What IS Ubuntu?

[SirSlaughter]

Ok I may get bricked here, But I have been so curious as what Ubuntu is.

I read up on it's website, It states it is an open source free OS.
Well Now I am curious, If it really is that, Could I simply run any computer with it? Such as, Can I download it and put in on a USB stick or order a CD and completely install the OS without any other OS like Windows?
Will this remove the need to buy a 64 bit windows 7 OS for new builds?
I see so many suggestions for it, And I don't rightly understand it completely.
It could be my ind just does not want to work today and yesterday, But any answers or explanations would be great. Thanks.

[Sebbie]

Yes - it's an operating system just like any other, so you can put it on any computer you'd like without the need for a proprietary OS.

[Tygron]

Yea it's a free OS. Not really sure what you can do with it, i've heard you have to get things that emulate windows to allow them to run. I've also heard games don't run because of that. BUT then i've heard people doing just that so I have no idea what so ever.

[TheJ]

[etam]

Back to being serious:

Well Now I am curious, If it really is that, Could I simply run any computer with it?

Yes.

Such as, Can I download it and put in on a USB stick

yes

or order a CD

burning it on your own cd might be cheaper

and completely install the OS without any other OS like Windows?

Yes. You can also have windows and ubuntu both on your computer and choose one at start-up.

Will this remove the need to buy a 64 bit windows 7 OS for new builds?

It depends on what you need to do on your computer.

As you said before Ubuntu is free operating system. In many cases it's different from windows and in some is similar.
- It has it's own graphical environment. By default ubuntu uses one named Unity, but you can also have KDE, GNOME, XFCE and more.
- You can't just take some .exe file and run it on ubuntu. Ubuntu (and generally all linux distributions) uses their own file format for binary applications. There is wine project http://www.winehq.org/about/ which helps running native windows programs. But there are lots of programs (like firefox, chrome, opera, libreoffice, vlc, gimp) that have their native versions for linux.
- Games. Almost all big productions does not have linux version. Things are slowly changing, but hey, did I mention wine? Go to http://appdb.winehq.org/ and have a look at top 10 platinum list.
- Linux uses it's own partition format ext4. It means that if you have both windows and linux on hard drive, windows won't be able to see linux's files. But linux has drivers to access FAT and NTFS partitions, so there is no problem accessing windows partitions.
- Linux has different hardware drivers. While lots of things are supported out of the box, some requires manual installation (like nvidia or radeon graphics and hp printing). There are very little thing's that doesn't work (like hardware of minor manufacturers).
- Probably you heard (or will hear) that "linux is bad, because you have to use terminal". That's not quite true. Instead of explaining "open this, type something there, find something else, bla bla bla" it's just easier to say "open terminal and type in 'sudo apt-get install something'". Terminal is powerful tool (unlike the windows cms) and some tasks are easier to do in it than clicking around (but of course it requires some knowledge and practice).

You can try ubuntu without messing with your computer: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/try ... ou-install

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

[RobbieThe1st]

etam is right.
Personally, I'd make a bootable USB stick, because they are so awesome - You can simply stick it in almost any computer, boot off the stick, and do whatever. Great when you have access to a locked-down computer and need to get around the locks... >_>

That being said, I'd definitely look on Youtube - There's a lot of great videos explaining Ubuntu and Linux in general, along with plenty of tutorials.

Just so you know, Ubuntu is a 'version' of Linux - It's based on the Linux core, which means that stuff you find for Linux will work with it.

As far as game support goes, there are some Linux-native games, but the number is small. Anything that's a web browser game(including Flash, Java, HTML5) will work on Linux without issues, typically as well as it would on Windows. If you're into old games, most of the emulators out there -- like DOSBox -- have Linux versions, so you can play your old PC and console games just the same as on Windows.
For more modern Windows games, you're going to be using Wine, or the more user-friendly paid Crossover software. This allows you to run most windows stuff at decent performance levels, though it will never be quite as good as Windows when Windows is /properly/ setup(In some cases, say with poor Windows graphics drivers, you can easily get better performance).
The other benefit is that Wine can 'emulate' anything from windows 95 to 7, which means it's possible to run those old games which you can't get to run on newer Windows versions.

That all being said, it's /different/ from Windows in many ways, some of which are far better, but most are just different - It takes some getting used to.
For example, with Windows, to install programs, you go to the website, download an installer, install it, and download new updates when they come out.
With Linux(and especially Ubuntu), you have a built-in system for automatically installing programs, and keeping them updated. You can simply open up the Ubuntu Software Center, pick what you want(99% of which is free) and it will install quickly and without a lot of fuss. Updates to your programs will come the same way - all you have to do is click one update button, everything on your system gets updated.

Overall, it's quite nice once you get used to it... But you have to have an open mind when looking at it. It's /NOT/ a version of Windows.

[SirSlaughter]

Thank you everyone, I think I will give it a try, Just to have a better experience with more software and such. Going into college for computers, I might as well learn as much as I can. So I will try it out and see how it works out.