Some Thoughts on Getting Started with Ubuntu Linux

By Lincoln Mullen. About a month ago, I came to the sad realization that my six-year-old white plastic MacBook was not going to see me to the end of my dissertation. Among the more serious of its ailments, its hard disk was about to fail, and doing any task took at least thirty seconds of waiting. (Going through the metal detector at an archives last summer, one of the security guards said, “I remember you; you’re the guy with the old laptop.”) Fortunately the funds for a replacement were at hand, and I needed to decide which computer to buy. There were two considerations. First, Macs of all varieties are expensive. If my budget were unlimited I’d buy one of the new Mac Pros with three Cinema displays, and compute in style. More...