What operating system has a penguin as a mascot and is free? If you guessed Linux, you're absolutely correct. Hold on. Before you hit the stop button, hear me out. This video is not going to geek out on you. This video is meant to inform you about what Linux is and what it can do. All on a very basic level.
Besides Tux, the cute jumping penguin, Linux is an open source program supported and developed by a community of users. What's open source, you say. The beauty of Linux is that it's open source. And open source means that no company owns it. It's not proprietary. You might say the world owns it. Or if you use Linux, you own it. How do feature functionalities get added to Linux, how do bugs get fixed? People throughout the world fix it.
For example, one major Linux program is called OpenOffice. OpenOffice is an office productivity suite. It has a word processor and a spreadsheet and presentation software. It's very similar to Microsoft Office. So there's a group of people that add feature functionality to it. And they'll submit it to the OpenOffice team who is really a virtual team, spread out all over the world.
So now you're thinking, okay, great for the Linux enthusiast but why should I care? I've got Microsoft Windows on my system. Well, think about it like this. You're at the grocery store and it's aisles and aisles of choices. If you want to eat, you're not forced to buy one product. You have the power to choose.
Well, that's what Dell has done for consumers who want Linux. Provided that opportunity of choice. Linux isn't for everyone. And most users will continue to opt for Windows, but choice is good, right? There's a lot of reasons why consumers like Linux. Number one, it's a powerful operating system. It can do lots of things very fast. It's extremely stable. It's very rare for the system to lock up or freeze. There's no blue screens. It's safe and secure. Over 95 percent of viruses, spyware and other types of malware are designed and targeted to attack Microsoft Windows.
So by definition, if you're not running Microsoft Windows and if you're running Linux, you just don't have to worry about malware or viruses and spyware. And oh, by the way, it's free. You don't have to pay money to get it. You never have to pay money to update it. Maybe we've piqued your interest a bit.
Where do you find Linux to check it out see if it's for you? If one wanted to download ubuntu, you would go to www.ubuntu.com and for all the different flavors or features of Linux they would simply go to the various websites. Novell is another one. Red Hat is another version of Linux. So anybody can get the various versions of Linux at any time they want. So far the primary users of Linux have been fairly technical.
And so you might assume that in order to use Linux you may have to be very technical. But there are the latest versions of Linux are extremely user friendly. And in some cases are easier to use than a Macintosh or a Windows machine. And in some cases it's more difficult. Ubuntu is now being factory installed on selected Dell consumer systems. Why? Well, because of viewers like you. A large group of users like yourself went out to our idea storm site our version of a suggestion box and you all pushed for Linux to be installed on to the PC.
So I called Michael Dell myself and said: Big guy, just kidding -- point being is you asked for it, and you got it. One of the neatest things about Linux is all of the applications that you can put on it. So, for example, with Windows or with Mac, the different software applications could be e-mail applications, your Internet browser, your office productivity software such as word processing and spreadsheet.
There's database software. There's photo editing software. Graphic design and layout software. All of these are software categories. For every one of these categories these are available on Linux as well. They're all free, and they're all available, all updates are easily install able, and you never have to pay for them. For more information please visit this website.
