Ubuntu 10.10- Maverick Meerkat

Recently, i made a shift to Ubuntu 10.10 maverick meerkat. The maverick is the adjective and meerkat is the animal. It was launched on 10th oct 2010 so version 10.10. They release a version every six months with small changes.
If you interested in knowing about other names of ubuntu versions.. have a look here.


Whats new?
1. The best thing i loved is the Ubuntu software center. A center for all your software needs..and obviously they all are free and open source.
2. The open office is still embedded, so no need to search for your word, pdf, excel, ppt etc documents.
3. The rhythm box is the inbuilt music player. It plays everything including online radio stations, podcast, last FM, and few more stuff. It gets embed into the volume control itself if closed.
4. Graphics is little tweaked, and looks better. Compiz config can be installed using Ubuntu software center.
5. The new default wallpaper and wall theme looks good.


Why Linux or say Ubuntu?
1. Faster-
                     With my PC configuration (p8600 2.4 ghz core 2 duo, 4GB of ram, 512 ATI radeon 4570 graphics card) it takes me around 45-55 seconds to boot my win 7 PC, freshly installed. And it takes 25-30 seconds to shutdown. Ubuntu 10 takes only 2 seconds to shut. The booting time is also better around 25 seconds + no time to start some services which hangs windows after booting a little.
2. Free-
                     Open source and free softwares.
3. Compatible-
                      Most of the windows softwares are compatible. You need to install wine for that.
4. Easy to use-
                       Its not that command line, that most of us use to hear about Linux. e.g. i hear once from someone that in Linux if you want to open CD drive than you have to write line of codes for that :P
5. Looks good-
                       Better graphics then windows and easy to manage them
6. Developer Friendly-
                      If you are developer than Linux is god for you. They have support for .net on Linux now. To know more about this click here MONO

It takes a little to shift permanently to Linux, you did not know windows from birth, its just that you are accustomed to it.
There are many Linux available but i prefer Ubuntu because of good support available at Ubuntu forums. Give it a shot and see the power.