Last time I was comparing operating systems, namely RedHat vs. Windows. So what about free Unix?  Is it still available and how useful is it?  The answer is Ubuntu .  Essentually Ubuntu is the latest and greatest free incantation of Unix and in short, it rocks.

It has a large, active user community and public developers, so it is vibrant and strong.  Installing software on Ubuntu is easy via the aptget utility.  To install the latest and greatest python use: “aptget install python pep8 pylint.”  Nice and easy.

Let’s take a little time for operating system comparisons, specifically RedHat Linux, Windows, and Ubuntu.  Let’s narrow the focus and concentrate on ease of use.

I have both a RedHat Linux desktop server and a Microsoft Windows desktop server at home.  My family uses the Windows server, and I use the Linux server for my personnal research – PhD and such.  I have tried to use the Windows server to some extent.  Its graphics are nice, but it seems that Windows should be rebooted about once a week to keep the system sane. Otherwise, the server gets very slow.  Perhaps memory fragmentation and garbage collection are a problem.