and, if you are contemplating, considering, have some time to kill, have low end hardware, dont have money to burn, not a brand fan boy or a professional requiring specific computing resources, not from a rich economy/society (people of my country make 70$ pm on an average), have no clue, or even bored, you should be considering ubuntu too. why?
all operating systems (os) are marvels of human genius and ingenuity, the enablers of whats good or bad happening in these unsettling times. all of them have their pros and cons. no amount of comparison would do justice to one or the other. and believe me ubuntu can hold on its own against any os out there.
lets get one thing straight. what do 95% of us do or want to do, with a personal computer 95% of the time. browsing, email/im ing, watching multimedia, programming?, playing games?, and more browsing. these, by the way enable you to learn, make friends, keep in touch, enjoy and hmm.. excel (mostly with proper guidance). do i hear 'what the..', just hold on, i am talking about PERSONAL computers. corporates, business minds, scientists, i will indulge you later, may be not scientists (they have no other good option, just kidding). all os s out there meet your requirements. ubuntu too comes up with a royal flush, for you. firefox or chrome (browsers), vlc (multimedia player), empathy (messenger), axel(torrents), open office (office productivity), etc., work excellently in ubuntu, and i believe should be enough to start you off.
if you want more, including you know that odd something that only you need, believe me ubuntu(gnu linux) is the right choice with the least hassles.
- no licenses or restraints anywhere (most of my computers came preloaded with an os . i liked them while they lasted, not long though. every time i had a simple problem like a simple hard disk change caused headaches with the os. upgrading without paying up is/was never an option.)
- minimal hardware restrictions/requirements (most os s have requirements in terms of hardware, some os s are even deliberately tied to their hardware. ubuntu(gnu linux) can handle the most possible hardware that you can afford or accommodate or dust off from the attic. but beware that some vendors still hold out on gnu linux. very minimal though.)
- ubuntu (gnu linux) caters to your level of computer literacy, whatever it is. just need to browse, watch multimedia, play games, email/im, prepare your resume, you can. want to dig a little bit deeper, want to program (almost any language), want to customize to your fancy, want to manage your data, you can. want to do more, want to run a server (any), want to edit audio/video, want to manage accounting for your business, want an encrypted machine, you can. want to go all the way, change the internals of the os for your research project cluster, port it to run on your mp3 player?, build your own linux os, you can. it is the only os that caters to your imagination with no strings attached.
