"Almost two years ago, I reviewed Ubuntu, the user-friendly version of the free Linux operating system. I wasn't impressed. I found the software a pain to install, a pain to work with, and—even if it cost me nothing—far less worthy of my time than other major OSes. "Nothing about Ubuntu is an advantage over anything in either Mac or Windows—it has no more features, no better stability, no greater speed," I wrote.
"Still, I thought that Mark Shuttleworth, the software entrepreneur who founded the Ubuntu project, was onto a good thing. In a world of cloud-based apps, there are fewer and fewer substantive differences between Windows and the Mac OS—since I can easily shuttle my data and programs between different computers, I rarely find myself wishing for one OS when I'm on another. If Ubuntu's designers could iron out some of its kinks, I thought, a free operating system could fit perfectly in this new, OS-agnostic world."
