“In a world without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates?”

When Helsinki-born Linus Torvalds first posted a fledgling version of Linux on an obscure software bulletin board, no one – apart from the most diehard open source evangelists – would have predicted that open-source software would be much more than a short-lived hackers’ experiment. And yet, within a few short years Linux became the largest software engineering project on the planet and spawned a multibillion-dollar ecosystem that upset the balance of power in the software industry.

Today, Linux is used in everything from the smallest consumer electronics to the largest super computers. It helps run Germany’s air-traffic-control systems. It also runs a number of nuclear power plants (whose names cannot be disclosed for reasons of national security). If you drive a BMW, chances are it is running Linux. And, at the time of writing, more than 500 million users of set-top cable boxes, TiVos, Android phones and other home appliances use Linux, and more than 1.5 billion people use it indirectly every day whenever they access Google, Yahoo or myriad other websites.

No matter what you’re running on your desktop — Windows 7, Snow Leopard, XP, whatever — you use the Internet, right? And you use Google to search? You talk to your friends on Facebook, Twitter of some other social network, yes? Then congratulations — you’re a Linux user.

Thanks to the Web, desktop Linux is everywhere. The old desktop metaphor is dying. Every day that goes by the lines between what used to be a desktop, a server, and the network keep blurring. Don’t think so? Answer me this: How much work could you get done without access to the Internet?

You may have heard of Linux. It’s possible that someone has told you that Linux is hard to install. That is not so. Windows can be much more difficult to install but many of us have never had to install Windows so we have no frame of reference.

Linux is easy, but installing it can be intimidating if you have never done it. We will come to your house or place of business and install it for you. We will configure it exactly as you like it and provide you with all the applications you need. We will backup and move all your data, photos and music. We’ll do all the hard work for you. You can rest assured that professionals are handling your important data.

Call us now! We are happy to visit you and demonstrate Linux. (240) 949-2947

Ubuntu is a free computer operating system based on the Linux kernel. Its name comes from the Zulu word ubuntu, loosely translated as “humanity”. Ubuntu’s goals include providing an up-to-date yet stable operating system for the average user, with a strong focus on usability and ease of installation. Ubuntu has been rated as the most popular Linux distribution, claiming approximately 30% of desktop Linux installations in a survey.

Linux Mint is an operating system for personal computers, based on (and compatible with) Ubuntu, with integrated media codecs. Mint also has design differences from Ubuntu, including a distinct user interface, including the custom Mint menu. The Mint Tools, a collection of system tools designed to make system management and administration easier for end users.

We install and configure Linux exactly how you like it. You get a personalized computer system just for you. You can still use Windows if you want. We can make many Windows applications work on Linux and we can install Windows and Linux together, so you can choose which system to use when you boot the computer. You get two weeks free support by phone and e-mail. We also offer extended support. If the software breaks or the system misbehaves, we will fix it for free.

Home Installation

Have us come to your home to install and configure Linux for you. We’ll also move over all your data and show you and your family how to use your new system. We will give you one hour of free training and additionally you will get two weeks of email/telephone support included in the package.

Ubuntu completes a new release every six months.

Ubuntu releases work on a time-based release schedule. While that requires an almost superhuman effort, the developers have the advantage of a core team of full time Ubuntu contributors who do an excellent job of the base Ubuntu platform and inside each Ubuntu release cycle is crammed in a huge amount of work. Through the cycle there is a sync with Debian, a merge of our patches, six alpha releases, a beta, a release candidate and all the feature development, bug fixing and other work that goes into making our favorite Operating System.

They then depend on contributions from the community (that’s you by the way) to make each release slicker and more polished than we could alone. While Canonical employs a large number of developers to work on Ubuntu across seven teams: Kernel, Server, Desktop, Foundations, QA, Community, and Mobile, the larger Ubuntu community play a key role in almost every element of Ubuntu.

Each Ubuntu release is supported for 18 months with security patches, fixes for critical bugs that could cause data loss, and extra translations.

You don’t have to upgrade to the next release when it comes out, you can stay on your particular release for 18 months (skipping two other releases) and continue to get security fixes on a regular basis. After that, you will want to update your computer to one of the newer versions of Ubuntu in order to continue to receive security patches.

Upgrades are supported from each release to the next. If you wish to skip a release, and then update to the latest one, then it is necessary to update the system from your existing release through each intermediate release to get to the release you wish to run.

Enterprise releases

In addition to the regular six-monthly releases, the Ubuntu team may make an Enterprise Release (based on an existing time-based release), also known as a “Long Term Support (LTS)” release, that has received additional stabilization, polish and translation work. These Enterprise Releases will be supported for a longer period than the standard 18 month support of the time based releases. Upgrades will be supported from enterprise release to enterprise release.

What about you? Does your operating system give you confidence? When things go wrong is your reaction a shoulder shrug or a sinking heart? Out of a score of one to ten how would you rate your confidence in your operating systems ability to recover when things go wrong?

“I get paid to support Windows, I use Linux to get work done.”