I'm not ashamed to admit -- I'm a Linux user. What's there to be ashamed of, anyway? A computer is just a tool, and so is the operating system that runs it. Still, there are numerous preconceptions people have about Linux. First, though, I should correct myself. Linux is just a kernel. When somebody refers to Linux, they usually mean to name one of the many distributions of Linux, or they are referring to all of the common distributions collectively. I usually use Linux to mean the latter.

I have been running Ubuntu at home, exclusively, since 2005. I do not hate Microsoft, I do not think they are evil. I've been using Microsoft products from QBasic to Windows Vista. There are clear benefits to using Microsoft products, especially as a business, and I don't feel that there is any need to dispute this.

Note: What I say about Ubuntu most likely applies to many other desktop distributions, especially Debian.

Many years ago, I was someone who considered Linux to be a joke. And back then, in many ways, it was -- not because the effort was laughable; the effort was certainly deserving of respect. The unfortunate reality was this: making a generic PC operating system is hard. As if that wasn't hard enough, Linux was often viewed as a solution to everything. Linux lived in embedded systems. Linux lived on stripped down computers running networks. Linux was the tech enthusiast's hacking station. Linux was used to run business machines, render farms, and word processors. Eventually people began to push linux as a media center, as an office solution, and as grandma's desktop. Linux (the kernel) matured, but the target audience fragmented (or diversified, if you're an optimist). Linux Linux Linux! It can do everything! Well ...

On the bright side, distributions sprung up all over the place, each one aimed at a specific subset of Linux usage, and Linux was able to smoothly go on trying to be everything to everyone. On the dark side, this was a massive division of labor, and often a duplication of effort. As libraries began to be written, several groups of people would start similar projects to do the same thing. The Open Source community was not one happy family. Beliefs were strong, and tempers ran hot. The same passion that drove the development inferno also lead to fractures in overall collaboration.

In 2005, I decided to give Linux another try. At that point I had been using IRIX alongside Windows for 4 years, and I was very comfortable with the whole UNIX philosophy.

I picked Ubuntu because it was recommended to me. I was pleased to find out that many of the problems I mentioned were truly going away. Single libraries were being chosen, duplications were being phased out, and standards were starting to be adopted across the board.

What are my beliefs now? In short, based on my experience, I believe Open Source software is going to come out on top. Between using Windows at work, and Ubuntu at home, I far prefer using Ubuntu. People often argue that Open Source software is inferior because it is written by amateurs, or people who don't need to worry about the quality of their software. I've come to recognize that argument as crap. I'm surprised to think they haven't considered why people write software for free in the first place: they are deeply motivated by a genuine interest in what they are making. Not only does this drive the passion to create good software, it creates a community keen on pushing the envelope, and implementing new technology before many of the more traditional software companies can get something out of the door. Funnier still, the inspired software is free!

Ubuntu, and indeed many Linux desktop distributions, enjoys substantial benefit from this 'inspired software' phenomenon. It also takes advantage of lessons learned by Microsoft and Apple, as they have made mistakes in their own endeavors. There are many ways that Ubuntu is ahead of the curve even when compared to Vista.

Ubuntu benefits from the concept of package management. Many linux distributions have a form of package management, but windows still has no clear equivalent. Modern package management in linux gives the ability to put many files together into a single 'package', and allows a package to tell the system what other packages it requires to run. This approach allows for a much more cohesive software environment. If a new version of any installed package is released, the system will be able to inform you, and take the steps necessary for seamlessly upgrading. By contrast, you are probably familiar with Windows Update. This only updates Windows components. You have probably also noticed that every other application not made by Microsoft (and some that are) has its own updater. Some examples are iTunes, Photoshop, Acrobat, 3D Studio, Quicktime, various virus scanners, and so on. In Ubuntu, applications don't need to implement any of that. It is simply handled by the package management system.

Package management also gives you one-click access to a single source of tens of thousands of packages ready to install. You can install them simply by clicking a package, and marking it for installation. When you are ready, you install everything you've marked in one shot. There is no need to download from a website, run the setup program, click "Next" five or six times, and repeat for the next item, and the amount of software available is unbelievable. Simple applications Windows has you scrounge for -- Ubuntu has them all available in one spot. And they aren't shareware, malware, or anything in between.

Ubuntu has also had a single desktop search solution for a long time now -- Beagle. It integrates nicely into many applications, and co-exists with your desktop in a way I could never get with MSN's or Google's desktop indexing software. This is another example of a user seeing a clear need, being inspired to create a solution, and coming out with a great result before the rest.

In my two years of using it, I have been extremely impressed with the GNOME desktop environment, and the Gtk toolkit that drives it. It is a very work-friendly, user-centric approach to the graphical desktop, and it has been wonderful working with it.

Please note that, yes, I have used KDE quite a bit, and no, I do not like it. I'm not going to get into it here, though.

GNOME is a desktop environment made with the belief that things should be simple. I completely agree. When I am using my computer, I am not using the desktop environment. I am using the applications within it. Complexity is tamed, and functionality is strong. Nautilus, while still a bit heavy, is a pretty good file browser. It is exactly what I've always wished Explorer had been. It has long featured the concept of 'breadcrumbs', something only Explorer in Vista now implements. You may traverse back and forth through your path by clicking on a string of directory names overlaid on the location entry. Nautilus also lets you filter the view by a string pattern, and implements very nice select-as-you-type functionality, where a small box in the corner shows what you have typed so far.

The whole desktop feels refreshingly in sync. If you have a color box, such as one for a color picker, you may pick a color and drag it to some item in your desktop environment. In most cases, that item will become the color you dropped onto it. For the desktop background, dragging a color to the center makes the entire desktop that color, whereas dragging a color to any corner will make a gradient from the desktop color to the corner color.

Desktop icons can be individually rescaled, and all icons typically use SVGs, so they are completely resolution-independent. You can overlay one or more 'emblems' in the corners of icons, which gives you the ability to visually tag things in a way that's meaningful to you, such as 'important', 'old', 'favorite', etc. Even small things have been thought of -- when you right-click > rename a file, it automatically highlights the name portion, but not the extension. This way, you can simply begin typing to give it a new name.

Some more generic (i.e. not exclusively GNOME) features include things like basic graphics functionality, system architecture, and helper apps. One example comes up when taking a screenshot. Upon pressing Print Screen, the screen is captured and a small screenshot helper app appears. It shows you a thumbnail of your screenshot, and asks where you want to save it. In Windows, you either do the copy-paste mess, or download a 3rd party screenshot app.

Progress windows (such as the ones which come up when you copy 5,000,000,000 files) have a live progress bar as their icon. When you minimize the progress bar, you can just glance at their taskbar icon to see how far they are.

Everything takes advantage of realtime volume monitoring, so creating, deleting, or changing a file is reflected immediately in anything that cares about it. If you do a Beagle search for "puppies", and then create a text file containing the text "Puppies are neat!!!", your text file will immediately appear in the search window, even if it finished searching before you created the file.

Your desktop session is tracked and managed. This means if you shut down, and log back in, the desktop environment will restore the applications you had running at the time of your last shutdown.

There are innumberable things I find wonderful about my experience with Ubuntu, and what it has become in the hands of the Linux community. While, for various strong reasons, I don't think Ubuntu is ready to replace Windows today, I am much more excited about Ubuntu's future than I am for the future of Windows. Things are going to be bright, indeed.