New life for an old PC with Ubuntu Linux

I like Ubuntu Linux. At version 10 Ubuntu has matured into quite a good operating system. Add the easy installation and practical and well thought out Linux apps included with the distribution package and it's a very viable alternative for a PC long past its prime. (Of course, it's good for new PC's, but try and find one with Ubuntu pre-installed.)

There was an old Compaq laptop collecting dust in the house. It was well "past it". The battery was marginal, the hard drive was flash drive small and it had just enough memory (512mb!) to run XP, when it decided to run XP. This was a troublesome laptop even when new. It had the amazing ability to corrupt itself senseless about every 6 months. Rarely did it make the 1 year mark without having to be completely wiped and reloaded.

To put this into perspective, there are more powerful netbooks, maybe smartphones, these days.

So, I decided that this was the perfect test for Ubuntu. Things certainly couldn't get worse. I downloaded Ubuntu 10, burned a CD, tossed it into the Compaq and rebooted. It took time for the Compaq to start up from the CD but it did - and everything worked. Even running from the CD things were snappy. I decided to do a complete installation on the hard drive and wipe out XP entirely. In less than an hour, Ubuntu was installed, configured and updated and running perfectly. I set up Firefox and Evolution and that was about all it took to make a obsolete laptop into a current, big, heavy, desktop bound, internet laptop. I rebooted several times and each time the computer worked quickly and perfectly. The new desktop is very nice and modern looking, the menu bar and task bar are very well thought out.

This laptop is too underpowered for heavy desktop apps, although it will run anything Ubuntu preinstalled well. Where it shines is web apps, like Google's apps. Times have changed. Casual computer users rarely need the heavy horsepower of desktop apps. They want to browse, send and receive email, chat, share, and all this can be browser based. It's now a great cloud computing device.

There's a lot of chatter that it's hard to learn to use Linux. Nonsense. Ubuntu has made an interface that's so user friendly and well thought out just looking at the main screen for a few minutes and exploring the menus will be enough familiarization. The Firefox icon looks the same and a icon of an envelope means "email" to anyone. Granted, Linux apps can have odd names, but Ubuntu groups the apps into sensible categories. The app store is pretty good, too.

The point is that an old computer can be re-purposed easily and inexpensively. So long as the hardware is sound - try Ubuntu. A special thanks to Canonical, Ubuntu and Mark Shuttleworth for this excellent Linux distribution.