When you first walked into PC world and bought your first computer, you probably thought your computing worries were over and you could surf the world wide web with impunity, how wrong you were. Just look at all the software you now have to install on your machine just to keep the baddies out, anti virus, anti spyware, anti trojan, anti worm, anti cross site , anti phishing etc etc. All of this software slows your machine , as they all take up machine cycles to run. I’m also guessing that you just love all the delays you get when the anti virus software does a daily disk check.
This can all be resolved by switching to a new way of running your computer using open source software, and that way is called Linux. It is a very simple install - see here - and you will never need all that pointless software again. Linux can do everything Windows can do, but in a slightly different way, and here is the real winner, 99% of the software you will want is supplied free when you install it and you can also download tens of thousands of other programs also for free. Linux can also run 95% of windows applications, if you have a program or game you must have, but it makes more sense just to switch.
Over the lifetime of a computer you could be saving yourself thousands of pounds, just think about that the next time you have to pay £100 for some software.
If you use your computer for surfing the web , writing and storing pictures then the move is extremely easy as all your familiar applications are built in, like browsers from Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome and the Open Office office application suite.
Linux is built on very similar underpinnings as Apple OSX and is very reliable and fast. It has a fantastic security record, which means you can spend far more time doing the things you enjoy with your computer, rather than fixing it. You will also join a world wide community of millions of people who are always willing to help with your problems, and who push the projects forward.
It is very easy to try Linux without changing your computer at all, you can just download a "Live" version and burn it onto a CD disk. Put the disk into your computer and reboot it. Nothing will change on your harddrive, but you can see just how easy and friendly it is to use.
If you have never heard of Linux, that is because there has been a quiet revolution going on within the internet, but it has been used by large companies for decades. It's what powers Google, Amazon, IBM, Oracle and Ebay to name a few. It's what is powering this server so you can read this post, like 90% of the internet you will ever visit. It's what is getting installed on the worlds hottest smart phones like the Google Nexus, Sony Xperia, Motorola Droid in the form of Google Android.
Give it a go, what have you got to lose, and you just might really enjoy the change. I changed fourteen years ago thanks to the advice of a friend, and I have never regretted the move.
) is that the Mac is so nice to use, work with and look at. Might sound nuts but if I’m staring at a screen all day, I would rather it is a Mac, free of endless leads, cables and other dust gathering apparatus. I have to confess that I’m a mac addict, have an i phone - best buy ever and am currently lusting after an i pad.