I’ve replaced 4 PCs this year, one was beyond redemption, but the other 3 still have some life in them.
The first of these three was converted to Ubuntu about 9 months ago. It’s used by three kids with the average age of 7 and replaces an old Windows PC they used to kill every other week. Nine months on and Ubuntu is still running fine 🙂
For years I’d been put off by the geekiness of Linux, every time I’ve had an old PC knocking about I’ve given it a go, but quickly backed off.
Big pluses of course are the price tag (free) and the scarcity of viruses compared to Windows. Add to that that it doesn’t seem to slowly strangle itself as nearly every Microsoft operating system does, and you’re on to a winner.
Ubuntu, pretty much works out of the box. I’ve just Installed it on my old laptop (an Acer Aspire 3630) the only thing that didn’t work straight away was the wireless network card, and all that needed was a bit of time searching through the forums for the one command to download and install the drivers.
Ubuntu itself has a simple to use desktop environment that the kids pick up very easily, and anything you could want to install is available in an appstore like interface. Firefox is there from the word go as is a competent office suite, installed VLC media player and that’s pretty much all they need.
Since the kids use the PC mainly for flash games and internet browsing (same as about 90% of the population) they don’t need the all singing all dancing hardware and now there’s two PCs for them to share.
Anyway for the last PC, Ubuntu Server is my next project, see what I can do with it.
