Is Ubuntu 9.04 a Contender Against Windows?
August 30, 2009 by headgeek
Filed under Business IT, Headline, Home Gadgets, Interesting Facts
What is Ubuntu
Ubuntu is an operating system that was developed in South Africa and that very much like Unix. It is available in over 55 languages and it was developed by Canonical Ltd and is set to be administered by the Ubuntu Foundation, which was created specifically for this purpose.
The word of Ubuntu is a South African word that describes an ideal or an ideology promoted there, which is ‘humanity towards others’. Ubuntu is a stable operating system and has been developed as an open source software platform that is distributed for free. One of the main goals of the software, and something that they have done successfully is make it very easy to use for the average computer user. It is very user-friendly and easy to install.
Ubuntu History
Ubuntu was first released in 2004 with the explicit goal of releasing an update every 6 months. The operating system has been developed with usability being one of the highest priorities. One of the biggest concerns though for computer users that have been raised on Microsoft Windows is, how many applications does Ubuntu come with and are software developers writing programs for this platform? Ubuntu comes with Firefox, OpenOffice, Pidgin, GIMP and a few others and it is also possible to use quite a few programs that have been written for Microsoft Windows, including Microsoft Office. This can be done either through a virtual machine (VM) or through Wine.
Can Ubuntu Compete with Windows?
Ubuntu has made huge strides when you consider that just a few years back it was a brand new operating system. Furthermore, it is attempting to compete with Microsoft which is a massive competitor. Ubuntu has made great progress and in just a few years. According to the New York Times in January of 2009, Ubuntu had more than 10 million users and this figure is reported to be growing consistently.
Although Ubuntu is not currently making much of a dent in the Microsoft market, it can no way be an indicator of where things can go. Ubuntu definitely has potential and it has made remarkable strides. At the end of the day, all sorts of factors can potentially affect whether a product finds true success or not. Keep an eye on the technology news headlines as well as to the way that investors and vendors respond to this operating system. The biggest challenges in my view will be keeping the product strong against viruses and security attacks, which are one Microsoft’s biggest weaknesses. Ubuntu can only begin to content with Windows when software developers create programs to run on their OS as often as they make them for Windows and Mac.
Adam Carmichael on Mon, 12th Oct 2009 12:10 am
One could argue that although Ubuntu is not making much of a dent in Microsoft’s market, Linux distributions in general are making their way into the corporate sector.
Novell acquired SuSe (another Linux distribution) and have made large volumes of sales with the German government to replace Windows desktop machines with SuSe based counterparts.
In the server market, Linux, BSD and Apple OS X (all variants of Linux, or the BSD / Darwin kernels), they win hands down in mission critical applications over Microsoft’s share in the market. In small offices, you will see Windows Server, but everywhere else, it is dominated by a *nix distribution, with maybe Windows servers on the side.
Cellular handset manufacturers are releasing more Linux based handsets, including HTC, Motorola, and even Sony have a handset in development to run Android (the Google Linux based phone OS).
And that brings the “big G” into the picture. Google Chrome OS is an operating system scheduled to be released in the second half of 2010 based on Linux designed for the increasingly popular netbook PCs.
To say Ubuntu is not currently making much of a dent in the Microsoft market is a very dubious statement. There are many markets, and they can be segmented. When coupled with the fact that Ubuntu is just one Linux distribution, it is hardly a fair comparison.
That being said, I have to agree that Canonical have done an awesome job since I tried out Hoary Hedgehog in 2005. It has matured enough that my mother (who is not technical) has been running Xubuntu for more than a year now without issues, and if someone is looking to try a new OS, or to buy a new computer without an OS, Kubuntu (the KDE variant of Ubuntu) is my first recommendation if there are no Windows based apps that must be run. And if they don’t like it, they can still buy Windows without having lost anything.
(Written on a pre-release Kubuntu: Karmic Koala beta using an alpha build of Google Chrome – am I a bleeding edge open source fanboi? Perhaps
)