Ubuntu Linux is just so easy to use for new users

I have heard over the years about the reason that Microsoft has retained it's monopoly position in the IT market was down to how easy it is to use, and nothing to do with the ineptitude of legislators. I have never believed this, having worked with Microsoft products for decades, I know for a fact how hard they can be to set up, how unreliable and how buggy. Everyone forgets the amount of time they have had to invest in learning the sometime ridiculous things you have to do to get Microsoft software to do anything, like pressing start to shutdown your machine!

As an example, when I used to work for Freeserve, we had a Windows 2000 cluster that was used to serve up a woman's chat forum, and I used to have to sit at my machine keeping that cluster alive while it was going on, as under pressure the cluster nodes would constantly crash, and I would have to constantly keep moving the services around. As the London stock exchange has also recently found out, when Microsoft's software is put under any real pressure it just can't cope.

So, when I had another friend come and ask me to get him onto the web, as he had no computing experience up until now, I had no hesitation but to put Ubuntu Linux onto his IBM laptop. This has been very successful, and he is now another happy surfer, using the full power of the machine, and even demonstrated to me yesterday how he had uploaded his photos to his laptop with F-spot photo manager and then put them onto web with the Picasso.

I haven't had to worry him with machine crippling anti-virus, anti-spyware software, as the machine was an older Pentium 4 , and this would have made it very slow. Ubuntu on the other hand flies along, and all the machines resources can be spent on doing real work. I have also saved him a small fortune in software costs. Their is no need to pay for an Office suite, archiving tool, anti-virus, photo editing software and world class Firefox browser, they are all pre-installed and ready to use straight from the first install. Also in the next few months there will be yet another piece of world class software going to be delivered to Linux in the form of Googles Chrome browser, which will have a big impact on the Linux community

Another great new feature about modern software , is that all of the software he has started to use is cloud based applications like Gmail, Facebook, Twitter and Picasa. So the need for machine backups at the moment are zero. Once he starts wanting to use local applications, then I can set him up a cloud based backup site like Dropbox.

No, Linux has been ready for a large percentage of the population for a long time now, and it is only the constant lies spread by the Microsoft FUD masters that keep telling people how hard it is. I would definitely recommend using Linux for many people, as you can save your family and friends thousands of pounds/euros/dollars in wasted expenditure on software you just don't need to buy. You will be giving them a reliable, secure system that will serve them extremely well, for years to come.

It is also no coincidence that Google have selected Linux to base their operating system on, as they get an extremely good foundation to base their new flashy operating system upon. In the years to come there will be hundreds of millions of people who will be relying on Linux on a daily basis for their computing needs, so it makes sense to become part of the revolution sooner rather than later.