Windows 10 and Windows 11 completely dominate the desktop operating system market, so it’s easy to forget that there are alternatives available for PC users. Even if you’re a gamer, you’d be surprised at how support for gaming on non-Windows systems has grown. Most of them won’t cost a penny, and we’ve listed ten of the best free alternatives to the Microsoft Windows operating system here.

Note that your current software may not have a version compatible with these alternative operating systems. You may have to look for alternative software to use compatibility layers. Check out the “try before you buy” section at the end of this article for some tips on making the transition easier.

Table of Contents

• Ubuntu Linux
• Chromium OS
• macOS
• Manjaro Linux
• Fedora Linux
• FreeBSD
• Elementary OS (Ubuntu-based)
• ReactOS
• Zorin OS
• Linux Mint

freebsd microsoft pc ubuntu react

Python is considered one of the best programming languages in the modern world. It has a vast field of usages like the development of desktop graphical user interface (GUI), apps development, development of websites, development of scientific applications and numeric applications, development of games, etc. To study this high-value language as a newbie, you need to choose a set of appropriate books. You might get confused once you see numerous books around you. Breath! Here we are to ease up your work. We are going to discuss some best Python books that are perfect for those who want to learn python.games

Windows provides developers with a familiar Bash environment. This environment will allow users to:

Run common command line utilities such as grep, sed, and awk

Navigate the file system using these commands

Run bash shell scripts which rely on supported command line utilities

Windows is running Ubuntu user-mode binaries provided by Canonical. This means the command line utilities are the same as those that run within a native Ubuntu environment.

This is provided as beta software. While many of the coreutil commands provided by Ubuntu will work, there are some that will not. We welcome feedback and will prioritize accordingly.ubuntu

One of the most surprising new features coming to Windows 10 this summer is “Ubuntu on Windows,” which basically brings a complete Ubuntu Linux file system to Microsoft’s operating system and allows developers to run Bash and command-line apps. But what about desktop apps with a graphical user interface?

Officially Windows 10 doesn’t support those. Unofficially, it looks like it works.microsoft ubuntu

In early April, Microsoft announced that it was bringing a “native” Linux shell to Windows. A few days later, they released an Insider Preview which included Bash: I signed up as an Insider, entered the “fast ring” to get the latest builds, and sure enough I was able to add Ubuntu bash as a Windows feature. Awesome!

I love how so much nerd stuff has gone back to the efficient command line, combined with basic text editors. I learned programming when Visual C and Delphi were the new hotness, but I was happier using DJGPP (if you remember that.) Microsoft’s move seemed to indicate that they were fed up having lost 90% of web developers to Apple. I’m not one of them, as I have a laptop with a stylus for graphic design work. Trying to use any kind of webdev tools and packages like nodejs or Grunt on Windows is just pure horror, so for the last few years I’ve been running Linux in a VM for coding work, and Adobe apps for design natively in Windows.microsoft ubuntu meteor test

Netflix. Snapchat. Dropbox. Uber. Tesla…and the International space station – what do they all have in common?

They run on Ubuntu.

To celebrate our upcoming 16.04 LTS we wanted to shine a bit of light on how many people in the world actually use Ubuntu. As users aren’t required to register their installation, devices are pre-loaded with the software and servers powered by Ubuntu – this means it’s not as easy to track users. However the reality is, hundreds of millions of PCs, servers, devices, virtual machines, and containers have booted Ubuntu to date and are in use!pc ubuntu

The newest Windows 10 Fast Ring release, 14316, includes Ubuntu and Bash. It may not have a Linux foundation, but this is close as a Windows PC has ever come to also being a Linux computer.pc ubuntu

I'm in San Francisco this week, attending Microsoft's Build developer conference, as a sponsored guest of Microsoft.

That's perhaps a bit odd for me, as I hadn't used Windows in nearly 16 years. But that changed a few months ago, as I embarked on a super secret (and totally mind boggling!) project between Microsoft and Canonical, as unveiled today in a demo during Kevin Gallo's opening keynote of the Build conference....microsoft ubuntu

This simple and brief tutorial is going to show you how to enable the hibernate feature in Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr.

Hibernate is disabled by default in Ubuntu, when the computer hibernates, all of your applications and documents are stored and the computer completely switches off so it does not use any power, but the applications and documents will still be open when you switch on the computer again.ubuntu

Holding the right Alt Key (Alt Gr) while pressing another key on the US International Keyboard yields the blue characters depicted in the layout below. Shown here is the PC104 (with 104 keys) which will obviously differ slightly with many notebook layouts.

