Lecture on userfriendliness in Desktop-Linux

Robin Heggelund Hansen, Journalist from hardware.no held a lecture on user-friendliness in Desktop-Linux. He began the lecture by explaining a short historical part of linux, and what the thing really is. Linux is the "kernel" or core part of operating systems which use it (like ubuntu, openSUSE and many others). Around the linux kernel are tools which assists in controlling how the OS responds, acts and looks. These tools are called GNU, and this is the reason why operating systems based on linux really should be called GNU/Linux systems (although it seems only creator of GNU, Richard Stallman does this). -Linux must be one of the operating systems that are most compitable with other OS, he says and mentions compability layers such as wine, which makes it easier to run windows programs in linux. As examples he says Counter-Strike 1.6, CS:source, Half Life 2, Sam&Max and Command&Conquer 3, whish all should run without problems in a linux OS. He also mentions flawless use of Photoshop CS2, Microsoft Word and more. Speaking of compability, linux machines can work with both macs and windows machines in a network.

Performance and gaming
By running superpi, a cpu-benchmarking programme on both ubntu and windows xp, Ubuntu gets a total of 29 points against windows' 25. Linux OS runs approximately 30% faster than a winxp system, he says from personal experience. On the gaming side of things, it gets worse. Because linux doesn't have the number of games built for it like windows has, a linux user must use the compability layer wine, which translates windows-language into something the penguin OS can understand, and the performance decreases because of this. In a 3dmark 2003 benchmark, windows ended with a score of 18000, against ubuntu's 12000 3dmarks. If you like using linux you can easily live with the performance loss, he ensures the audience.

Ultra portable
Someone famous once said that it won't be long before you can install linux on you toaster, and this is a good point. Linux has been installed on numerous platforms, like mobile phones, PDA's, mp3-players and Playstation 3. Robin shows us his installation of ubuntu on his ps3 and adds that it is a very cheap computer system, but says that it hasn't got the performance of a normal computer. Sony doesn't give full software access to the hardware in the console in fear of piracy and discovered secrets, so the system runs slowly, and would have problems showing films with better quality than DVDs, but it is a perfect cheap internet, e-mail and text editing system for your mother.