Hail Ubuntu!

Me bumped into Ubuntu about an year and a half ago. Around the time when news was doing rounds that Windows Vista required new hardware to run in its full splendor (read eye-candy) and Me was in no mood to upgrade from a PC that Me prided as having the then best configurations.

Actually, my experiences with Linux hadn't been that great till then. My first attempt was with Red hat Linux, but that experience had left me sour - really sour. Probably Linux as a destop hadn't evolved enough back then. Configuration of devices wasn't easy enough, finding information on the net was quite tough and help wasn't readily available. I think Gnome wasn't that pretty too.

What prompted me to move to try Ubuntu was actually, one of these videos. And then, there was Ubuntu's website which claimed that really good eye candy could be experienced even on older hardware. That you didn't have to install to experience it - live cd provided the capability to run it without having to actually install it. That it wouldn't require much hardware configuration. And that it came with this variety of software - office, image editing, media players, etc... - that came along with it. All free. That it boasted of a good user community. Enough stuff that pushed me to try it out.

Downloaded Ubuntu 6.10, burnt it onto a CD and tried it out. Must say, was in for a very good surprise. We will list out all the features in detail in the coming posts, but was pretty much convinced that this is what Me'd be using. Its been a good one and a half year since Me's started using Ubuntu on my home PC. Only a handful of times has Me booted into Windows XP. These days, Me feels strongly about 'Openness'. Me uses open source software as much as Me can and would like to contribute as much as Me can too.

Must mention here about the Ubuntu Philosophy, and the way Ubuntu influences people's thinking. Me thinks that it stands for freedom of software in specific, but could generalize it to freedom of knowledge in general. Me thinks when Ubuntu talks of Freedom, they refer to it in the Gandhian way. Me always believed that Knowledge flourishes when its shared freely, and would foster innovation in a way that no other strategy would.

There's this interesting statement that Ubuntu prints on the CDs it distributes - "You are encouraged and legally entitled to copy, reinstall, modify and redistribute this disc for yourself and Ubuntu. Share the spirit of Ubuntu". Now, compare that feeling of freedom when you read this statement with the one that you get when you read licenses of conventional software that restrict the user to make copies/ distribute it. That feeling is what Me thinks, the very essence of freedom.

Fortunately, a friend of mine, Raghav and me realized that we share similar views. These days, we discuss a lot about Ubuntu. We realized we could just pen it down into a blog, and the result is this blog. We would be posting all our learnings about Ubuntu in general and hope that it would be useful to other folks too.

While this blog would contain details about Ubuntu, we would like to extend it to include stuff about other open source stuff too.

And here we go!

:-)

Me.