Example 1: To type the Euro sign € hold the Alt Gr and press 5

Example 2: To type a capital C cedilla Ç hold both the Alt Gr and Shift keys and press ,

Dead keys

There are 13 dead keys on Kubuntu - Linux and most of these are combinations with Shift and/or Alt Gr.pc ubuntu

Hello Linux Geeksters. In this article I will show you how to enable hibernation on Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr, and add the Hibernate button in the shutdown menu.

As you may know, via the hibernation process all the data stored in the RAM memory gets moved on the swap memory (on the hard disk). In order to properly enable hibernation, make sure your swap memory is at least as big as the RAM memory.

While hibernation can be easily done via the command-line, you can also make some tweaks to get the Hibernate button into your shutdown menu.ubuntu perl

“We’re working on Linux support—hang tight!” said Google nearly three years ago. And despite that claim and more repeated promises over those many years, Google Drive for Linux still hasn’t been released.

If you started hanging tight when Google asked you to, your arm is probably very, very sore.

But there’s now some actual evidence Google may be on the brink of releasing Google Drive for Linux, in the form of screenshots showing Drive running on Ubuntu. These didn’t just appear on some social media site where they could have been faked. No, they leaked straight from Google itself.pc ubuntu

LXLE is a GNU/Linux operating system based on Lubuntu which is an official Ubuntu OS using the LXDE desktop enviroment. It is designed to be a drop-in and go OS, primarily for aging computers. Its intention is to be able to install it on any computer and be relatively done after install. At times removing unwanted programs or features is easier than configuring for a day. Our distro follows the same LTS schedule as Ubuntu.

In short, LXLE is an eclectic respin of Lubuntu with its own community based support.ubuntu

Ubuntu is a free operating system or a Linux distribution ("distro") which receives the highest hits on DistroWatch and has been selected by readers of DesktopLinux as the most popular distro. It also gets the highest number of votes in Poll Results on Gizmo's Freeware Forum.

If you have the latest version of Ubuntu 10.04 installed in your PC, you might find these tips and tricks useful for working with the system.ubuntu

The following are links to the current schedules for various significant projects which are shipped in Ubuntu so that we can easily check how we line up with them. ubuntu

NX is an exciting new technology for remote display. It provides near local speed application responsiveness over high latency, low bandwidth links. The core libraries for NX are provided by NoMachine under the GPL. FreeNX is a GPL implementation of the NX Server and NX Client Components. ubuntu

A computer cluster is a group of linked computers, working together closely so that in many respects they form a single computer. Clusters are generally connected by a fast Local Area Network. Parallel programs that run on one of the nodes uses the processing power of all the nodes and produces the result. Generally clusters are tightly coupled ie. All the motherboards will be stacked into a single cabinet and connected using some interconnection network. They'll share RAM, Hard Disk and other peripherals. Operating System runs on one of the nodes and controls the activities of other nodes. For more on Clusters, refer the Wiki Page.

Beowulf Clusters are cheap clusters created using off the shelf components. You can create a Beowulf cluster with just a few crap computers and an ethernet segment in your backyard. Although they don't give you top-notch performance, their performance is many-fold better than a single computer. A variant of Beowulf Clusters allows OS to run on every node and still allow parallel processing. And this is what exactly we're going to do here.ubuntu

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala has a lot of beautiful wallpapers. These were picked through a competition, which had a lot of very good submissions. However the CD restriction meant that only 19 had been picked.

However, the good thing it that you can now get a lot of those amazing wallpapers which did not make it to the CD. Kenneth Wilmer has packed those wallpapers and put them in his ppa.

So, to get those extra wallpapers, here is what you have to do:

• Add Wilmer's repository using the command:

  sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kwwii/ppa

• Update using the command:

  sudo apt-get update

• Install the package using the command:

  sudo apt-get install desktop-backgrounds-extra

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GNOME 3 is the much talked about next generation GNOME that was supposed to come in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx. (Update: It has been confirmed that GNOME 3 will be delayed till atleast September 2010. So it will most probably come with Ubuntu 10.10 not 10.04.) It introduces a radical shift from the interface found in GNOME 2.x. In this article we will give you a quick visual tour of GNOME 3 in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Kola.ubuntu