Windows Vs Linux

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
Hard Drive: Seagate 320GB Barracuda 7200.10 SATA II w/ NCQ, 16MB Cache
RAM: 4GB (4 X 1GB) Kingston PC2 5300 667MHz
Motherboard: MSI K9NBPM2-FID
Optical Drive: LG Super Multi DVDRW/CDRW Combo drive
Onboard video, sound, ethernet

This is the basics of my computer hardware wise. I'm not using a separate video card as I have no need for it.

OS: Windows XP Pro Service Pack 2
Web Browsing: Internet Explorer 7
Entertainment: Windows Media Player 11
Web Design: Macromedia Dreamweaver 8
Photo Imaging: Adobe Photoshop CS2
CD/DVD burning: Nero 7
OfficeSuite: Microsoft Office 2007
Hard Drive Partitioning: Partition Magic 8
PDF Editing/Creation: Adobe Acrobat 8.0

OS: Xubuntu
Web Browsing: Mozilla Firefox
Entertainment: VLC Media Player
Web Design: Quanta Plus
Photo Imaging: GIMP
CD/DVD burning:
OfficeSuite: OpenOffice
Hard Drive Partitioning: GParted
PDF Editing/Creation: PDF Editor

*All of the Xubuntu applications are open source and operate under the GNU Public License henceforth are free to use and distribute.

For your reference, a few of these Linux apps are cross-platform compatible meaning you can download and install them on Windows XP. I would highly recommend you trying these out as a free alternative.

Mozilla Firefox - who hasn't heard of Firefox these days? Even Google supports it wholeheartedly.
VLC Media Player - play absolutely EVERYTHING I've ever thrown at it, including DVDs with DVD menus.
GIMP - This full-featured application mimics Photoshop extremely well right down to keyboard shortcuts, menu options, and capability.
OpenOffice - will open, edit, and save ANY Microsoft Officesuite application. This is truly amazing!

Getting Xubuntu is the easy part. Just go to www.xubuntu.org and download the ISO from one of the mirrors or through bit torrents. An ISO is a CD image. Your Windows installation CD is an ISO. (Personally I think the tech industry has way too many acronyms)
You can also order an installation CD to be sent to you if you want.
This is the neat part about this installation CD - it's also a LiveCD meaning that you can preview what Xubuntu can do by running a scaled down version of it from the CDROM drive without installing it on your hard drive so for people paranoid about losing Windows, this is a pain-free way of checking out alternatives.

Installing Xubuntu is as easy as installing Windows XP. Basically, you pop the Xubuntu installation CD in your CDROM drive, restart the computer and click on "Start or Install Xubuntu". It will then launch the LiveCD and you can start playing around with it.

When I first played around with Xubuntu I knew I had to install it on my system to get a feel for the true power and stability of this operating system. However I also wanted to preserve my Windows OS just in case, but I only had 1 hard drive. Lucky for me it's more than big enough to accommodate the two operating systems.
I repartitioned my hard drive to allow for the second operating system and when the time came to install Xubuntu I chose to manually partition the drive instead of choosing the easy way and letting Xubuntu do the partitioning for me. It also installed the GRUB loader onto my hard drive to allow for the dual boot between Windows XP and Xubuntu.

The actual install only took about 15 minutes which surprised the heck out of me since I'm used to waiting a long time for Windows to install. Also it was really painless and straightforward. To install all I had to do was click on the "Install" icon on the Xubuntu desktop and the wizard popped up straight away. I had to make a few choices as far as keyboard layout, time zone, username and password - pretty much the same questions that Windows asks you when you install it.

Once the install was done I got the prompt to restart my computer and I was on my way.

First run of Xubuntu

"Holy CRAP! Am I at the log in screen already?"

You have to understand, with my system configured the way it is - everything tweaked out - I was expecting a fast boot, but not that fast. This operating system took about half the time that Windows normally takes, which is pretty dang fast on my system to begin with. Okay, I was impressed, but then I thought about all the drivers and everything else that I had to load onto Windows to get it to run and work the way I wanted it to. The ethernet drivers for internet, sound drivers, video drivers, setting up my internet connection, installing programs.....yada yada yada! Well...I was in for some more surprises.

Installing drivers
What installing? All the drivers were already there! I had sound, video, internet, my keyboard and mouse worked perfectly right away on first boot!

Getting updates
Getting updates is really simple. Just like in Windows a little icon showed up on my task bar (which is at the top, not the bottom). Whe I floated my mouse over the icon it said I had updates to do. I clicked on it to get the updates and voila! All the updates started coming in just like Windows. Once completed (which didn't take long at all) I figured I'd run it again seeing as some Windows updates don't show up until previous ones are installed I thought this might be the case. I was wrong. There were no other updates.

Getting and installing applications
Could this get any easier? I thought I was in heaven. To get and install applications all I had to do was click on "System" go to Add/Remove and the list of available applications showed up. They were even categorized for me.
I clicked through the categories, picked the ones I wanted and when I was done picking and choosing I clicked on "Apply Changes". It took a long time to download all the applications and games, but once they were downloaded the system did all the rest and installed everything for me automatically.
There is no need to manually install ANY of the applications you find on the listing as the system will do it for you!
I had to control myself to keep from giggling like a little schoolgirl when it was all said and done.
Uninstalling apps is just as easy. Just go through the same list and take off the checkmarks beside the apps that you no longer want, click on "Apply Changes" and your done!

Launching the applications
Similar to Windows, Xubuntu has a program listing, but this is broken down further into the categories once again. So if you wanted to launch Firefox you'd go to Internet and click on Firefox. Multimedia for playing videos and music, Office for the Officesuite...etc..etc...etc. You get the picture.

Performance
Hmmmm...hands down Xubuntu more than outperforms Windows XP. The apps launch super fast, easily twice as fast as Windows apps. You can have more than one application running at a time, just like Windows, but Xubuntu handles the multiple apps better from what I've seen.
Not only that, but you can have more than 1 desktop running at the same time. The default number of desktops available is 4. I think you can configure it for more or less but I haven't gotten that far yet. Gimme a break...it's only been 2 days!

Sorry Windows!

This Linux distro (distribution) has so far kicked you in the rear!

In two days, I have gotten Xubuntu to do everything that you can do and do it better.
All the apps that you have - Xubuntu has them too!
If I want to find an app I don't have to go hunting through the Internet to find a suitable free/trial version to install/uninstall.

Xubuntu and its brothers Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Edubuntu are so easy to use that I installed it on my 6 year olds laptop (yes, I got him one for Christmas) and even he has no problems with it. I wish he'd spend more time with the learning tools, but it's Christmas break and I figure he can go and install and play games as much as he likes! For now.

Eat that Windoze. My 6 year old is configuring his own laptop! Now if I can only get him to clean his room....