Steve Jobs’s Touch Is What Ubuntu’s Missing: Rich Jaroslovsky

“If you’re put off by Steve Jobs’s control-freakdom and
Microsoft’s long history of buggy bloatware, you might want to
spend some time with Dell Inc.’s line of laptops running Ubuntu,
the free, consumer-oriented version of the open-source Linux
operating system. Cheaper than Apple, cheaper and more stable than
Windows, Ubuntu might be a viable alternative were it just not
quite so geeky.

“This may be the year when Linux operating systems go
mainstream. Most notably, Google Inc. is promising we’ll see
netbooks running its Linux-based Chrome OS in 2010. Ubuntu, by
contrast, isn’t just a get-me-on-the-Internet-fast solution: It’s a
full-fledged Windows substitute designed to be at home on a wide
range of hardware.

“While the software can be installed on pretty much any standard
desktop, laptop or netbook, Dell is the best-known company that
sells Ubuntu-based systems off the shelf. My test unit was a $604
Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop with Intel Corp.’s Core 2 Duo processor,
three gigabytes of memory, a 15.6-inch screen and a 250-gigabyte
hard drive.”

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