ubuntu system yet. Knock on wood.

4) No system crashes. And when I crash my system (a rare event) while trying to open 10 different applications or files at the same time, Ubuntu recovers beautifully, restoring each crashed file one by one when you restart the system.

5) Auto updates... when you click this great little "you have updates" button on top of the screen, UBUNTU automatically downloads (after your approval of each item) whatever updates are developed by hard-working Linux volunteers around the globe.

I do all my writing, for example, on my Linux machine. Since OpenOffice also has a free PDF conversion utility built right into its word processor, I'm writing my new book ("Copyright-Free Content for Your Web Site and Newsletters") also on my Linux machine.

Click here for a great article that compares UBUNTU with MS Vista