6 Reasons Why Your Business Need To Switch To Ubuntu Linux 8.10

Ubuntu 8.10 widely known as Intrepid, the latest stable release of Ubuntu already arrive and I think it time for your business to switch to Ubuntu.  While your business owner heavily depend on MS Window, Microsoft decision to shelve XP in support of Vista may had left small business in a dilemma.

Although most of productivity software run under Vista and XP,  this post look into possible alternative software available as FREE alternative that come with Intrepid.

Office suite: OpenOffice.org 2.4.1

OpenOffice has done some amazing things bringing a completely full-featured office application to Linux, and also offering support for the OpenOffice Document Format which currently used by Microsoft Office. Intrepid comes with 2.4.1, but you can download and install OpenOffice 3.0 made available on their official website.

OpenOffice come give an apple to apple office suite as compared to Microsoft Office with some more application:

1. OpenOffice.org Writer – word processor
2. OpenOffice.org Calc – spreadsheet
3. OpenOffice.org Impress – presentation
4. OpenOffice.org Draw – drawing
5. OpenOffice.org Base – database
6. OpenOffice.org Math – equation editor

What I like much about this software, is the ability to save my document into PDF format which save the need to have a PDF converter thus making it easier to send file in much acceptable format.

Web browser:Firefox 3.0.3

Intrepid come with the last stable release is 3.0.3 while a beta for 3.1 has been released on the official Mozilla website.

You still need to use sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree with your user password to install Flash support. Other add-on you can install much like the normal process.

File manager: Nautilus 2.24.1

If Window have Window Explorer, Linux have  Nautilus.  Nautilus comes with tabbed browsing, bookmarks, a ‘Computer’ place which will list your partitions/hard drives (including the unmounted ones) and optical drives.

Three modes for viewing files: icon view, list view and compact view is provides in a side panel which you can toggle on/off by pressing the F9 key.  You could also set tag to files or sort them by name, type, modification date, size and tag.

One noticeable function in Nautilus was the ability to configure default actions when media is inserted or other devices are connected to the system.

CD/DVD burner: Brasero 0.8.2

A very good alternative for Nero and default Roxio program provided by Vista is Brasero.  Brasero supports burning in it burns CDs/DVDs, audio CDs, DVDs or SVCDs, multi-session mode and ISO images.  The last two function only available in commercial software like Nero.  Brasero also come with a minimal interface, allowing you to drag and drop files to be burnt.

One thing I like about Brasero was their ability to suggest filename and the parallel design tone with the famous Human theme Ubuntu used. By default, It comes with four plugins of which one of them being the ‘normalize’ plugin, which sets consistent volume to tracks burnt to an audio CD.

M and IRC client: Pidgin 2.5.2

Pidgin supports various IM protocols like Yahoo!, MSN, AIM, ICQ or Google Talk and can be also used as a basic client for internet relay chat.  Since it supports all those protocols, you won’t need to use a separate client for each of them.  Other notably function is:

1. Nautilus integration (provide the ability to browse and attach file on the fly)
2. Join/part hiding
3. Evolution integration
4. History (to keep conversation logs and to refer back as notes)

Image editor:GIMP 2.6.1

GIMP 2.6.1. is linux alternative to Adobe Photoshop, if not better than Photoshop at least at par or best alternative.  While Intrepid come with version 2.6.1, you can download the latest stable version 2.6.2.  GIMP come with a lot of notable features (for additional features you can click here):

1. Customizable interface
2. Photo enhancement that fixed some of digital picture problem like barrel distortion.
3. Digital retouching

Personally I had used GIMP in a simple application (like the picture for this post) but some advance users think GIMP give a notable comparison to Adobe in many way.  Of course, the most notable comparison was GIMP come with now cost attach to it, FREE.

Should your business change to Ubuntu?

While you can have this thing for free, switching from old habit to new habit will requires learning a new things.  If you like to learn new way of doing old thing, may be you should change.  But if you’re just like me, may you should think this cafefully.

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