Time to take another look at Linux

I went to a man’s apartment today on a business matter and while there I noticed that he had an old thick book about Red Hat Linux on his shelf.  At one point I made a comment about it and how I had switched to Linux and that it was getting more popular.

He made a terse comment about how he had tried it and it was much MUCH too difficult for average users to use and so would never really go anywhere.

(O Rly? ;)

So during a break I showed him the Ubuntu website and we downloaded an ISO in the background and then later burned it on his XP system and booted from it.  His face went something like this:

:-|

:-)

8-)

=D

Because suddenly he was staring at a fully graphical OS booted entirely from a CD…  that didn’t have any malware issues…  and that was free.  And then I pointed out to him that Dell sells Ubuntu systems.  And HP is now selling modified-Ubuntu-based systems.

Having used Ubuntu continuously since early-2005 (yay Warty! :) I don’t notice the release-to-release improvements nearly as much as those who haven’t seen Desktop Linux in almost a decade ;)  But for those who haven’t tried Linux (in general) or Ubuntu (specifically) in even just a year, its time to try it again.  It’s like watching a child growing up (there is of course room for improvement, but it’s getting excellent grades here and there :).