Installing Windows is just the beginning. Imagine you just installed
your brand new copy of Windows 8 and prepare to unleash your computer
skills. A friend sends you an email with an attached PDF file : damn,
you don't have a program to read it. You need to go online, search
for a website that will let you download Adobe Reader (or another PDF
viewer), download it, install it, maybe even reboot. When, all right,
now you're all set. Attached to your friend's email you find a text
document, file.doc. Your Windows can't read that either, right now:
great. Either you go buy your copy of Microsoft Office, or you just
download OpenOffice, but still, you need to find it, download it
(let's hope you have a broadband connection), install it, etc. Your
friend also sent you an image, but it has a bad contrast, bad
luminosity, and needs a good crop. So you can now go and buy Photoshop
(how many hundred bucks is that again?), or download the GIMP (this
is the name of the free program that can do nearly as much as
Photoshop) : search, download, install, etc. That's enough : you get
the idea, Windows is far from complete, and installing it is just the
beginning of trouble.
When you get Linux (such as Ubuntu, Mandriva, Fedora, etc., these are different "flavors" of Linux), you also get,
without installing anything more :
- Everything you need to write texts, edit spreadsheets, make neat presentations, draw, edit equations.
- A web browser (eg Firefox) and an email program (eg Thunderbird, or Evolution).
- An image editor (GIMP) nearly as powerful as Photoshop.
- An instant messenger.
- A movie player.
- A music player and organizer.
- A PDF reader.
- Everything you need to uncompress archives (ZIP, etc.).
- etc.
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