14 DAY TRIAL // I know. This must make you think someone is crazy here and that person is definitely not you. But no, I don't intend to go to the madhouse because this is just a thought that went through my head yesterday morning. Just stop for a moment and read on because this will get even more interesting.
Let's just suppose that Microsoft is the company that developed Ubuntu and they want to put it in store shelves in a few days. What do you think the price tag attached on the virtually impossible-to-open "Microsoft Ubuntu" case would be? I understand you can't get a figure in your head - or even on paper - while reading this but, in this case, let's find the one thing that the Redmond Company would bring forward to make it as desirable as possible so we can have two terms of comparison to reach a result.
Could that be the eye candy every Ubuntu user out there is already used to? Most probably, considering the Vista feature Microsoft has stressed on during the whole advertising campaign preceding and surrounding the Vista launch. I'm sure all of you have heard of the Vista WOW and how facing it will change your way of experiencing an operating system's interface with 180 degrees or even more.
Now, I don't know your opinion on this one, but Vista hasn't changed anything in my opinion. Sure, it's got the transparency effect, the Flip 3D and the Aero interface but, compared to what the Ubuntu Linux distribution can offer even to a not so experimented PC user, those things that Microsoft bragged all this time seem to be kind of lame.
I already know you're going to ask yourselves why I'm taking the eye candy road to make a comparison between the two OSs. I agree there are other terms of comparison too but anyone who saw an Ubuntu desktop at work must agree with me that the thing making most people switch to Ubuntu is the infamous Cube. Yeah! The one that spins around and has on its sides the virtual desktops the Linux users have grown so accustomed to.
All the windows users I know that have seen that thing have also told me or the person next to them they want it too. So, if that's the thing which makes the users leave Vista or any other Windows OS and head to the Ubuntu open source OS, that means this is the OS area that makes Ubuntu look down on Microsoft with a big grin on its face (a penguin face most likely. That also means we've found the weak link in the chain Microsoft has built around Vista: the very thing that is supposed to make it the top selling OS on the planet - the eye candy (a notion "baptized" by Microsoft as the Aero interface).
Let's return to our OS comparison now. An Ubuntu Feisty Fawn user for example has transparency and the Desktop Effects feature out of the box. The thing that sets these Ubuntu features apart from what Vista has to offer is the ludicrous small amount or resources one has to have on its PC to run them. While Vista will make you hit the nearest hardware store in search of at least another gigabyte of RAM (if not in search for a new computer altogether), Ubuntu will be happy with what you have to offer and will run even on your old PC that only has 256 MB of RAM.
All you skeptical Windows users out there should know I'm not making any suppositions here because that is exactly the amount of RAM one of my home PCs has and it runs Ubuntu with all the Desktop Effects turned on and I still can watch a couple of movies at the same time, listen to music, browse the web and chat with my friends without the computer begging for another bowl of memory each second and going on strikes every two seconds threatening me with a complete freeze.
When I started writing this article I wasn't supposed to discuss the following matter but I think I'm going to break my self-made promise and I will tell you this: Ubuntu is now 7.10 old, just got a new name (Gutsy Gibon) and it also has a whole new set of eye candy goodies in it. Out of the box! To enumerate all the new and quite spectacular looking features will probably make my article even longer and painfully boring for some, so just read the article written by one of my colleagues on this subject, an article you can find here.
The thing is that Ubuntu is probably twice as good looking than ever before, good looks maintained with very few resources as always and this leads us to the following conclusion: there is an OS with breathtaking looks out there, an OS that doesn't need a lot of resources to look that good and you can have that OS for nothing. In case you're still wondering, I'm talking about Ubuntu, the one that looks four times better than Vista and all that without spending its money on lots of expensive cosmetics (to be read hardware).
And this is my conclusion: Ubuntu is four times better looking than Vista and Microsoft continuously stressed upon Vista's stunning looks during their whole marketing campaign. Therefore, if Microsoft developed Ubuntu instead of Vista, they would sell it for about four times more money you pay for their top notch Vista version.
I'm sure there will be a lot of people that will catalog me as an Ubuntu ambassador and will call my article subjective but I say this in response: just try Ubuntu for yourself and make your own comparison process (based on the eye candy/resource consumption relation) and then tell me if I'm wrong.
There will also be people that will rant about me taking as a base to my analysis only the eye candy side of the whole problem. I already explained the reason and that's the arrogant attitude Microsoft had while running the ad campaign about Vista: they've centered on this exact subject - the looks of their future to be released OS. If that's the case, how could I possibly miss the occasion of basing my analysis of this imaginary situation on it?
And another thing: remember the embarrassing episode Microsoft went through these days when Ubuntu appeared out of nowhere on one of their Windows Marketplace website's pages? This is what that page said: "Ubuntu is a community developed operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops, and servers." PERFECT!
I rest my case and tell you one more time my personal eye-candy based conclusion in this matter (with transparency, 3D effects and everything else that comes with it): "Microsoft Ubuntu" would sell for about four times the money you pay now on the Vista Ultimate Edition!