Becoming an Ubuntu Evangelist

This summer, which is now totally over, left a little room for experimentation. I used what room I had -- and a little more -- to take a hand-me-down laptop from Larry Handlin, Cornerstone's evaluation expert, and turn it into an Ubuntu machine.

Ubuntu, for those new to the topic, is a flavor of the Linux operating system, which is what you might call the third rail of computing.

Everybody knows Windows, most people know that Macs have a system of their own, but lots of people have no idea that there's a third, perfectly fine system out there, and that most of the time, it costs nothing. It's the fruit of a vast, collaborative community, open to everyone, that has worked across years, continents, and languages -- part of the so-called "open source" movement.

I chose Ubuntu because of its reputation for ease of installation and usability, and I have to say, it lives up to both. Plus, it comes with slick new versions of OpenOffice, another perfectly good, open-source package that offers us all the functionality of Microsoft Office at zero cost.

With Ubuntu 8.04, Larry's laptop -- which was a sluggish, quirky, cantankerous thing under Windows XP -- has been reborn. Fast, stable, quick to start and shut down. It's now running the slideshow that plays on the plasma screen at Cornerstone.

The only drawback so far is that you need a solid understanding of Linux in order to find and install new software. Until that changes, and until Linux takes more of the consumer desktop market, Ubuntu users will always be in a parallel world, more or less stuck with what the community supports.

But is that so bad? Most people I know only ever need a browser and an office suite.

So picture this. You're a student for whom every last penny has to count. You need a laptop because it seems like more and more of your professors expect you to have one. You need an office suite for writing papers, crunching numbers, and making flyers for the groups you belong to.

You can easily blow over $1000 for such a device if you go with, say, Dell + Microsoft Office, or over $1500 for the equivalent Mac setup. But with a used, high-end laptop off Craig's List and Ubuntu, you could be up and running for about $500.

It's hard to beat that kind of math, or the freedom that comes with it.

UPDATE: A very enterprising young TRiO student has agreed to a six-month trial run, using a laptop running Ubuntu 8.2 to meet all his needs. The experiment begins mid-October, and he will be posting updates on this blog!