Open Source OS

Operating System is the first software that is loaded in any machine. All automated machines like PDAs, Tablets, Laptops, PCs, Smart Phones etc contains an OS. OS loads all the necessary data/programs for a user to interact with a machine. There are various Operating systems out there from the very popular Microsoft Windows known for its user friendliness, Ubuntu free Linux based OS, and UNIX known for its security and stability, Android popular platform for Mobile phones, Apple OSx widely used OS for graphics applications.

Windows OS is a propriety tool by Microsoft that means only Microsoft can make changes to the Operating System, which comes out in form of new versions/patches. It is also a costly program; a very good alternate to this is using Open Source Operating System. Some popular Open Source OS are Linux (Ubuntu, Red Hat, Fedora etc), OS for mobile Android. They provide all the functionality of your expensive OS at no cost. Open Source programs are generally free and their source code (Programming commands used to create the software) is available to all, this is the most wonderful thing about Open Source software, any programmers from anywhere in the world can contribute in their development and improvement. In case of any issues they get resolved very fast, as so many minds work on it at the same time.

Said that you don’t have to be a programmer yourself to install or use open Source OS. You can find hundreds of articles and books out there on open source software from beginner to expert level, in case you are interested in giving your OS your own flavor. There are various versions and configurations available which you can utilize to setup your OS as per your needs for example you can install Linux in following ways:

Stand alone Primary OS.
Dual mode with windows.
On a virtual machine running on your windows OS.

You also get a suite of free programs like Open Office, Firefox, Thunderbird, Games and Image Processing like Gimp. They are widely used industry standard open source programs. Another advantage of using Open Source software is freedom from viruses. No program is free of bugs; if you are a windows user you are already familiar with blue screen of death. Same is the case with open source OS, but the good part here is that they resolved very fast and you can immediately get a fix or patch for your issue. Also Linux is known to have almost no viruses and you don’t even need to have expensive antivirus software.

Though there are many advantages of open source software, there are some disadvantages for example there are some programs that are windows specific for example Microsoft Office, Various PC games, some drivers.