Five Essential Ubuntu Features
- Hardware auto configuration - Ubuntu comes with the drivers for most hardware built-in. anyone who's installed a generic version of Windows (i.e., not one pre-configured by a PC vendor to work with certain hardware) knows how nice it is not to have to spend hours hunting around for drivers after installing the operating system.
- Multiple desktops - Virtual desktops are like tabbed web browsing
- Software repositories - It is able to install thousands of applications from Ubuntu's repositories in a few clicks. Besides the fact that the software is free and more secure than .exe packages downloaded from random websites, it's much more convenient to install programs from a centralized location.
- ssh client - This probably only matters to geeks, but having an ssh client built into the operating system is a major point. There are some decent ssh clients available for Windows, like Putty, but none are available in Windows out-of-the-box.
- No antivirus - Security practices in the Windows world are profoundly contradictory. Many of the same companies that write Windows software also make millions of dollars selling resource-hogging applications to protect Windows applications from their security flaws. Ubuntu is as secure as it needs to be for most users out-of-the-box, without any expensive antivirus scanners added on.