Ubuntu 10.04 brings Linux closer to the mainstream

Ubuntu 10.04 brings Linux closer to the mainstream

No Windows viruses. Free. Any questions?

 

Of course. Start with this one: How can an operation system with those virtues, the open-source Linux, remain confined to a tiny minority of desktop and laptop computers at home?

 

Linux may run TiVo video recorders and live inside Android phones, in addition to running much of the Internet's servers, but it still lags on home PCs.

 

Will that change anytime soon? A new version of a consumer-oriented edition of Linux, Ubuntu, offers hope for Linux optimists but leaves room for doubters, too.

 

Ubuntu 10.04, nicknamed "Lucid Lynx," comes from London-based Canonical, but like other open-source releases, it benefits from other programmers who have improved its source code.

 

As for those names, Canonical christens its versions after the year and month of their delivery as well as an alphabetical series of animals (the release I tested last year was Ubuntu 9.10, "Karmic Koala"). The word "Ubuntu," in turn, comes from South Africa's Zulu and Xhosa languages and, Canonical says, means "humanity to others."

 

I installed 10.04 on a months-old Sony Vaio laptop running Windows 7, then put its netbook edition on a 2008-vintage Dell laptop set up with Windows XP.

 

I've spent more time waiting for Windows to ingest last month's bug fixes: Within 30 minutes, Ubuntu's installer had partitioned each laptop's head drive to park Linux alongside Windows and then rebooted into the new software. On the Dell, the Ubuntu installer also copied over such Windows setting as the desktop background and Mozilla Firefox bookmarks.

 

Ubuntu's desktop interface shouldn't look foreign to Windows regulars. Its Start-menu equivalent resied at the screen's top-left corner instead of the bottom left, but otherwise there's little to get you lost.

 

Its netbook edition is another matter, in a good way. Instead of cramming an unmodified desktop interface on a small screen--see, for instance, Microsoft's disappointing Windows 7 Starter Edition--it presents folders and programs as large icons grouped in palettes that vaguely resemble an iPhone's home screen.